Updated: 4/13/20
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth [mammon] (Matthew 6:24).But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you. Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day has enough evil of its own (Matthew 6:33–34).
In Matthew 6, we have the most detailed summary of what it means to be a Christian in a world of economic scarcity. The chapter begins a discussion of charitable giving. It is to be done privately, not publicly. “Take heed that you do not do your acts of righteousness before people to be seen by them, or else you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. So when you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before yourself as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may have the praise of people. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your gift may be given in secret. Then your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:1–4). [North, Matthew, ch. 11] It is clear from this passage that Jesus expected His people to expect rewards from God the Father in response to their charitable acts. It is not clear from the passage whether these rewards are to be experienced in history or beyond the grave. But there will be rewards from God in response to charitable acts performed by covenant-keepers as long as these charitable acts were conducted in private, and therefore beyond the applause of the crowd.
Jesus then instructed his followers to take exactly the same attitude with respect to prayer. “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, so that they may be seen by people. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But you, when you pray, enter your inner chamber. Shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. Then your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:5–6). It is clear that we have had a fundamental change in public attitudes regarding public prayer. No one gains applause from the crowd for prayers on street corners. We no longer live under the Old Covenant. But there is no question that Jesus did expect his followers to pray to God in expectation of receiving positive sanctions from God.
Third, Jesus gave instructions on the proper way to pray. This is known as the Lord’s prayer. This prayer calls upon God to provide positive economic sanctions. The nature of the prayer is unique in the history of private prayer. It begins with an affirmation of the corporate nature of this prayer. It begins with the words “Our father.” It does not begin with these words: “My father.” So, even in the privacy of our prayer lives, we are to think of God as the God of the collective known as the church. We are never to lose sight of the fact that He is the God of multitudes, just as he promised Abram in the original covenant, renaming him Abraham: “father of nations.” Here is the Lord’s prayer. “Our Father in heaven, may your name be sanctified. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:9b–13). [North, Matthew, ch. 12:B] Two things are important here. First, this prayer calls for God’s victory in history. “May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus expected his people to pray this prayer because He expected them to call on God to extend His kingdom across the face of the earth. The mark of this extension is the eradication of the difference between people’s obedience to God’s will in heaven in contrast to their obedience in history. There is an inherent and inescapable corporate optimism about this prayer. It is prayed in the name of the corporate entity: the church. It is prayed on behalf of the kingdom of God in history. These are not individual requests. They are corporate requests. If you have never heard a sermon on this aspect of the Lord’s prayer, then either you have not been listening carefully to your pastors, or else your pastors have not been listening carefully to God. The text is clear. The second important thing is this: there are economic requests in this prayer. “Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Again, the focus of the prayer is on corporate rewards. Individuals are to pray on behalf of the church, not just on behalf of themselves. When God answers the prayers for the church, he will thereby answer the prayers for the individuals who are praying on behalf of the church.
It would be a mistake to understand this prayer as a prayer for personal wealth as such. It is not. The language precludes such an interpretation. It is not a prayer for the individual to get rich irrespective of what happens to covenant-keepers around him. It is a prayer on behalf of the church as a community. When the church is blessed, individual Christians will be blessed.
The next section of the prayer has to do with individual wealth. Jesus warned against piling up treasure in history. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:19–21). [North, Matthew, ch. 13] This is an explicit promise that covenant-keeping leads to rewards beyond the grave. This should be a person’s primary focus when he thinks of rewards. Positive sanctions that accumulate in heaven are vastly more important than positive sanctions that accumulate in history. This attitude is fundamental to Christianity. There is no escape from this. There will be rewards. Some of the rewards may be in history, but historical rewards are subordinate to the rewards in eternity. This sets the agenda for understanding verse 24: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
In the original Greek text, the final word is not wealth. It is mammon. The word appears four times in the Greek New Testament text, but it appears nowhere else in Greek literature. It occurs in three places in Luke’s parable of the corrupt steward. This steward was in charge of his master’s operations. He went to men who owed money to his master, and he reduced their debts. He was currying future favor from these beneficiaries. I have marked the English words that are used to translate mammon. This is probably the most difficult parable to interpret. In the King James Version (1611), it is translated as mammon. In the modern translation of the Bible that I use in this book because it is in the public domain, the English Literal Unlocked Bible, the translator translated the word as wealth. “I say to you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings. He who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much, and he who is unrighteous in very little is also unrighteous in much. If you have not been faithful in using unrighteous wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you have not been faithful in using other people's property, who will give you money of your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:9–13). [North, Luke<, ch. 40] Jesus clearly differentiated two kinds of wealth. We should understand the difference between them. Unrighteous wealth is what Jesus prohibited. Therefore, it is also what He was prohibiting in the passage in Matthew.
