A continuing effort on my part to list what the Bible has to say about economic issues - on wealth and poverty. When I'm done, I'd like to have one source of a fairly large compendium of what the Bible has to say on matters of wealth and poverty.
There is a sidebar below on the left (Titled, "The Bible and Economics") where you can see the other entries.
I have not seen an official count, but clearly, the Bible talks about money, wealth and poverty more than practically any other topic. Today, we're looking at the last chapter of 1 Timothy...
All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against.
Those who have believers as their masters must not be disrespectful to them because they are brethren, but must serve them all the more, because those who partake of the benefit are believers and beloved. Teach and preach these principles
If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.
But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.
If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content. But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness…
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy.
Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
11 comments:
I find the following to be an interesting list of specific instructions given specifically to the rich:
Instruct those who are rich in this present world
1. not to be conceited or
2. to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God
3. Instruct them to do good,
4. to be rich in good works,
5. to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed.
Not, "repent of your sins," not, "acknowledge Jesus as the resurrected son of God," or "believe in the atonement."
Which is not to say that I think any of that is bad, just noting that it is interesting what Paul instructs specifically to we rich people. Can we assume that Paul gave this set of instructions to Timothy and intended them for rich Christians?
That is, when Paul says, "Instruct those who are rich in this present world...", is he indicating ALL those who are rich in this present world or is he telling Timothy what to do about all the rich Christians in his community?
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
Proverbs 22:7
Can the unsaved rich store up treasures in heaven? Will any good and generous deeds mitigate their punishment for having rejected Christ?
If they still end up in hell because they DIDN'T accept the Lord Jesus Christ, what good did it do them to "not be conceited"? "to fix their hope on God"*? "to do good"? "to be rich in good works"? "to be generous and ready to share"?
Without Christ? None whatsoever.
But IF they "repent of their sins" and "acknowledge Jesus as the resurrected son of God" they will at the very least escape hell. Good works will not save anyone.
For myself, I believe Paul is talking about those who are temporally rich within the body of Christ... the Church.
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* A man can hope that God will weigh his good against his bad and so escape hell, but that's now how it works...
I don’t know, I’ll have to break out my Strong’s concordanance. But I do believe that “sex” is discussed more than money.
Regardless, you make an excellent point.
“…but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain…
Now that hits home, no, it smacks of the egotistical nature of man.
It points out the unworthiness of our selves.
I don't know the answer to that myself, Blamin, but my guess at this point would be that money-related topics beat sexuality-related topics fairly handily.
I looked over at Bible Gateway's concordance in the NASB version and found (I was going to use NASB, but that only turned up 2 hits on "sexual" - apparently NASB doesn't use that term much - so I switched to NIV):
sexual = 54
sexually = 8
adultery = 46
prostitute = 74
lust = 31
money = 114
wealth = 124
poor = 178
poverty = 20
greed/greedy = 25
Now, of course that is not exhaustive. The Bible may talk about "you should not lay with a woman who is your brother's wife..." and never mention sex, or "You have chased after mammon" and never mention money.
Still, I think those are pretty good sampling words and it comes up to 213 instances of "sex"-y words and 461 instances of "money"-ish words. That is about what I would expect if you did a more exhaustive search.
Anyone know?
Well, I used “sex” as a generic term. And you gave your best, when researching my opinion., but you’d have to include “harlot, whore, sodomites, etc” to get a true picture of my meaning.
Regardless, sex and money (or is it money and sex?) is an almost overwhelming subject in our Book. It’s no coincidence that these happen to be the greatest (?) or at least the most talked about subject. At the same time it separates us from the rest of the chaff. This (the sex/money) subject is used (USED) to disregard so much that we feel dear. Most people can’t abide the fact that something they want so badly is wrong. They look for a reason to justify said behavior and said behavior almost always envolves sex or money.
That being said, it kind of throws unadulterated capitalism in a whole new light. Socialism is not the answer (too much suffering), Communism is not the answer (too much suffering), Capitalism has its share of suffering – but it probably provides the best chance of charity.
Just a question, not a statement.
For what it's worth, I'm in agreement with your statement. I do not think socialism or communism are evils in any form, like so many people do, but I do think they're less effective, less able to help people live aright. I am a supporter of a limited/regulated capitalism.
I have some sympathies for a socialist democracy, but it seems to me at this point, a limited capitalism is my favorite. I think a lot has to do with how it's implemented.
But I'm just not trusting enough in gov't to give them as much power as straight socialism does. There's too much opportunity for corruption (just as there's plenty of opportunity for corruption in a wholly unregulated capitalism).
As to the bible concordance check...
Harlot: 3
Whore: 0
Sodomite: 0
Again, I'm checking in NIV. But, as noted, when I checked in NASB, I came up with only 2 instances of "sexual," so with any translation, there will be some terms that show up more and some less.
I'm pretty sure that, in spite of the reality of how TREMENDOUSLY MUCH many churches focus on sexual sins, it is not the most commonly discussed topic in the Bible.
Idol worship, idolatry, other gods, these terms would come up a lot - this is the other topic that I'm thinking would match "greed" and money issues on a pound per pound basis.
"idol" comes up 231 times. "gods" comes up 454 times!
For what it's worth...
Meh. I find bean counting Bible verses to be the absolute lowest form of interpretation possible, except perhaps for the so-called "literal" reading. It's about as useful as counting the number of times Dan mentions "blood" on his blog and determining he doesn't believe in atonement because it's not mentioned often (which is, I believe, the silly argument someone actually tried to make once.) Double "meh."
Obviously (well, obvious to most folks anyway) the Bible has lots to say about money. I'm not sure how (or why) anyone would attempt to argue that it doesn't, or that those messages would somehow be less important if it happened to talk about something else more often (ie. sex). I suppose though, at the very least, that if one is going to make such an argument, they should at least be correct about the numbers. But then, as they say, 95% of statistics are made up on the spot -- maybe the same is true of Bible verses. LOL
BTW, it turns out that God only sacrifices his son once in the entire Bible, but that turns out to be a rather important event. ;)
Thank you for the output; however the issue of LOVE never came up in my reading of any of the statements. If you learne to LOVE properly all the other issues will fall in place. Remember God so LOVED the world. Start there and I am sure that any of you want continue down any other street other than to LOVE God first and LOVE you neighbor as yourself. Don't make it rocket science when it is just plain simple.
Good post and good comments. I enjoyed reading all of it and found it all pretty useful. Thanks!
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