The Christian Eunuch
And He said to them, “Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of possessions.” Luke 12:15
Every Form of Greed – Sometimes I think we needed to be there. We needed to be sitting in the audience, listening to Jesus speak in order to really understand His words. We needed to be first century Jews, filled with first century life and a long heritage of repression, occupation and poverty in order to feel the meanings. But we weren’t there, so the best we can do is dig through the etymological archeology.
Luke uses the Greek word pleonexias. It is an umbrella word, covering several other concepts all connected with longing desire for possession and accumulation of created things. It covers the love of money, extortion, fraud and any other action designed to take what is not given from God. Luke’s word is found in the Old Testament in Jeremiah 22:17, where the Hebrew is betsa (illegal gain or profit). It covers the profit from selling Joseph, plunder taken in war, bribes, gain from illegal business practices, and illegal seizure. No wonder we translate the word as every form of greed.
But Jesus has more in mind than your bank account or your P&L. Behind these two words lies the God-ordained role of the steward. Believers are called to be the caretakers of someone else’s property. God placed Adam in the Garden to fulfill the role of overseer. Man is to “subdue” (kavash – to bring under control) the earth. In this role, Man is to model God’s activity, bringing order to chaos (compare Genesis 1:2-3). Man’s divine mandate is to make all the earth a garden to God’s glory. And that is the secret. We are not here to bring about any form of order. We are here to bring about God’s form of order. Why? Because the creation we oversee is not ours.
We are Christian eunuchs. We are called to watch over the possessions of another. We live to serve to the King. The vast treasury belongs to Him. We only serve properly when we bring His order to this world. That means we live voluntarily stripped of what we could otherwise take. We live with empty closets, empty garages, empty bank accounts and empty offices because we want to fill our lives with His good pleasure. There is no room for my stuff and His treasures in the same space. I serve at the pleasure of the King. What He puts under my control is His, not mine.
When I desire to take more than I am given, I give away my role as steward and take on the role of God. That’s why pleonxia is so hideous. It is not possessing that causes the problem. It is the wish to be god of my own treasury.