Jesus did not say it is wrong to pursue wealth. He said that it is wrong to pursue a certain kind of wealth. What kind of wealth is this? It is wealth that accumulates only in history. It is wealth that a person pursues for his own use. This does not necessarily mean consumption. It means wealth that he pursues for whatever purpose. It may be to build his reputation as a charitable person. It may be his goal to accumulate a vast corporate empire. Whatever it is, it benefits him primarily. It does not accumulate beyond the grave. It is the pursuit of autonomous wealth. I have summarized it as follows: more for me in history.
This is the background for Jesus’ designation of the ultimate goal in history for every covenant keeper: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33). [North, Matthew, ch. 15] Everything else is to be subordinate to this goal. It is not a goal devoid of rewards. It is specifically a goal with numerous rewards: “all these things.” These rewards are not all to be enjoyed beyond the grave, but some of them will be. The more dedicated that we are to building the kingdom of God in history, the larger the percentage of those rewards that we will experience beyond history. In the meantime, if we feel that we are not receiving sufficient earthly rewards to make our lives pleasant, we should remember this: “Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day has enough evil of its own” (v. 34). We are to be optimistic regarding our eternal future. We are therefore to be optimistic with respect to our temporal future, beginning with optimism today about tomorrow. We are not to worry about tomorrow. It takes great self-discipline not to worry about tomorrow if things are going badly today. But that is what Jesus told us to do.
To understand the difference between the two kingdoms, consider the differences between covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers who are working for the same success indicators in this life. Let us say that they are owners of the same kind of business. They both want their businesses to be profitable. They both want to avoid losses in their business. They are both confronting similar consumers. They both are operating within the same economic environment. They may not know of each other. Neither of them is praying for the failure of the other. Each of them is praying for success in his next entrepreneurial venture.
God may regard the outcome of both of their business plans as productive for consumers. Neither of them is cheating consumers. Both of them are providing services that may be beneficial to some consumers. Some of the consumers will be covenant-keepers. Some of them will be covenant-breakers. So, there is no fundamental distinction between the outcomes of the two entrepreneurial ventures. They both will lead to positive outcomes for consumers. They both will lead to profits for the two entrepreneurs.
God may favorably answer the prayers of both entrepreneurs. There is no objective difference between the outcomes of the two business plans. In both cases, consumers will be benefitted. In both cases, the entrepreneurs have developed plans that will not waste resources. Yet the results individually in the eternal lives of the two entrepreneurs will be different. One of them is a worshiper of mammon. The other is a worshiper of God. One of them seeks to accumulate wealth in this world for the sake of this world alone. The other seeks to accumulate wealth in this world, but primarily for benefitting the extension of God’s kingdom in history. He will therefore accumulate wealth beyond the grave. From the point of view of his eternal condition, the first entrepreneur is heaping up coals of fire on his head (Romans 12:20). Jesus was clear about this. “That servant, having known his lord’s will, and not having prepared or done according to his will, will be beaten with many blows. But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating, he will be beaten with a few blows. But everyone who has been given much, from them much will be required, and the one who has been entrusted with much, even more will be asked” (Luke 12:47–48). [North, Luke, ch. 28] The successful entrepreneur who has served mammon faithfully will receive his reward in history. The price of that reward in history will be a catastrophe in eternity.
The success indicator of monetary profit is common to both businesses. But it is misleading for the covenant-breaker. He thinks he is being successful, but his success is leading him into a disaster that will last for all eternity. He is being successful in history. He is serving his customers well. But there is more to life than serving customers well.
The person who is striving to build up the kingdom of God understands that money is a means of extending the kingdom. It is a form of capital. In order to increase his ability to extend the kingdom, he must make more money. In contrast, the covenant-breaker sees money as a tool for serving customers better. In both cases, money is capital. What is different between the two money-making entrepreneurs is this: the different uses of the money. Their money serves rival kingdoms.
