Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say,
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5–6)
We have two commands at the start of this passage. First, “Keep your life free from the love of money…” This is a continual battle of the flesh. We are so quick to worship money and to struggle to have more of it.
Our Lord has said that we cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24). There cannot be two masters in our lives. We will serve God, or we will serve money. Money seems to always rise in the hearts of men as an acceptable god. This is not to say that any of us would willingly claim that we serve money. We are very good at ignoring our gods, but money is Zeus in the pantheon of modern-day false gods. We are to have no other gods but the living and true God (Exodus 20:3), so we must keep our lives free from the love of money.
The second command is closely related to the first, “…be content with what you have…” Some men are like the dragons of myth who collect hoards of gold just to lay on their treasure and obsess over it. However, many of us want money to have what money can buy. We want the money for what it can get us, whether it is a false sense of security, technology, nice cars, big houses, or whatever we would like to have. The Lord commands us to be content. We must not covet our neighbor’s possessions or base our worth on what we own or want to own (Exodus 20:17). Having things is not wrong, but it is wrong to covet what God has chosen to give to someone else. If we truly believe that the Lord is sovereign, we must also believe that all we have is a gift from him. All we do not have is by his gracious choice for us. We are to be content with what God has chosen to give us.
But, as is the case for his people, the Lord does not give us law without promise. These commands are based upon a promise from the Lord Jesus, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” How can we live our lives with contentment and free from the love of money? The Lord Jesus will never, under any circumstances, leave us nor forsake us.
The Lord Jesus will never forsake us. He has not forsaken us up until this moment. The Father has chosen us, Christ has died for our sins, and the Spirit has applied this to us when we deserved only God’s wrath. Christ has saved us when we were dead in trespasses and sins, when we deserved to be forsaken. He has kept us to this day. God began a good work in us, he will continue to do this good work in us, and he will bring this good work to completion at the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6). Throughout the coming eternal ages, he will dwell with us as our God, and we will be his people (Revelation 21:3). He will never leave us; he will never forsake us.
Since the Lord Jesus is with us, we lack nothing (Psalm 23:1). Whatever we may lack in money and possessions we are more than compensated by the presence and care of the Lord Jesus. Whether rich or poor by the world’s standards, Christ is ours and we are his. He is with us always. There is nothing left to covet when we belong to the I AM and have him as our God.
So, we may join the author of Hebrews as he quotes Psalm 118:6:
“The Lord is my helper;
I will not fear;
what can man do to me?”
Photo by Patrick Schneider on Unsplash
Bible Living Blog 