What Wealth Can't Do
Scripture Reading: Luke 16:19-31
Were we able to judge one’s spiritual state and eternal destiny by the relative fates experienced in the here and now, we would assume Lazarus was destined for hell and the Rich Man for heaven. Yet, the opposite was true. It wouldn’t be wrong to suggest the Rich Man was blessed if you automatically put wealth and everything money can buy in the blessing column. Abraham does tell the Rich Man, ‘In your lifetime you received good things.” And that reinforces the truth that it isn’t money that is evil, it is the love of money. What he had was good according to Abraham.
But if those good things – the blessings of wealth and the comfortable life wealth can buy – leads you on a road away from heaven, can we call them true blessings? Jesus asked rhetorically, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” The answer became obvious to the Rich Man when he lifted up his eyes in torment.
Lazarus didn’t enter the Kingdom of God because of his poverty and the Rich Man didn’t land in torment because of his wealth. We are not saved or lost based on our balance sheet. That wasn’t Jesus’ point. But these things are not irrelevant either. They influence and shape our hearts. Or at least they can. Riches and comfort tempt us to trust them and not God.
They also lie to us about ourselves and others. We assume (wrongly) that material blessings and health come upon those with whom God is pleased and poverty and sickness upon those with whom he is angry. We weigh our standing with God on the wrong scale. If the Rich Man’s wealth was a predictor of his soul’s state, it wasn’t his net worth or how much he had that was an indicator. It was what he did and didn’t do with what he had.