Jun P. Espina 2 min read
Updated on December 19th, 2019
What is the greatest form of poverty in this life? Poor pocket? Poor health? Poor relationship? NO! When cancer or accident comes to kill, Christ would say: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee…[but] you are not rich toward God.” In Luke 12:20-21, Christ taught about poverty toward God.
Poverty Toward God is the Greatest Form of Poverty
Imprisoned, Paul and Silas sang hymns instead because they were rich toward God; their chains then fell apart by His intervention! (cf. Acts 16:25)
The greatest poverty, therefore, is not lack of food, but the lack of Christ! Wrote Paul: “you were separate from Christ…no hope and without God in this world.” (Eph. 2:12) It is poverty toward God. What a tragedy is it to be without God—the calamity of an endless life in the burning Hell amidst mysterious worms (Mark 9:44) forever—when we can be forgiven and saved by faith in Christ’s atoning blood today!
Poverty Toward God is also Poverty Toward Christ
Many say that Christ is no longer relevant. There is truth to this observation as demonism has gone deep down into the very fabric of our cyberculture, politics, and philosophies. The image-based information that is daily bombarding the mind leaves the modern man spaceless for reflection of God and the spiritual things to come. And it is the greatest poverty that is plaguing the human race today: the destitution of the word and promises of God; the poverty toward Christ!
Some predict that the next leaders could be men and women who will be more misguided and brutal and without an understanding of the way of peace. The barrenness of understanding and the path toward the real order of the populace is real poverty of what is good and right. The pervading poverty toward God is now breaking most families; even shattering communities and even entire nations as in the case of the Middle East countries.
Poverty Toward God Breeds Crude Godlessness and Immorality
It is the poverty, moreover, called godlessness and immorality that would cover the whole earth as the devil’s last struggle to thwart God’s good blueprint for the universe.
God’s master plan is the cleansing of heaven and earth from the footprints of Lucifer who is Satan and the fallen angels called the demons who followed him. Hence, the creation of the new heaven and earth. But most important of all is the redemption of man from God’s wrath and the incarceration of both body and soul in hell forever.
We need to be rich toward God by faith in Christ, or we would be so poor in the spiritual realm forever.
The saved person from the judgment to come through faith in the blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ, is richer than the billionaires of this world.
