Simon Peter began to tellJesus , “Look, we abandoned everything, we followed you…”Jesus said,
“Amen. I promise you, there’s nobody who abandoned stuff—home, brothers or sisters, mom or dad, children, fields—for the sake of me or the gospel, who won’t get it back a hundredfold now, this moment: Homes, brothers, sisters, moms, children, fields—and harassment. And in eternity to come, eternal life. And many princes will be last; and the last will become princes.”
I’ve heard Prosperity Gospel preachers misuse this verse to say God wants us to be wealthy now, and the way to do it is to “sow some seed into the Kingdom”—give up your money, preferably to their ministries, and God will reward you with fat stacks of cash.
Of course, in so doing, they totally ignored the context. This story comes right after Jesus had to disappoint a man who had a lot of stuff, then turn round and tell his students how hard it is for the wealthy to get into the Kingdom. If your motive for putting any effort into the Kingdom is the promise of great wealth, you did not read this passage correctly.
Jesus’s promise of reward.
We recognize this is one of Jesus’s promises, because he begins with amen. Most of us think of amen as just the word we say at the end of prayers. Amen is Hebrew for “I confirm,” or “I support,” which is why a lot of bibles translate Jesus’s, “Amen, I tell you” as “Truly I tell you” or “Verily I tell you” or “I tell you the truth.” Since “amen” was regularly used for oaths, I’ll translate it, “Amen, I promise you.” Jesus doesn’t need to swear to the truth of anything, but he does so to make it clear he really means this. We can take it to the bank.
What Jesus swore was those who gave up their stuff for him and the Kingdom would
Some bibles miss it anyway. The NLT dropped “this moment”; I’m not sure why, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and figure they found it redundant. The NIV has “in this present age,” and the NRSV has “now in this age.” Of course an “age” can mean any length of time, and usually a long length. Tell anyone to “wait an age,” and they won’t expect it to be a brief wait. But kairó doesn’t mean an age, but a moment. Translating it otherwise means only one thing: The translators don’t believe Jesus meant it when he said “this moment.” So they translated it into something they can believe. They figure at some point in their future, they’ll be rewarded. Maybe. But not now.
But that’s not what Jesus said. He said right now.
Because he meant right now.
It’s not possession. It’s access.
The main misinterpretation the Prosperity Gospel folks cling to, is this idea “get it back” means we get to own this hundredfold blessing. They tend to focus on it in terms of wealth: When you give up a dollar, you get a hundred dollars. And when you give up a house, you get a hundred houses. Okay, not literally a hundred houses (’cause literal amounts only seem to apply to dollars), but at least a hundred-times-bigger, or substantially bigger, house. When you give up a car, you get back a Lexus, or maybe a Gulfstream jet or something. Something nice and big.
It’s a very materialistic interpretation. But it falls apart because of one rather simple, obvious thing: Jesus referred to family members.
When you give up brothers or sisters, you get back a hundredfold in brothers and sisters. When you give up your father or mother, you get back a hundredfold in mothers. Prosperity Gospel folks never talk about getting back a hundred mothers. (Some of them are perfectly happy to leave behind the mothers they have!) Like I said, they’re only interested in the money or the stuff. But notice most of the things Jesus lists aren’t possessions, but relationships.
You get a hundredfold in mothers. Now, many of us have only one mother. And many have more than one: A biological mother of course, but also adoptive mothers, grandmothers, stepmothers, aunts, mothers-in-law, godmothers, spiritual mothers, and so forth. Jesus promised if we give up the one mother for his and the Kingdom’s sake, he’ll give us a plethora of new mothers. Now. At this moment.
Obviously he’s not talking about possessions. He’s talking about the new relationships we Christians have with one another as soon as we enter the Kingdom. He’s talking about the family of God. He’s talking about the access we have to one another’s resources once we enter the family of God.
If you give up your house for the Kingdom, guess what: You get access to the houses of many, many Christians. If I’m ever in a jam, Christians will take me in. Yeah, not all of them will take me in, ’cause they’re sucky Christians: They don’t wanna. Or they’ll have a thousand conditions: I have to compensate them like a tenant, and their generosity has strict limits. Not that it’s right for me to exploit anyone’s grace—either theirs or God’s. But family, true family, extends hospitality to family members. And if we’re all truly part of God’s family, we’ll do that. So because I’m part of the Kingdom, I can tap way more resources than I could on my own. That’s what family means.
Unless, of course, you’re wealthy—and stingy. Like the wealthy man in this story, who couldn’t give away his stuff to follow Jesus, he wasn’t willing to share for the Kingdom’s sake. Lots of Christians are like that. Like the folks who would never take me in, they don’t look at the Kingdom as a family, but as a network of connections they can exploit. But if they can’t profit from those connections, they close those connections. They don’t consider themselves part of any pool of resources; they consider such pools a drain, and at most all they’ll ever do is throw money at it. Hence many churches’ pools are small. We wind up redundantly buying resources because those who have ’em won’t share. We can’t meet in their homes, so we’re obligated to rent space. We can’t use their books, so we gotta buy our own. They won’t volunteer their labor, so we have to hire it. They won’t put up guests, so we have to put guests in a hotel, and either pay the bill directly, or pay the guests, which costs even more. This is why Jesus said it’s hard for the wealthy to get into the Kingdom: They’ve already stayed out of it.
But those who do contribute to their churches, are in the Kingdom already. And if I have to give up family for the Kingdom’s sake, I get them as my family. If I have to give up property because I became a Christian, I have access to the property of my new family. I don’t have to own it. Ultimately God owns it anyway, and all we are is responsible for what he’s given us. We must be generous with it, for God has been generous with us. It’s never about piling up wealth for ourselves: It’s about what we gain because of the way we give.
And we gain all these blessings right now. We don’t have to wait for Kingdom Come. At that time, we get eternal life. But right now, we get the family of God, and its resources.
And harassment.
Yeah, Jesus had to throw
When you worship wealth, you despise people who don’t likewise bow to your idol. You don’t understand their motives: You can’t manipulate them the same way you’re so easily manipulated. Their self-deprivation and self-control make no sense to you, unless they’re trying to profit by it. Their priorities seem imaginary and bizarre. Their goals are nothing like your goals. You want to become a prince, who wants for nothing, whose every wish is fulfilled; they think that behavior is elitist and awful, whereas you think it’s totally earned.
And if you’re a Mammon-worshiper who’s deluded yourself into thinking you’re Christian, you can’t possibly understand why these people aren’t interested in having the biggest, sparkliest, most well-attended church campus in the state. Or why they’re wasting time on the money-draining task of individual people’s lives, when they could be concentrating on big groups and big shows; raking in the people, and raking in the bucks. You don’t get them. So you fight them.
So yeah: When we give up everything for the Kingdom, we’re gonna get hassled. Comes with the territory. But the gains are greater than the hassle. Focus on the gains, but Jesus doesn’t want us to be surprised by the hassle. In the end, those of us who won’t concentrate on becoming princes will just become them anyway. For we’ve been living in the Kingdom, and get how it works, and be prepared for Jesus’s takeover… and today’s princes will take a mighty long time to get over their overthrow.