The covenant-keeper wants to increase his responsibility. He wants to be a better servant of God. In the modern world, with its high division of labor, the main tool for gaining increased responsibility is money. Money is the most marketable commodity. It can be used to build the kingdom of God in many ways. The covenant-keeping entrepreneur gains increased responsibility by making money. He then has to decide the hierarchy of uses to which his money will be put in extending the kingdom of God. The greater the amount of money he earns, the greater the level of the responsibility he will have for determining the proper allocation of this money. Money is a tool. It is not an end. It is probably not an end for the covenant-breaker, either. He serves customers in history. He does not see his profits as tools for building the kingdom of God, thereby receiving rewards beyond the grave. The main reward in eternity is this: greater responsibility. In the parable of the stewards and the minas, we read: “The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’ The nobleman said to him, ‘Well done, good servant. Because you were faithful in very little, you will have authority over ten cities’” (Luke 19:16–17). [North, Luke, ch. 46:C] Responsibility never ends. The quest for greater responsibility never ends. Service to God never ends. The dominion covenant never ends for covenant-keepers. It defines mankind. There is always more to learn about God’s relation to creation.
Conclusion: the equilibrium model for economic theory is a humanist myth. Avoid it.
Economists have the concept sometimes called a zero-sum game. This is a game in which the winnings of the winners are funded by the losses of the losers. There is no increase in net wealth of the group. In fact, there has to be a loss. Someone is spending time in the game. This is a loss. The players may be paying a casino to run the game. This is a loss for the players. All of this is to sustain the game.
1. Free Trade
The free market is based on the idea of voluntary cooperation. People cooperate in order to benefit themselves. It is not a zero-sum process. Both parties to a transaction may turn out to be winners. Each of them gains a profit. Each of them exchanges a less desirable set of circumstances for what he believes will be a more desirable set of circumstances. Because of this mutually beneficial arrangement, individuals can benefit through trade. Both parties to the transaction will be beneficiaries if they have estimated the outcome accurately.
So, with respect to personal outcomes in history, entrepreneurial ventures that successfully meet the demands of consumers at prices the consumers are willing and able to pay will be profitable. There will be an increase in corporate wealth. At least two people are better off because of an exchange. As long as others in the community are not driven by envy, the community will experience net benefits. No one will resent the benefits of the successful traders, and both traders will be better off. This is why the free market is a great generator of wealth for all. This is why it reduces poverty for all. It is an answer to the Lord’s prayer: “Give us today our daily bread.” It is a positive sanction.
Jesus taught specifically that in the competition between members of the two kingdoms, God's and mammon’s, the final judgment will separate the sheep from the goats. History as a whole is something resembling a zero-sum process. The benefits that God will transfer to covenant-keepers will be paid for by the losses experienced by covenant-breakers. This is the message of the parable of the talents and the parable of the minas. Solomon had said the same thing a millennium earlier: “A good person leaves an inheritance for his grandchildren, but a sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous person” (Proverbs 13:22). [North, Proverbs, ch. 41] This is the pattern in history. It is the pattern for history.
This is why a Christian economist should affirm the benefits of free trade. These benefits accrue to both parties of the transaction. It does not matter what the covenantal status is of the two parties. Both of them will benefit from the transaction. Each of them will use his profits to worship at the altar of his king. One of them will worship the God of the Bible with his wealth. The other will worship the god of mammon with his wealth.
2. Political Envy
When a covenant-breaker accumulates wealth by efficiently serving consumers, covenant-keepers should not resent his success. To do so would be to indulge in the sin of envy. Envy is the sin of pulling down the other person merely because he is achieved something profitable in some way. Envy is a self-destructive sin. It is also an objectively destructive sin when envy becomes part of the political order. When people vote for politicians who promise to take wealth from successful people and redistribute it to the poor, despite the fact that such policies reduce economic growth and also violate the principle of private property, they are indulging in the sin of envy. They will be worse off if the people they vote for implement such a program. But they may not care. What they do care about is that rich people be pulled down.
