Kingdom Commerce (6)

Then He taught, saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” Mark 11.17

A cancerous corruption
Once corruption has found its way into an economy, it grows like a cancer. When greed supplants grace as the currency of an economy, the dark horse is untethered, and deceit, self-interest, pride, oppression, corruption, and idolatry spread throughout, until no sector of society is safe from infection. Even the Church can take up practices symptomatic of economic corruption, and become so accustomed to their use that they fail to see the threats and dangers inherent in them.

This is what happened in the temple in Jesus’ day. The religious leaders of the day had turned spiritual leadership into a means of personal aggrandizement, even depriving their needy parents of support in order to bankroll a system that ultimately enriched them more and more (Mark 7.9-13). So comfortable had these religious leaders become in their position of prestige, power, and prosperity, that their great fear concerning Jesus was that the Romans would do away with their privileges (Jn. 11.45-48).

Sanctioned and licensed by the religious leaders, the temple merchants brought buying and selling, as well as money-changing, into the sacred precincts of the Lord’s house, making a profit on people’s desire to be pleasing to the Lord, enriching the purses of those who approved their corrupt economic practices.

But Jesus would have none of it.

Worldly practices?
I often wonder what the Lord thinks about some of the practices we have taken up in His Name. Visit a Christian bookstore, for example, and contemplate all the items of clothing, jewelry, candy, chewing gum, and much more that have been “spiritualized” by some Jesus imprint or Gospel tagline. Look at the way fund-raising in the Christian community seeks to manipulate donors through sentimentality, marketing techniques, premiums, and vague promises of personal blessing and enrichment. Consider how churches assess their health and growth by counting heads and tallying-up bottom lines. Look at the lengths churches go to “market” or “position” themselves in the eyes of their communities.

All these practices have the odor of secularism about them. As long as we continue to man these tables in the courts of the Lord, letting programs take the place of prayer and preferring numbers to spiritual nurture, we are giving in to economic self-interest in the name of the Gospel – and we cannot expect the Lord to bless our endeavor.

In our day corrupting economic principles and practices have pervaded much of the life of the Church; it is no coincidence that the Body of Christ in America is both richer and more populous and, at the same time, more marginal and irrelevant than at any time in our history. In many ways, we have fit ourselves into the economy of greed and getting-and-spending, rather than work by grace through faith to bring the Kingdom economy of God to reality.

The evidence of sin’s corrupting presence is easily marshalled. If Christians worked as hard at their sanctification and Personal Mission Fields as they do at their jobs and diversions, we might bear more fruit evidencing our Kingdom-and-glory calling. If we tithed as freely and lavishly as we spend on our own greed and self-interest, no good work undertaken for the Kingdom economy would go without the resources it needs. If we invested as much time in Scripture and prayer as we do in the various diversions that gobble up God’s gift of time, we might be more inclined to seek the Kingdom and righteousness of God rather than our own comfort and convenience above all else.

If churches and ministries spent as much time praying as they do pleading for funds; if they studied and obeyed the Word of God as assiduously and faithfully as they embrace the latest techniques for organizing or marketing themselves; and if they insisted on holiness as earnestly as they promote spurious notions of “growth,” the Church in America today would be a far different place.

It is ironic that, for much of the past generation, Christian thinkers and preachers have been flailing away at the corruption of the world with all their might, denouncing cultural perversion, defending the Ten Commandments, declaiming against all manner of moral evil, and denouncing the greed and wickedness of the age.

But are we not like Brer Rabbit, flailing at the tar baby of a corrupt economy, and, rather than overcoming the evils of the world with good (Rom. 12.21) – since we have offered so little of real good ourselves – we have become ensnared, enmeshed, and enfolded in the very evil we so ardently denounce?

Corrupt economies infiltrate all the institutions of society, and the Church today harbors its own money-changers and power brokers, all the while thinking itself immune to the cancer of greed.

For reflection
1.  Do you agree that the Church today has become ensnared in the corruption of our greed-based economy? Explain.

2.  What is Jesus looking for from His followers? From His Church? How can we know when we are fulfilling His expectations?

3.  What does it mean to overcome a corrupt commerce and economy with an economy of Kingdom good? How does that happen?

Next steps – Preparation: Wherever you see the corruption of the greed-based economy of our age leaching into your life or the life of your church, make a point to pray daily, that Jesus will exert His grace-based rule into your midst with renewed vigor.

T. M. Moore

This week’s ReVision study is Part 5 of a 10-part series, “The Kingdom Economy.” You can download “Kingdom Commerce” as a free PDF, prepared for personal or group study. Simply click here. Start your day in the Word of God. Study with T. M. in our daily Scriptorium newsletter, as he walks us through the ongoing work of Christ in the book of Acts. You can subscribe to receive Scriptorium each day at 5:00 am Eastern, or go to the website to download each week’s study in a free PDF.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.