Why I Believe It's Hard (But Not Impossible) For Rich People to Enter Heaven
I would like to talk about one problem namely why so many rich people have rejected Christ. People say getting saved is easy but do they consider that the Gospel is actually hard to believe? It's a paradox that salvation is a free gift yet it can be costly at the same time. Salvation is costly because it means it can cost you your self-righteousness, your pride, your fame, your fortune and even your life. While not everyone who got saved was at first willing to pay the cost but no one who's truly saved isn't willing to pay the high cost for following Christ.
One passage often misinterpreted by the works salvation crowd is the account of the rich young ruler found in Matthew 19:16–23, Mark 10:17–22, and Luke 18:18–23. Some people think that to be saved you need to give up on your physical wealth and become materially poor. They don't realize the whole context of Jesus' statement with the rich young ruler. Jesus didn't say that those who are rich are damned but those who trust in their riches are damned. People who trust in their riches tend to think that because they acquired so much wealth in their hands that certainly they can work their way to Heaven. Many of them may be giving huge amounts of money to charity and to their respective religions hoping they can pay their way to heaven. The rich young ruler must have thought that by donating huge sums of money he can buy himself in. Remember the rich young ruler wasn't even willing to accept the fact that he's a sinner. It showed he couldn't keep the whole Law. Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell everyone and follow him to show the stupidity of thinking you can keep the whole Law and trusting in your riches.
The problem today is that many people don't want to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior because of worldliness. Some people got rich from joining Freemasonry or are getting rich because of their false religion. You can talk about a rich Buddhist tycoon or rich Roman Catholic tycoon who has powerful connections within their organizations. You have rich atheists who become super-rich because they only focus on grabbing money for themselves. What could be worse is that you have some wicked people who think that their material wealth is proof that they're right with God. I can't see any passage in Scripture that suggests that material wealth is necessarily proof that one is right with God. Job certainly was wealthy but that wasn't proof he was right with God. Rather, the proof of Job being right with God is that he was declared just. Many people may have had a lot of wealth such as Saul, King Ahab, the rich young ruler and the Pharisees yet they weren't right with God. Today, many people possess so much wealth yet they aren't saved.
The problem today is that many people don't want to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior because of worldliness. Some people got rich from joining Freemasonry or are getting rich because of their false religion. You can talk about a rich Buddhist tycoon or rich Roman Catholic tycoon who has powerful connections within their organizations. You have rich atheists who become super-rich because they only focus on grabbing money for themselves. What could be worse is that you have some wicked people who think that their material wealth is proof that they're right with God. I can't see any passage in Scripture that suggests that material wealth is necessarily proof that one is right with God. Job certainly was wealthy but that wasn't proof he was right with God. Rather, the proof of Job being right with God is that he was declared just. Many people may have had a lot of wealth such as Saul, King Ahab, the rich young ruler and the Pharisees yet they weren't right with God. Today, many people possess so much wealth yet they aren't saved.
Becoming a Christian could mean losing all those connections. I remembered how Manny Pacquiao's change of faith from Roman Catholicism to becoming a born again Christian was made subject to his losses. But for Pacquiao, his losses probably have a message from God. Jesus never told anyone that following Him would mean they would have worldly fame. In fact, He warned many times that you could lose all your fame and fortune, that you can get persecuted for the wrong reasons, you can be at war with the world because the world doesn't love the Christian but their own (John 15:18-19). It's often that people in so much comfort of material wealth refuse to see God and worse, some of them even blame God for their problems rather than turn to Him in repentance. God wants them to see their wealth is only temporary yet they are still in so much hatred against God for calling them to repentance. For the Christian - becoming wealthy means God is entrusting him or her with more because they can be entrusted with more. A wealthy Christian only thinks that the wealth they have is temporarily and it truly belongs to God.
1 John 2:15 warns about not loving the world. This world is in rebellion against God ever since the fall of man. It's really something to think about how the world is still in rebellion against God even with all the events in the Old Testament. God justly and fairly drowned a wicked world, He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins, ordered the Israelites to destroy sinful heathen civilizations all because they were a danger to people around them yet they would not repent. Think about it that how after the Flood that Nimrod's rebellion came just a hundred years later. People immediately forgot about God's wrath in the flood that He could still destroy the Earth in other ways. Christians can't love the world because they are not of the world. Only unsaved people think of loving the world and feeling at home with it.