A covenant-keeper should always bear in mind that the capital accumulated by covenant-breakers will be the lawful inheritance of covenant-keepers at the end of time. That means that the wealth of the sinners in history will be laid up for the righteous in eternity. Covenant-keepers can and should rejoice in the fact that history is a zero-sum competition. This is not the sin of envy. Covenant keepers simply acknowledge the fact that covenant breakers will have no use for their accumulated wealth in eternity. It would be unwise for this wealth to go to waste. This is especially true because wealth is increasingly produced on the basis of specialized knowledge. What possible good would it be for God to erase all traces of the technological advances that covenant-breakers have produced in history? How would that benefit the extension of the kingdom of God beyond the grave? It would not.
Because most people so far in history have been covenant-breakers, most of the discoveries and inventions that have benefitted mankind have been made by covenant-breakers. In my day, virtually all of the super rich are covenant breakers. The total wealth of about 6,000 people in the world is equal to the wealth owned by the bottom half of the world’s population. There are far more covenant-keepers among the half of the world’s population who live in poverty than there are among the superrich who control the majority of the capital assets in the world economy. Nevertheless, because of the enormous economic growth that these superrich people have supervised, there is a real possibility that there will not be starvation-level poverty in the world within one generation. This will be a tremendous benefit for those hundreds of millions of mainly rural people who are poverty-stricken covenant-keepers today, but who will not be poverty-stricken in a generation. Nor will their children be impoverished.
Political envy and state-enforced wealth redistribution would hamper the ability of the superrich to supervise the allocation of capital that has made them incomparably wealthy, but which has also increased economic growth to such an extent worldwide that starvation-level poverty is being eliminated rapidly. In the long run, meaning the long run of history, covenant-keepers will be the heirs of all of the capital of covenant-breakers. Political envy would reduce this inheritance.
There is constant competition between the two kingdoms. It is a continuity of service. The free market economy forces this on all participants. We are now seeing how the first principles of both kingdoms play out in history. The twentieth century, more than any century in history, demonstrated that the free market economy is vastly superior in its productivity to socialism and Marxian Communism. The failure of Communist Russia and Communist China, which became visible to the leaders in both nations in the final third of the twentieth century, testifies to the utter failure of central economic planning.
Jesus taught that there will be historical continuity in the future. He made this clear in His parable of the wheat and the weeds. This parable is central to Christian economic theory and Christian social theory in general. There will be no interruption in the development of Christian social policy and Christian social theory between now and the final judgment. This will manifest itself in the development of Christian economic theory and applied Christian economics in the social order. We will be able to see clearly the superiority of free-market principles, which rest covenantally on the private property order that God has demanded from the day that he placed legal boundaries around the forbidden tree. Here is what Jesus taught about the continuity of the rival kingdoms in history.
Jesus presented another parable to them. He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while people slept, his enemy came and also sowed weeds among the wheat and then went away. When the blades sprouted and then produced their crop, then the weeds appeared also. The servants of the landowner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How does it now have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘So do you want us to go and pull them out? The landowner said, ‘No. Because while you are pulling out the weeds, you might uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First pull out the weeds and tie them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matthew 13:24–30).
The disciples did not understand this parable.
Then Jesus left the crowds and went into the house. His disciples came to him and said, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” Jesus answered and said, “He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world; and the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Therefore, as the weeds are gathered up and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all the things that cause sin and those who commit iniquity. They will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth. Then will the righteous people shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him listen” (Matthew 13:36–43).
I do not see how anybody could not understand what Jesus said. He said specifically that there will be no time in which the wheat will be removed from history. Let me spell this out. There cannot possibly be a seven-year period of tribulation in which the church has been enraptured out of history, and in which covenant-breakers will be in charge of the world order. I hope this is clear. It is not clear to those pastors and theologians who teach that there will be a seven-year tribulation or a three-and-a-half year tribulation in which the church will be removed from history.
This means one of two things. Either the church is going to go through a future tribulation, called the great tribulation, or else the great tribulation has already taken place. I argue that Jesus’ forecast of the great tribulation was fulfilled with the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. This is most persuasively argued by David Chilton in his books, which I published in 1987: The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation and The Great Tribulation (1987). They are available online for free. Jesus’s statement about the great tribulation appears in Luke 21. Jesus made it clear that some of His listeners should expect to see the great tribulation. “So also, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (vv. 31–33).
Paul taught that there will be a time in which this even takes place. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven. He will come with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will together with them be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. In this way we will always be with the Lord” (I Thessalonians 4:16–17). The eschatological debate among Christians is over when this will take place: at the end of history at the final judgment or 1,000 years before the final judgment. Premillennialists believe that this will take place 1,000 years before the final judgment. Amillennialists and postmillennialists teach that this will take place at the end of history.
