On Possessions, Income, and Time

The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains,
The world, and those who dwell in it. -Psalm 24:1

Possessions: Stuff, family, reputation, etc. There is a legitimate purpose for having them.

With respect to your own possessions, you ought to think of them as on loan and subject to departure at any moment for any reason, whether by breakage, loss, theft, destruction, or your own departure from this life. With respect to your neighbor’s possessions, you ought to seek their protection and their increase.

Ownership: personal control, manipulation, whether for oneself or for others. To own something is to have power over that object, to dispense it, manipulate it, consume it, watch it, and apply it to reason and senses, all during a short time under the sun.

By nature, your heart treats as the highest and best good anything other than God and neighbor. That includes your possessions, income, time, and even at times your family. Uh oh! Your soul is at stake in all this. Your soul is worth more than your possessions but also includes them. Abusing your possessions is abusing your life.

By nature, however, God’s utmost desire is to have and keep you and His people as His own possession. This He does, in and through Christ Jesus. He honors your life and possessions first by laying down His life and taking it up again, and by seeing to it that your life and all you have may be joined to Him forever through the Gospel of the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life.

All that you are and have are in and through Christ Jesus, dear Christian. Therefore, your possessions, income, and time are to be used with this in mind.

Part of this includes money in support of your pastor(s) and for churchly supplies so that the Gospel may be preached and practiced, apart from which you cannot live.

Part of this also includes money for goods and services provided by your neighbor, so that he, too, may live and prosper in peace.

Lastly, the grace of God in Christ Jesus makes you mindful of the poor who are all about you, so that your possessions and income may be used in their favor as well.

Thus it stands for all those who know and believe that they have not made themselves and cannot make themselves. + + +