Share your food with the hungry! Provide for the homeless and bring them into your home! Clothe the naked! Don’t turn your back on your own flesh and blood!
This is how we have discovered love’s reality: Jesus sacrificed his life for us. Because of this great love, we should be willing to lay down our lives for one another.
“ ‘Splendid! You have done well, my excellent servant. Because you have shown that I can trust you in this small matter, I now grant you authority to rule over ten cities.’
“Ah,” Jesus said, “there’s still one thing you’re missing in your life.” “What is that?” asked the man. “You must go and sell everything you own and give all the proceeds to the poor so you will have eternal treasures. Then come and follow me.”
Use the wealth of this world to demonstrate your friendship with God by winning friends and blessing others. Then, when it runs out, your generosity will provide you with an eternal reward.
To all the rich of this world, I command you not to be wrapped in thoughts of pride over your prosperity, or rely on your wealth, for your riches are unreliable and nothing compared to the living God. Trust instead in the one who lavishes upon us all good things, fulfilling our every need.
When they heard this they were crushed and realized what they had done to Jesus. Deeply moved, they said to Peter and the other apostles, “What do we need to do, brothers?”
“Now, go and sell what you have and give to those in need; you will be making deposits in your account in heaven, an account that will never be taken from you. Your gifts will become a secure and unfailing treasure, deposited in heaven forever.
Just then a religious scholar stood before Jesus in order to test his doctrines. He posed this question: “Teacher, what requirement must I fulfill if I want to live forever in heaven?”
Jesus then gave them this illustration: “A wealthy land owner had a farm that produced bumper crops. Every year the harvest was so great it filled his barns to overflowing!