It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1).

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, though he was rich, became poor for our sakes so that we might become rich in him (2 Cor. 8:9).

(The first in a series on freedom from avarice and greed to generosity)

Money – along with sex -must be of the two subjects that we speak most often, least openly, and even less comfortably about. It’s also an extremely common topic in the Bible. Whenever I think about what Scripture has to say about it, three things consistently impress me: First, God cares – passionately – about what we earn, what we own, and what we spend. Second, money and the ownership of things are intimately involved with worship. And, third, there aren’t really rules that spell out exactly what to do about our finances and our possessions.

As an example of the last point, I initially thought that an analysis of the word greed would help direct my consideration of the right approach to money. Alas, the best I could come up with was 1.) that the essential definition of the word is simply “wanting more than one needs”; and 2.) that greed is idolatry (Colossians 3:5). I obtained an equally inconclusive result by reading through Paul’s discourse on the subject in 2 Corinthians 8-9. If I read these verses correctly, I have to conclude that our stewardship of resources is a serious matter of discipleship and relationship, but not one of charts, tables, and regulatory filings. How are we, and how should we be following Jesus and his principles about money? And how does money affect and inform our intimacy with God and with other human persons – and vice-versa?

Before tackling such specific questions, it might be helpful to frame our response by thinking about the broader context of freedom as a bi-directional work of the Holy Spirit. I mean by this that God does not liberate us from sin, limitation, weakness, or ignorance without giving a completing call to their virtuous opposite. Conversely, he doesn’t lead us into following his call without his acts of transforming power that release us from what restrains our obedience.

However obvious this sounds, we are liable to forget the truth and can end up stuck on one side or the other of freedom’s equation. It is too easy for us to line up all the things that we or others need to be rid of – in the case of money, it could be anxiety, greed, stinginess, the shopping bug – and not see what grace leads us into – peace, generosity, liberality. It’s equally common for us to hear the call to spiritual fruit and strive to answer it without a divine divestiture of our fleshly and sinful impediments to growing Christ’s character in us.

Grace, working through faith, always seeks to deliver us from the frustration of swinging between self-reliance and hopelessness, and to bring us into a place of resting trust where we meet the Lord’s strength and allow it to be perfected in our weakness. This is the foundation for all freedom, whatever spiritual fruit God wants to bear in us – and money is no exception.

Scripture presents a baffling array of passages about money and getting off the money-go-round. Among them are two big-category warnings from the Apostle Paul – both from his first letter to Timothy. The first regards those who “want to be rich” (1Tim. 6:9), whose desires plunge them into folly, ruin, and destruction. The second concerns those who are already rich “in this present age,” whom Paul exhorts not to be arrogant and to avoid trusting in their uncertain wealth.

As I think about this double admonition, it strikes me that the current world culture exemplifies the conditions about which Paul writes in a couple of unique ways. On the one hand, there is a deep anxiety about falling into poverty, not having the means to support ourselves, or failing to enter retirement at a level that the world deems sufficient (an elusive figure that is generally north of a million dollars). Much of this kind of fear arose in the post-depression years of my parents’ generation, who promised us that we would never have to suffer the economic hardships of the 1930s and ’40s. Theirs was an almost monomaniacal drive to success and security – not money for its own sake, but as hedge against the specter of political and societal upheaval – and an allergy to ever being dependent on anyone for assistance. There are, of course, virtues hidden under the extreme self-sufficiency and work ethic, but also a poison core that is virulently anti-gospel.

On the other hand, many gen-yers and millennials combine a desire for the high life – a gourmet existence – with an insistence that all the markers of material attainment be theirs from their earliest years. As an employer, I have seen a willingness in younger workers to take on incredible amounts of debt to have new cars, a large home, even a lake house; all the things that their parents and grandparents took decades to acquire. Again, the reaction to previous eras carries some positive characteristics, but the traps of modern indulgence, fueled by the proliferation of craft beers, artisan foods, luxury automobile ads, and HGTV are bound to prove fatal in the end.

Between the intense saving and the easy spending stand we boomers, who take the best and worst of the generation that preceded and followed us, who sometimes live in the frugal anxiety of our parents and sometimes in the epicurean profligacy of our children. And the less said about us, the better …

Regardless of our individual expressions of either wanting to be rich or putting trust in uncertain wealth, God has some questions for us. In this post, I am only going to address the most basic of them: How much is enough? Such a simple question, but one that exposes the core of our money problems and the conflict between the fretfulness of greed and the gift of contentment. Again, Paul makes a radical statement to Timothy: If we have food and clothing, we will be satisfied with these (1 Tim. 6:8). I assume he might add shelter and perhaps a cool ride; his main point is to challenge us at the point of discerning between our many wants and our relatively few needs.

What is Paul getting at here? At its most basic, he has the pulse of greed as idolatry, a false god that drives us to make, possess, and continually increase our hoard. In the accumulation of wealth lies a complex set of expressions of self that we don’t always understand or even see. For example, those who amass for fear of the future would deny that “wealth” has anything to do with begin acquisitive. We propose that our large bank accounts are signs of prudence, of rainy-day thinking that allows us to responsibly care for the future. But perhaps they are really insurance plans and security blankets covering our anxiety and unbelief. In a different vein, we might intend our possessions to project an image of success, status, or even divine favor? The man caught in a mid-life crisis, the person who saves essentially for savings sake, and those scrambling to keep up with the cultural emblems of accomplishment all evince enslavement to the little gods of this age.

As with all idolatry, the money god distracts us from what Paul calls our “undivided devotion to Christ” (see 1Cor. 7:35). Every scriptural principle grounds our use of money on faith in and obedience to God first. From the declaration that wealth comes only from the Lord (Deut. 8:18) to the parable of the rich young man called to give his possessions as an act that worship, to the discourse on giving in 2Cor. 8 and 9, we find that how we interact with money is a matter of freely receiving and freely giving – a matter of reveling in the gracious love of God that releases a gift of unfettered, abandoned generosity in return.

These verses are only a first step in solving the riddle of how much is enough. They don’t provide concrete measures to take, steps to follow, checklists to consult and complete. They don’t bind us in a moral straight jacket. They only invite us to an honest encounter with what goes on in our hearts, and to an unvarnished admission of where we are fearful, or grasping, or defensive, or spendthrifts. Of the times when we feel that pang when we sense the leading or know it is right to open our hands. Of the urge to judge others in their giving or spending. Of the lies that we tell ourselves and the justifications that we make that prevent us from generosity or integrity.

But the revelation of our money-worship, however it manifests itself, is not meant to carry us to a despairing end. Because into the midst of our grasping self-love and self-protection comes the Father’s greatest offering, his divine Son, foregoing the riches of glory for the poverty of incarnation so that we might be truly wealthy – not in or for ourselves, but for his kingdom and for a world that does not know its own infinite need for his infinite intimate love.

The intersection of seeing ourselves for what we are and the Lord for who he is releases us to live in the glorious liberty that we have as children who bear his nature and character.

Can there be anything better than being reflections of such goodness?