Mrs Ikpe started with one bag of rice. Thirty years ago she sold foodstuffs from a wooden table at Mile 12 market, rising at four to meet the lorries coming in from the north. Today she owns a haulage company with forty-two trucks, a warehouse in Ikorodu and contracts with two of the largest food distributors in the country. She is a deaconess in her church, she has put a dozen young people through university, and she still knows the price of a bag of beans better than any of her managers.
One Sunday the preacher took his text from Mark 10. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,” he read, “than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” He preached it hard. Mrs Ikpe sat in the third row and felt every word land on her.
She came to see me that Wednesday. She put her handbag on the table and asked her question without any introduction. “Pastor, should I be ashamed of what God has given me? Should I sell my business?”
We talked for over an hour. Somewhere in the middle of it, almost in passing, she mentioned that the month had been difficult because her daughter’s wedding had cost more than planned, and she had just taken delivery of a new car. Then she added, “And the drivers’ salaries are late again. Two months now. Cash flow. They understand.”
She did not notice what she had said. I did. And I asked her, as gently as I could, whether the drivers really understood, and what two months without pay looked like in a driver’s house in Ikorodu.
PunchlineShe was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “I came here to ask whether it is wrong to be rich. I think I was asking the wrong question.”
The wrong question and the right one
Many believers carry Mrs Ikpe’s first question. Some carry it as guilt, wondering whether God disapproves of their success. Others carry it as a weapon, using it to judge those who have more. Both groups are usually asking whether wealth in itself is sinful.
Scripture does not condemn the possession of wealth as such. “And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold” (Genesis 13:2). Job was the greatest man in the east, and God restored him with double what he had lost. Joseph of Arimathea was a rich man who was also Jesus’ disciple, and he gave his own new tomb for the Saviour’s body (Matthew 27:57-60). Women of means, including Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward, supported Jesus’ ministry “of their substance” (Luke 8:3). Moses reminded Israel that it is God “that giveth thee power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). God is not embarrassed when His people prosper. He is often the reason they do.
Yet Scripture also speaks about riches with a seriousness that should make every believer pause. Jesus warned more often about money than about almost any other subject. Paul said that “they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare” (1 Timothy 6:9). James addressed the rich with words that still burn.
So the faithful question is not whether you are rich. The better question is this: What is your wealth doing to you, and what is it doing to the people affected by how you earn it and use it? That question reaches the heart, and it reaches the drivers in Ikorodu. It is the question Paul, Jesus and James each press in their own way.
Paul’s charge to the rich
Near the end of his first letter to Timothy, after warning about the love of money, Paul turns to a group that was clearly present in the church at Ephesus. He does not tell Timothy to expel them, shame them or demand that they become poor. He tells him to give them a charge:
Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.
Notice first the phrase “rich in this world.” Paul is distinguishing between two kinds of riches. Some people are rich in this present age, in money and property. That kind of wealth is real, but it belongs to “this world,” and it will not outlast it. Paul wants the wealthy to hold it with that perspective.
Then he names two dangers. The first is being “highminded.” Wealth tends to make a person feel superior. It brings deference in meetings, the best seat at functions, people who laugh at your jokes and agree with your opinions. Over time a rich person can begin to believe that his money reflects his worth, and that those with less are somehow less. Paul says: guard against that.
The second danger is trusting “in uncertain riches.” The word uncertain is well chosen. Anyone who has lived through a naira devaluation, a bank collapse or a sudden change in import policy knows how quickly riches can shrink. A business that seemed secure can be shaken by one government circular. Paul does not tell the rich to be careless with money. He tells them not to rest their hope on it. Wealth is a poor foundation for a soul because it can move under your feet overnight.
Instead, their trust is to be “in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” That is where hope belongs. Money is a gift from the living God. It is never a substitute for Him.
Permission to enjoy
That last phrase deserves its own attention, because it surprises many readers. God “giveth us richly all things to enjoy.” Paul does not tell the rich to feel guilty about every good thing they own. He says God gave it to them, and gave it richly, for enjoyment.
This guards against a gloomy kind of religion that treats every pleasure as suspect. Earlier in the same letter Paul opposed teachers who forbade marriage and certain foods, and he wrote, “For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4). The Preacher of Ecclesiastes said something similar: when God gives a man riches and the power to enjoy them and to rejoice in his labour, “this is the gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 5:19).
So a wealthy believer may live in a good house, drive a reliable car, take a holiday and celebrate a daughter’s wedding with joy, as long as these are received with thanksgiving and held within a life that is open-handed toward others. There is no virtue in pretending to be poor. Nor is it the role of other believers to inspect every purchase a wealthy brother makes and pass judgement on it.
But enjoyment is the first of Paul’s words to the rich, not the only one. The verse that permits enjoyment is followed at once by the verse that directs generosity. They belong together. Enjoyment without generosity turns into self-indulgence. Generosity without any freedom to enjoy can turn into joyless duty or a show of piety. Paul wants both held in the hand of a person whose hope is in God.
Rich in good works
“That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate.” Here Paul plays on the word rich. You are rich in money. Now be rich in something that lasts. Let your good works be as abundant as your bank balance.
