God is a giving God, but not a banker. There had been a common general misconception in the mind of some Christians that if we give (money) it to the Lord, the Lord will bless us hundred fold. They usually bring in Mark 10:28-30 as their support base. We need to read the Scripture fully to understand Jesus teaching on this:
In this context, these earthly blessings and eternal life are not merited rewards for our good works of prayer, fasting, giving to the needy and so on, but are totally undeserved gifts. They are the unmerited grace consequences of our fulfilling God’s stated condition of surrendering ourselves to Jesus’ Lordship or Kingship. Note the surrendering context relates to how to enter God’s Kingdom (see Mark 10:23-27).
In the parallel passage – Luke 18:29, Christ refers to surrendering ourselves for “the Kingdom of God”. Jesus is the King or Supreme Lord of God’s Kingdom.
Mark 10:28-30 does not use any of the Greek words for rewards or payments or recompenses. This is further proof that this passage relates to unmerited grace consequences and not merited rewards.
There have been some extremely poor interpretations of Mark 10:28-30 taught in recent years. For example, commenting on this passage, one American preacher whom I know personally say something like this: “Give $10 and receive $1,000; give $1,000 and receive $10,000. Such words have more in common with a salesman than a preacher of God’s unmerited grace through Jesus Christ. This interpretation of Mark 10:30 change a grace-based Biblical principle into a legalistic meriting formula with a guaranteed enormous interest rate.
The above preacher wrongly treats the New Covenant as some type of business contract. But note in the Greek New Testament, the word “covenant” is “diatheke” and not “syntheke” which is the Greek word for a contract.
This preacher wrongly assumes that every aspect of Jesus’ Words in Mark 10:30 must be interpreted totally literally and contrary to other Biblical verses on the same topic.
Mark 10:30 is similar in its type of wording to Jesus’ comments in Matthew 5:41. Matthew 5:41 says: “And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.” In the latter verse, Jesus was teaching a general spiritual principle, not some literal rule of having to always in every circumstance do exactly double of what a person asks you.
Luke’s account of the same event does not use the word “hundredfold” but instead uses “many times” (see Luke 18:29-30). Both Luke and Mark are obviously recording the basic meaning of Jesus’ Words and are not contradictory. The Lukan account confirms the fact the word “hundredfold” in Mark 10:30 should be taken as a general principle and not as a literal specific quantity. Most of the Bible should be taken literally, but only a fool would say none of it contains figurative language. For example, when Jesus said in John 10:9 “I am the door”, He was not talking literally.
Many American television ministers and many others interpret Mark 10:29-30 as referring to some supposedly special group of Christian givers who after conversion donate their houses and lands to these television ministers, their local churches or other believers and are rewarded by God with money and material possessions which are 100 times the quantity or value they originally gave. In other words, they teach God offers a 10,000% interest rate payable in this earthly life on any material thing we gave to Him. For example, they claim that if a believer gives $100,000 to the church or some ministry as a one-off gift or over a number of years, God guarantees him a merited reward of $10 million throughout the rest of his life.
The hundredfold blessing teaching is a form of pyramid selling. This type of pyramid selling in the Church can be called the Carnal Fundraising Cult. It involves those at the top of the pyramid convincing those lower on the pyramid to give to them with the promise that the latter can become as rich as those at the top of the pyramid. A constant supply of new gullible is needed to keep the operation running as a success. This success is constantly used as an advertising ploy to attract new supporters.
God never intended the “rewards” or wages for ministry received by church leaders to be a means of making them millionaires at the expense of poor widows in their congregations. In Matthew 23:14, Jesus said many of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law had used dubious means to expand their ministries’ incomes at the expense of poor widows: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.” Jesus here accused the Pharisees of devouring widows’ houses. In Luke 16:14, Christ said the Pharisees loved money. Some Christian leaders use the hundredfold blessing teaching as a Pharisaic means “to devour widows’ houses” by alluring them with promises of 100 or more houses and so on in return.
By offering 10,000% interest on giving, these teachers dupe sincere but simple-minded believers and greedy carnal churchgoers into giving to them. These teachers then go in first class by airplane from nation to nation and stay at the most luxurious hotels on the money given by the gullible and the greedy. These teachers then say that their own massive wealth gained from the offerings of such people, is proof their false teachings are correct.
Proverbs 14:15 compares simple ignorant people to prudent believers: “The simple believes every word, but the prudent man considers well his steps.” I am continually amazed at how many naïve churchgoers gullibly believe every word of these teachers, instead of Biblically examining their “proof texts”.
Having a godly simplicity in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 1:12 and 11:3) refers to having a simple loving trust in Jesus Christ and God. But this is different from being simple or naïve in the sense Proverbs 7:7, 9:16, 14:15, 14:18, 22:3 and 27:12 refer. In Hebrew, the word “simple” in these verses in Proverbs is “peti” which “generally describes the naïve”.
But a socially aware Christian knows a liberating gospel liberates us from our addictions to, and reliance upon, material wealth and power. It corrects our misguided view that money can buy our happiness or that material wealth can give us meaning or purpose. It is only by our willingness to pick up our crosses and marching to our own “Jerusalem”
Remember, God is a giving God; But He is not a banker you can bank upon.
