Poor Paul
So was Paul really poor? Before Paul was a Christian He was a Pharisee.
Pharisees were rich and influential men in the Jewish community. So it is
clear that Paul knew what material prosperity was all about.
That all changed when Paul met Jesus. In Acts 9:16 Jesus told Ananias
that Paul would "suffer" for His name. Part of this suffering I
believe was financial.
In Phil. 3:7 and 8 Paul says, "whatever was to my profit I now
consider as loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider
everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things". Paul uses the
words "profit and loss". These are financial words. Paul is not
merely saying that he lost his religious life. He’s saying that he lost
everything, including the wealth and prestige that came with being a
Pharisee. Some suggest that he even lost his wife. So Paul wasn’t
kidding when he said he lost all things. The flip side to this loss is
that He gained Jesus.
Paul’s life took the opposite turn to what prosperity teaching
teaches when he met Jesus. So, at least in Paul’s case, prosperity
teaching didn’t work.
A pastor once told me that Paul was poor by choice. At the time I
agreed, but not any more. Maybe in one slight sense of the word Paul could
have said "no" to the life Jesus had for him, but if you ask him
if he had a choice in the matter, I think he’d say, "no way".
Read Acts 9 and determine for yourself whether Paul had a choice. Jesus
clobbered Paul, leaving him little choice to say "no".
In 2 Cor 5:14 Paul says that the "love of Christ compels Him…"
Paul felt compelled to preach the gospel and live the life that Jesus set
out for Him, which included a good amount of poverty. The Greek word
"sunecho" is the Greek word translated as "compel".
"Sunecho" means, "to fasten, secure, hold fast, confine,
and so on. It is like Jesus yanked Paul out of his world and glued him to
Himself and in a stern voice said, "you’re serving me now,
buddy". I believe Paul felt he had no logical choice but to serve
Jesus in the way Jesus wanted.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Christians working hard and
having financial success. I just feel many of us have our priorities wrong
when we name and claim material prosperity.
Paul gave His life completely to Jesus and didn’t ask or demand any
part of it back. If I can prove that at least some godly New Testament men
and women did not live the life of covetous prosperity, then I can prove
that Jesus doesn’t make everyone prosperous, and it makes no sense to
name and claim prosperity. It is Jesus’ choice to do as He wishes with
us. Also, if poverty is to be interpreted as a curse or a lack of faith,
as some prosperity people claim, then Paul and others should not be seen
as the men of God as we say they are.
Should I Give Everything Away?
Should we leave an affluent lifestyle and become poor? Paul, in 1 Cor
7:17 to 25 answers this question. In verse 17 he says, "each one
should retain the place in life that the Lord assigned to him". In
verse 20 he says, "each one should remain in the situation which he
was in when God called him". He even said that if you were a slave
when you got saved, don’t try to gain your freedom unless it is offered
you. All this means that if you’re rich when Jesus calls you, stay rich,
but be generous, unless Jesus says otherwise.
I don’t believe the Scripture is opposed to material riches in
itself. It is opposed to expecting and demanding such riches from Jesus.
It is also opposed to putting material riches ahead of Jesus. Prosperity
teaching only encourages us to be materialistically motivated and not
Jesus motivated.
What About The Rich Young Ruler?
In Luke 18:19 and following Jesus speaks to a rich young ruler who
seemed to live a pretty good life. Jesus told him that he was lacking one
thing and so he needed to sell everything he had and give the proceeds to
the poor. So should we do the same? Not necessarily. It is bad Biblical
interpretation to say that because Jesus told this one man to do something
we should do the same. This was an isolated incident of one man’s call
from Jesus. We are not all called in the same way. We can learn something
from this and what we learn is that the accumulation of wealth without
helping the poor is not right.
As I said earlier, money is not the problem. The love of money is the
problem. If we are bent on prosperity apart from doing God’s will, then
we have a problem. Our pursuit of the good life is covetousness.
So I’m Promoting Poverty, Right?
Wrong. I’m not promoting being rich or being poor. I’m promoting a
life given to Jesus and checking off His wish list, not ours. A poor
person can be just as selfish as a rich person. As in the case of Paul
with the Corinthians and Macedonians, it wasn’t whether they were rich
or poor. The issue was giving to the poor saints in Judea, no matter how
much money they had or didn’t have. It just so happened that the
Macedonians were extremely poor, but still gave.
The issue at hand is "giving, not getting", and to me
prosperity teaching promotes getting.
Giving To Get
I know you’ve heard this on TV before. "Just send my ministry
money and you’ll get a hundred fold blessing in return". Or,
"triple tithe and you’ll be blessed out of your socks". That
would be great for me since my socks have been seen with holes in them.
Giving to get is not Scriptural. I don’t think I need to find a verse
to prove that. What is Scriptural is "giving to give". Just give
because Jesus has put such a spirit in your heart. Paul calls this the
"grace of giving". (2 Cor. 8:7) I admit, even with the Holy
Spirit this is hard to do, but this is New Testament thinking.
Part 4
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