Hard for a Rich Man

This past week Bryce Harper, who is a bright, young, exciting major league baseball player, signed the largest contract in sports history. The deal was worth $330,000,000.00 for a thirteen year commitment. I was never any good at math, but that’s about $25.3 million per year. It’s about $157,000.00 per game. He is projected to have 491 at-bats in 2019 and so that comes to about $51,700.00 every time he steps up to the plate. That’s more than many regular workers make in a whole year.

I don’t begrudge anyone for making as much money as they can while they are able. If people are willing to pay someone that kind of money, then that is great.

But what does the Bible say about this?

The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said that “those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9). It doesn’t take a theology degree or much interpretative skills to discern what is being said here: great riches have great potential to do great damage.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said to his disciples, “It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:23). He didn’t say it was impossible. But He did say it was hard. Jesus had just been approached by someone who had great riches and who wanted to know how to obtain eternal life. Jesus, wanting to expose if the rich man’s heart was really on eternal life or on his possessions, told him to go and sell everything and give the proceeds to the poor. The man went away grieved. Why? Because he had much property and couldn’t bear to part with it. When he weighed out the options, comparing the treasures of Heaven to his own accumulated treasures, the treasures of Heaven sadly came up lacking to him.

When we come to Christ, we surrender all to him. Everything we own belongs to God, but we’ve been entrusted as stewards of God’s resources. People with massive bank accounts have done great things for the kingdom of God by using their wealth to advance the message of the gospel. There is nothing wrong with possessing great riches. The great problem is when the riches possess us.