Money and Judgment – Preparing for Next Sunday’s Sermon

This is the error that makes us imagine, as we so often do, that God’s judgment is a weighing of good and of evil, of good works and of sins. How often we think that God’s judgment is based on a weighing (the scale is a symbol of justice) or a balance sheet! At the end of the big book where all our good and bad deeds are recorded, the Great Bookkeeper tallies up the balance.

But God is neither a bookkeeper nor a grocer weighing merchandise in order to set its price. To think of judgment this way is, once again, to make the law of money penetrate God’s truth. It is once again to obey the order of buying and selling, which God’s world does not obey. God’s judgment is a judgment of grace. Because God’s gift in his Son is free, the whole perspective changes, and we have no right to want an accounting system. This would be fatal for us. But mercy triumphs over judgment (Jas. 2:12-13), and we understand why God’s judgment on us and on our money (at the same time as on our works) ultimately introduces us into the world of grace.

~ Jacques Ellul, Money and Power

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