28 Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” 29 Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, 30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. (NRSV)Many use this hundredfold as money sown has the promise to receive a hundredfold return. This is a carnal interpretation of the scripture. The corrupted version of the “Hundredfold Blessings Teaching”. The promoters of this give to get formulae have made good use of this by distorting its meaning. If this is literal- then what of persecutions, there is a promise of 100 fold of persecutions attached to this promise. So what really is the intent of this passage?
In this context, these earthly blessings and eternal life are not merited rewards for our good works of prayer, fasting, giving to the needy and so on, but are totally undeserved gifts. They are the unmerited grace consequences of our fulfilling God’s stated condition of surrendering ourselves to Jesus’ Lordship or Kingship. Note the surrendering context relates to how to enter God’s Kingdom (see Mark 10:23-27).
In the parallel passage – Luke 18:29, Christ refers to surrendering ourselves for “the Kingdom of God”. Jesus is the King or Supreme Lord of God’s Kingdom.
Mark 10:28-30 does not use any of the Greek words for rewards or payments or recompenses. This is further proof that this passage relates to unmerited grace consequences and not merited rewards.
There have been some extremely poor interpretations of Mark 10:28-30 taught in recent years. For example, commenting on this passage, one American preacher whom I know personally say something like this: “Give $10 and receive $1,000; give $1,000 and receive $10,000. Such words have more in common with a salesman than a preacher of God’s unmerited grace through Jesus Christ. This interpretation of Mark 10:30 change a grace-based Biblical principle into a legalistic meriting formula with a guaranteed enormous interest rate.
The above preacher wrongly treats the New Covenant as some type of business contract. But note in the Greek New Testament, the word “covenant” is “diatheke” and not “syntheke” which is the Greek word for a contract.
This preacher wrongly assumes that every aspect of Jesus’ Words in Mark 10:30 must be interpreted totally literally and contrary to other Biblical verses on the same topic.
Mark 10:30 is similar in its type of wording to Jesus’ comments in Matthew 5:41. Matthew 5:41 says: “And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.” In the latter verse, Jesus was teaching a general spiritual principle, not some literal rule of having to always in every circumstance do exactly double of what a person asks you.
Luke’s account of the same event does not use the word “hundredfold” but instead uses “many times” (see Luke 18:29-30). Both Luke and Mark are obviously recording the basic meaning of Jesus’ Words and are not contradictory. The Lukan account confirms the fact the word “hundredfold” in Mark 10:30 should be taken as a general principle and not as a literal specific quantity. Most of the Bible should be taken literally, but only a fool would say none of it contains figurative language. For example, when Jesus said in John 10:9 “I am the door”, He was not talking literally.
Many American television ministers and many others interpret Mark 10:29-30 as referring to some supposedly special group of Christian givers who after conversion donate their houses and lands to these television ministers, their local churches or other believers and are rewarded by God with money and material possessions which are 100 times the quantity or value they originally gave. In other words, they teach God offers a 10,000% interest rate payable in this earthly life on any material thing we gave to Him. For example, they claim that if a believer gives $100,000 to the church or some ministry as a one-off gift or over a number of years, God guarantees him a merited reward of $10 million throughout the rest of his life.
The hundredfold blessing teaching is a form of pyramid selling. This type of pyramid selling in the Church can be called the Carnal Fundraising Cult. It involves those at the top of the pyramid convincing those lower on the pyramid to give to them with the promise that the latter can become as rich as those at the top of the pyramid. A constant supply of new gullible is needed to keep the operation running as a success. This success is constantly used as an advertising ploy to attract new supporters.
God never intended the “rewards” or wages for ministry received by church leaders to be a means of making them millionaires at the expense of poor widows in their congregations. In Matthew 23:14, Jesus said many of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law had used dubious means to expand their ministries’ incomes at the expense of poor widows: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation.” Jesus here accused the Pharisees of devouring widows’ houses. In Luke 16:14, Christ said the Pharisees loved money. Some Christian leaders use the hundredfold blessing teaching as a Pharisaic means “to devour widows’ houses” by alluring them with promises of 100 or more houses and so on in return.
By offering 10,000% interest on giving, these teachers dupe sincere but simple-minded believers and greedy carnal churchgoers into giving to them. These teachers then go in first class by airplane from nation to nation and stay at the most luxurious hotels on the money given by the gullible and the greedy. These teachers then say that their own massive wealth gained from the offerings of such people, is proof their false teachings are correct.
Proverbs 14:15 compares simple ignorant people to prudent believers: “The simple believes every word, but the prudent man considers well his steps.” I am continually amazed at how many naïve churchgoers gullibly believe every word of these teachers, instead of Biblically examining their “proof texts”.
Having a godly simplicity in Christ (see 2 Corinthians 1:12 and 11:3) refers to having a simple loving trust in Jesus Christ and God. But this is different from being simple or naïve in the sense Proverbs 7:7, 9:16, 14:15, 14:18, 22:3 and 27:12 refer. In Hebrew, the word “simple” in these verses in Proverbs is “peti” which “generally describes the naïve”.
But a socially aware Christian knows a liberating gospel liberates us from our addictions to, and reliance upon, material wealth and power. It corrects our misguided view that money can buy our happiness or that material wealth can give us meaning or purpose. It is only by our willingness to pick up our crosses and marching to our own “Jerusalem”
Remember, God is a giving God; But He is not a banker you can bank upon.
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