© 2013 by Tom Boynton (editing by Kathy Boynton)

How’d you like to be rich? Over the years, I’ve spoken with various individuals who’ve likened life to a board game. According to them, the winner is determined by the following rule: “He who dies with the most wealth, wins.”

Let’s think about this for a moment. If the winner is determined by the wealth a person has, when he or she dies, doesn’t this mean you have to die to “win”? Does this really make sense?

Others have sought the “fountain of youth.” Perhaps “He who lives the longest, wins.” Unfortunately, the longest living human being died a long time ago. His name was Methuselah. He lived to be 969 years old (Genesis 5:27). As far as I know, no one has yet discovered the “fountain of youth.”

God, Himself, presents the following thought-provoking question regarding wealth. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36). You and I have souls that will eternally survive our physical death. Isn’t it reasonable to be more concerned with our eternal destiny than with our accumulation of material wealth? In fact, later on in this same Gospel, Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25). Why is this? It’s because the urgency of accumulating wealth often distracts man from the more important issues of eternity.

What is the answer to this dilemma? God provided the answer through the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthian Christians: “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Jesus Christ, who is God, the Son, and owns the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalms 50:10), came to die for sinners. He offered His own blood as the atoning sacrifice to purchase forgiveness and eternal life for all who, in repentance, cry out to Him for mercy.

Will you be satisfied with the wealth of this world, only to die and face eternal torment, or will you cry out to the Lord Jesus Christ for mercy and forgiveness, and obtain the riches of eternal life in Him?

 

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