Ready to distribute describes a person who is quick to share, who does not need to be chased or persuaded. Willing to communicate translates a Greek word related to koinonia, fellowship. It means sharing what you have with others as partners, not as superiors handing down scraps. A rich believer is to treat his resources as something held in common fellowship with the family of God.
And then the reason: “Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life.” Paul is not teaching that generosity earns salvation. He is echoing Jesus, who told His disciples to lay up treasure in heaven, “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). What we do with money both reveals and shapes where our heart is anchored. A rich believer who gives generously is building on the only foundation that will stand when this world’s riches have passed. He is laying hold of “eternal life,” which some manuscripts render “that which is life indeed.” The point is the same either way. There is a life that money cannot buy, and generosity helps a rich person take hold of it.
That is a beautiful vision of wealth. A rich believer can be a source of great blessing: funding a clinic, employing people at fair wages, paying school fees for children whose parents have died, supporting missionaries, carrying the weight of projects that would never happen otherwise. Some of the most faithful believers I know are wealthy. Their money has not captured them, because they keep giving it away.
Good works with wealth are not limited to donations. A business owner does good when he charges honest prices, keeps his promises to suppliers, trains young staff and pays what he owes the government. A landlord does good when he maintains the building and does not raise rent simply because he can. These are less visible than a cheque presented at a fundraising dinner, but they touch more lives every week.
The church has a part to play here too. James rebuked congregations that gave the rich man the good seat and told the poor man to stand at the back (James 2:1-4). When we flatter wealthy members, we make it harder for them to hear the charge Paul wanted Timothy to give. A rich believer needs pastors and friends who will love him enough to speak plainly, and who value him for Christ’s sake rather than for his contributions.
The man who went away sad
Now we turn to the passage that frightened Mrs Ikpe. A young man ran to Jesus, knelt in the road and asked the most important question anyone can ask:
And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is , God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother. And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.
There is so much here. The man was sincere. He ran, he knelt, he called Jesus “Good Master.” He had kept the commandments outwardly from his youth. And Mark adds a detail found in no other Gospel: “Then Jesus beholding him loved him.” Whatever Jesus says next, He says in love. This is not a harsh teacher trying to drive a rich man away.
Notice too which commandments Jesus lists. They all concern how we treat other people, and Mark alone includes “Defraud not.” The man believed he had kept them all. But Jesus saw the one thing that held him: “One thing thou lackest.” His possessions had become the centre of his life. They occupied the place that belonged to God. So Jesus asked him to give them up, give to the poor and follow.
Sincere Christians have read this command in different ways. Some take it as a call that every disciple should be willing to obey, and a few, through the centuries, have literally given away everything to follow Christ. Most interpreters note that Jesus did not give this command to every wealthy person He met. Zacchaeus gave half his goods to the poor and repaid fourfold those he had cheated, and Jesus declared, “This day is salvation come to this house” (Luke 19:9). Joseph of Arimathea and the women who supported Jesus kept means with which to serve. The command was aimed precisely at this man’s heart, because his wealth was the thing he could not let go.
That is the test for every believer with money. If Jesus asked you to let it go, could you? If not, it may be holding you more than you are holding it. “He was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.” He came running and left grieving. His wealth had promised him life, and in the end it stood between him and the One who is life.
The camel and the needle
As the man walked away, Jesus turned to His disciples:
And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his disciples, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were astonished at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.
The disciples were astonished. In their world, as in many churches today, wealth was often assumed to be a sign of God’s favour. If the rich could not be saved, who could?
You may have heard it said that the “eye of a needle” was a small gate in Jerusalem’s wall that a camel could pass through only by kneeling and having its load removed. It is an attractive sermon illustration, but there is no reliable evidence that such a gate existed, and it softens what Jesus meant. He was using a deliberately impossible picture. The largest animal in the region cannot pass through the smallest opening anyone could think of. Jesus meant that no one, rich or poor, can enter the kingdom by human means.
Look at verse 24. “Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God!” The problem is trust. Riches tempt their owners to believe they are secure, self-sufficient and in no need of mercy. That is precisely the posture that keeps a person from receiving the kingdom as a gift.
And then comes the hope. “With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.” The rich can be saved, but only the way anyone is saved: by grace, as a miracle of God. Zacchaeus is the proof. A chief tax collector, rich through exploitation, met Jesus, and the camel went through the needle.
So Mrs Ikpe did not need to sell her business to be saved. She needed what every one of us needs: to trust Christ and not her wealth, and to let that trust reshape how she treated the people around her.
NuggetThe question is not whether you have money. The question is whether your money has you, and what it is doing to the people within its reach.
The wages that cry out
James adds a voice that is uncomfortable to hear, and he does not soften it:
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you . Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
These are some of the strongest words in the New Testament. James is probably addressing wealthy landowners outside the church as much as within it, in the style of the Old Testament prophets. But his charges are specific, and they are about what wealth does to others.
They had hoarded: “Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.” Clothes sat in the wardrobe until moths ate them. Gold and silver lay idle until they corroded. Wealth that could have fed the hungry was simply stored.
