Kingdom Currency
Mark 12:29-31 The most important command is this: …Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second most important command is this: ‘Love your neighbour the same as you love yourself.’ These two commands are the most important.
It turns out that the things that we tend to value most, and the things that God values most, aren’t always the same. And as counterintuitive as God’s values are sometimes, in the end, they’re the only thing that end up satisfying us.
Each kingdom or country in this world has its own currency; the US dollar, the UK’s pound sterling, the Indian rupee, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Congolese frank. Every nation has a currency on which value and commerce are based.
The Kingdom of God has its own currency too, but … well, it’s a little different to what we’re used to. Listen to how Jesus describes it:
Mark 12:29-31 The most important command is this: … ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second most important command is this: ‘Love your neighbour the same as you love yourself.’ These two commands are the most important.
It turns out that the currency in God’s Kingdom is love, and that makes it quite a bit different to the currencies of the kingdoms of this world. You see, in our worldly kingdoms, success is about how much of the currency – the dollars, the pounds, the rupees, the franks – you can obtain and how much you can spend.
But in the economy of God’s Kingdom, success is about how much you can give away, how much you can lose, how much you can sacrifice.
The thing of greatest value in God’s Kingdom – love – flows in the opposite direction to the things of value in the world’s kingdoms. In God’s Kingdom, the more you give, the more you have. The more you sacrifice, the richer you become.
Perhaps that’s why all the money in the world can never satisfy the deepest yearnings of the human heart. Love.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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