The Greek word for the KJV, “household,” is oikonomia. Literally, it means the rule, or law, or order of the family/household: “How the family is run.” It is also exactly the same word which we derive the English word “economy.”
God’s economy is based on the exchange of love and charis (gifts) in a family of relationships. It is not based upon money. Without functional relationships in which love and charis are exchanged, there is no kingdom economy, nor can there be.
In God’s economy, finances and material resources follow upon the exchange of love and charis. Gift exchange in the family is the economy of God. It is possible to have lots of finance and never touch God’s economy because the genuine relational infrastructure of love and gift exchange is absent. Rather, in its place are the mechanics of money and the strong arm of human determination to build something for God, even using “biblical principles of finance.”
The flow of finance is the logical fruit of an economy based on the exchange of love and charis. A lack of finance for legitimate kingdom efforts is not a lack of money. It is the fruit of a lack of love, and a lack of the understanding of the financial responsibilities of “one-anotherness” in a functional relational community. Love expressed has an economic element.
There are those today who think that a more “faithful” approach to the “stewardship” of money and finance, if overseen by “governmental apostles,” is somehow the magic key of the hour to open up untold kingdom opportunities in the present day. God’s economy is much more sublime than the “release of marketplace ministries,” as valuable as that may be. I submit to you that Calvary’s plow must go yet much deeper than that if we are to even approach a semblance of a “kingdom economy.”
Everything . . . and I mean every practice, belief system, theology, value . . . every precious “conviction,” up to and including our right to be “right” in our views, must be on the table for radical reassessment and reconfiguration to Christ.
If we get the cart of spiritual money mechanics ahead of the horse of loved-based family economy, we will experience the logical end of that order of things: NOTHING.
Copyright 2011 Dr. Stephen R. Crosby www.drstevecrosby.wordpress.com
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