There are two varieties of premillennialism: historic (originating in the early church) and dispensational (originating in the 1830s). Historic premillennialists believe that they will immediately return from the skies with Christ and rule beside him in His kingdom. Dispensational premillennialists believe that neither Christians nor Christ will immediately return from the skies. Christians will be removed from history during the period of the great tribulation. After the great tribulation, they will return with Christ to rule over the world for 1,000 years. They will have sin-free, death-free bodies. They will be like angels. Neither position is consistent with what Jesus taught about the side-by-side progress of the kingdom of God and the kingdom of mammon until the end of time. There will never be an uprooting of the wheat in history. Jesus was clear about this. This is the only parable that Jesus ever was asked to explain by the disciples, and He explained it. We should take His explanation seriously.
Christians should expect continuity of God’s kingdom in history. There will be constant competition between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of mammon. The principles of both kingdoms will be worked out in history. The results of this competition will be visible in history. The Dominion covenant will be worked out in history by mankind as a whole. It was given to mankind as a whole. We will see which of the two families is more productive: the disinherited family of covenant-breakers or the adopted family of covenant-keepers.
Amillennialists do not believe that Jesus’ promise of a millennium of kingdom rule is literal. They believe that the church and its rivals will develop side-by-side. They do not believe in the eschatological possibility of a progressive extension of the kingdom of God in history as a social, economic, scientific, and political force. They do not believe in the legitimacy of the ideal of Christendom. They do not believe that the church will ever develop and then implement Christian social theory, Christian economics, and Christian politics. They would say that if a few Christian scholars ever develop such theories, Christians will never be able to implement them. Finally, they believe that if a handful of Christians do implement such theories, they will not be successful in their competition against covenant-breakers. The world will remain as it is today: dominated by covenant-breakers in every area of life. Therefore, developing such explicitly Christian theories is inherently futile. Basically, they conclude, this would be a waste of time. In other words, what I have been doing for the last six decades is inherently a waste of time.
In contrast, postmillennialists believe that Christendom is a legitimate ideal for history. They believe that the church will, through competition and through the explicit blessings of God, extend Christian principles institutionally across the face of the earth. They will achieve this before the end of time. Postmillennialists have an optimistic outlook toward the development of Christian principles and Christian institutions. They believe that, in the competition between the two kingdoms, the kingdom of God will prove to be more competitive than the kingdom of mammon.
Karl Marx was wrong. “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” He announced this in the opening sentence of The Communist Manifesto (1848). In contrast, Jesus taught that the history of all hitherto existing society is the conflict between the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of mammon. The kingdom of mammon is the kingdom of self-proclaimed autonomous man. These two kingdoms cannot be reconciled theologically. They can and will compete for the allegiance of men until the end of time.
The two kingdoms have rival principles of sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and time. In other words, they are committed to rival covenants. The competition of the two kingdoms begins with theology. The fundamental debate is over who is sovereign: the Trinitarian God of the Bible or man. Christianity ever since the Council of Nicaea in 325 has held to the Trinitarian position. But Christians have borrowed heavily from non-Christians with respect to the issues of authority, law, sanctions, and history. The issues have not always been clear. But, over time, these issues become more clear. Each side will become more consistent in its understanding of its first principles, and each side will become more consistent in the implementation of these principles. This was Cornelius Van Til’s position. It was also C. S. Lewis’ position. He had the character who was most like himself in his novel, That Hideous Strength (1945), make this announcement. “If you dip into any college, or school, or parish, or family—anything you like—at a given point in its history, you always find that there was a time before that point when there was more elbow room and contrasts weren’t quite so sharp; and that there’s going to be a time after that point when there is even less room for indecision and choices are even more momentous. Good is always getting better and bad is always getting worse: the possibilities of even apparent neutrality are always diminishing. The whole thing is sorting itself out all the time, coming to a point, getting sharper and harder.” My work on Christian economics is my attempt to get things sharper and harder. I mean harder in the sense of harder to reconcile with humanistic economic theory, not harder to understand. I hope that my books are fairly easy to understand. I also hope that they are harder to reconcile with non-Christian economics.
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