They had cheated their workers: “the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth.” The wages were withheld, and the withheld wages themselves cried out to God. James calls Him “the Lord of sabaoth,” the Lord of hosts, the commander of heaven’s armies. The poor labourer may have had no one to hear him. God heard him.
They had indulged themselves: “Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton.” They had fattened their hearts like cattle on the day of slaughter, not realising the knife was coming.
And they had used power against the righteous, condemning those who could not resist them.
James was drawing on an old command. The law of Moses had already protected the hired worker:
Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD , and it be sin unto thee.
“At his day thou shalt give him his hire.” A day labourer lived from day to day. His wage was his family’s dinner. Withholding it, even overnight, was oppression. And the reason God gives is tender: “for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it.”
This is where Mrs Ikpe’s story becomes our story. In Nigeria, late salaries are so common that we have stopped treating them as a moral issue. Contractors wait months for payment. Domestic workers are told to be patient. Small suppliers carry the cost of large clients’ delays and go into debt to feed their families. Sometimes the business genuinely has no money. But often, as in Mrs Ikpe’s case, the money exists, and it has simply been spent elsewhere first.
A wealthy believer must ask: Whose patience am I spending? Whose children are paying for my comfort? James says the cries of unpaid workers enter God’s ears. The question of faithful wealth is never only about the heart. It is also about the driver, the cleaner, the supplier and the tenant.
A heart whose hope is in God
How can a believer be rich and remain faithful? Job gives us a model. In chapter 31 he makes a long, searching declaration of innocence, examining every area of his life. When he comes to his wealth, he says this:
If I have made gold my hope, or have said to the fine gold, Thou art my confidence; If I rejoiced because my wealth was great, and because mine hand had gotten much; If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; And my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.
Job had great wealth, and he examined himself honestly about it. Had he made gold his hope? Had he rejoiced simply because his wealth was great and his hand had gained much? He saw that trusting in wealth was a form of idolatry, as serious as worshipping the sun and moon. Earlier in the same chapter he asked whether he had eaten his morsel alone while the fatherless went hungry, or seen anyone perish for want of clothing (Job 31:17-19). His self-examination covered both his heart and his neighbour.
We can borrow Job’s questions:
- Where does my sense of security come from? If my business collapsed tomorrow, would I still know who I am?
- Do I treat people with less money as less important?
- Is every person who works for me paid fairly and on time?
- Am I rich in good works, or only rich in money?
- Do I enjoy what God has given me with thanksgiving, or have I begun to feel I deserve it?
Let me say plainly that God is not against His people prospering. Many believers in this country have been taught to feel that poverty is more spiritual, and that a Christian businessperson must apologise for success. That is not the teaching of Scripture. God can and does bless the work of His people’s hands. But wealth is never the measure of His favour. Some of His dearest children are poor, and “Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith” (James 2:5)? A rich believer is not more loved than a poor one. He is simply more responsible, because more has been placed in his care.
Mrs Ikpe went back to her office that afternoon and asked her accountant for the payroll. She paid the drivers that week, both months in full. She did not stop there. She called a meeting of the drivers and their supervisors, something she had never done before, and apologised to them. One of the older drivers, a man who had been with her since she had three trucks, wept openly. He told her that his son had been sent home from school for unpaid fees the week before.
She changed the way the company ran. Salaries are now paid on the twenty-fifth, before any other expense except fuel, and she told her managers that if there is ever a choice between her personal spending and the drivers’ pay, the drivers come first. She set up a fund to help staff with school fees and hospital bills.
She did not sell the business. It has grown since. She still drives the new car, and she still enjoys it. But when I saw her at a church thanksgiving some months later, she said something that has stayed with me.
Punchline“I used to think the question was whether God would let me be rich,” she said. “Now I think the question is whether He can trust me with it.”
That is the question for every believer God has prospered. Hold your wealth with an open hand and a humble heart. Enjoy it with thanksgiving. Give it away generously. Pay your workers on time. And let your hope rest, not in uncertain riches, but in the living God who gives you richly all things to enjoy.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Have you tended to feel guilty about wealth, or to judge others who have it? How does 1 Timothy 6:17 speak to that?
- What does it look like, in your situation, to be “rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate”?
- If Jesus asked you to let go of what you own, how would you respond? What does your answer reveal about your heart?
- Is there anyone whose wages, payment or due you have delayed? What will you do about it this week?
- Which of Job’s questions about wealth do you most need to ask yourself?
This Week
This week, make a list of every person who depends on you for payment: employees, domestic staff, contractors, suppliers, tenants or landlords. Check honestly whether each one is being paid fully and on time. If anyone is owed money, pay it or contact them with a clear and truthful plan. Then choose one specific good work to do with your resources before the week ends, and do it quietly, with thanksgiving.
A Prayer
Living God, thank You for every good thing You have given me richly to enjoy. Forgive me where I have trusted in uncertain riches instead of in You, and where I have looked down on others because they have less. Search my heart as Job searched his. Show me anyone I have wronged through delay or unfairness, and give me the courage to make it right. Make me rich in good works, ready to distribute and willing to share. Keep my hope anchored in You, so that I may lay hold of the life that is truly life. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.