Or are you so well satisfied with what you are, that you have never sought eternal life, never hungered and thirsted after the righteousness of God, the perfection of your being? If this latter be your condition, then be comforted; the Master does not require of you to sell what you have and give to the poor. You follow Him! You go with Him to preach good tidings!–you who care not for righteousness! You are not one whose company is desirable to the Master. Be comforted, I say: He does not want you; he will not ask you to open your purse for Him; you may give or withhold: it is nothing to Him…. Go and keep the commandments. It is not come to your money yet. The commandments are enough for you. You are not yet a child in the kingdom. You do not care for the arms of your Father; you value only the shelter of His roof. As to your money, let the commandments direct you how to use it. It is in you but pitiable presumption to wonder whether it is required of you to sell all that you have… for the Young Man to have sold all and followed Him would have been to accept God’s patent of peerage: to you it is not offered.

~George MacDonald; Carrion Comfort

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

These pithy little excerpts from George MacDonald’s anthology continue to grab me in profound ways. Each one is like a compressed sermon full of other-worldly conviction and penetrating insight. In our age of lavish materialism and world shrinking information stores, we always seem to be juggling this strange double standard in regards to our lifestyle and known areas of local and global need. By comparison we can all find ourselves in the shoes of the Rich Young Ruler.

The Rich Ruler
18A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

19″Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’[b]”

21″All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

22When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

23When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. 24Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

26Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

27Jesus replied, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”

28Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”

29″I tell you the truth,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life.”

~Matthew 18:18-29

In an attempt to deal with our uncomfortable situation of having so much comfort and being aware of untold suffering in our own city and the world we are tempted to ask the questions of money before the questions of righteousness. MacDonald seems to point out with his label “God’s patent of peerage”; that for all I know the Rich Young Ruler actually was righteous and the next step towards Jesus for him was in regards to his money, I don’t think I can say the same.

Where do I begin then?

These poetic sermonets paint a wonderfully ambiguous picture of what it looks like to truly yield our will and a harsh warning of just how convoluted we can make the spiritual life when we try to quantify our relationship with God.

Does this comfort you? Then alas for you!… Your relief is to know that the Lord has no need of you–does not require you to part with your money, does not offer you Himself instead. you do not indeed sell Him for thirty pieces of silver, but you are glad not to buy Him with all that you have.

~George Macdonald; The Same

Categories: Money, George MacDonald, Quotes, Bible Study, Books