Jesus on Money (3) - Seek the Kingdom Means

Most modern Christians do not have to worry about what they will eat tomorrow. We tend to assume that Jesus was teaching means that people who seek God’s kingdom will prosper. That is not what he meant.

People who follow Jesus have a new King. What most Christians do not realise is that a king owns all the property within his Kingdom. He will assign some property to his followers, but they will only hold it at his favour. People who opposed the king would have their property confiscated with out compensation. The name of this practice is “eminent domain”.

When Christians decide to “seek the kingdom”, all their possessions become the property of their king. Giving a tenth of what they own is not an option. Everything they own now belongs to Jesus, and must be used as Jesus directs. This produced the change of thinking recorded in Acts 2 (cf Luke 12:22).

No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had (Acts 4:32).

This was not unusual behaviour, but the natural outworking of the Kingdom.

For modern Christians, seeking first the Kingdom means surrendering all our income and wealth to the Holy Spirit and using it as he directs. If he tells us to sell our property and give it away, that is what we must do. It no longer belongs to us, but to our king. If the Holy Spirit tells us to share our possessions, then we have not option. From reading Acts, it seems that the Holy Spirit likes telling people to share, so we should not be surprised if that is what he asks us to do.