Write The Author
By Gary Nunn
How many times I heard the phrase "the Lord's money" and "the Lord's treasury" as I grew up attending church in a small Alabama congregation. It seemed to me there had always been a "Lord's treasury" and once we put money into the collection plate, it became the Lord's. It was no longer ours because it was suddenly "holy" to be spent doing "the Lord's work". We were doing the work of the Lord by giving back to Him a portion of what He had so generously blessed us with. It seemed so -- it is what we understood. It seemed "scriptural" and "sound", we said, because it was right there in I Cor. 16:1-4 for the whole world to see. It was all very clear back then. It was easy because we were taught it as "the gospel truth" and there were just some things one just didn't question.
It never dawned on me back then that the Lord didn't need our money. In fact, the Lord doesn't need anything we have or own. That's right! Everything is already His -- all that we have or could ever have already belongs to God. We are the ones who are in need and God surely doesn't need our money. Instead, He wants us to love Him first and foremost because He first loved us. Then He wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves, especially those of the household of faith, and have compassion enough to help them. That's what I Cor. 16:1-4 teaches. It always did, but we couldn't see it in those passages. Why not? Maybe it was because we used the passage to justify our practice and doctrine of having a treasury. Maybe it fit "the pattern" we had created for our corporate worship and practice. Maybe, because our preachers were so well trained in "hermeneutics", they convinced us all that hermeneutics was right.
Hermeneutics, applied correctly to 1 Cor. 16:1-4, shows a pattern alright. The pattern is this: money was being laid by in store (stored up by each person) until the apostle came to pick it up. He would then take it to Christians who were in desperate need, due to a famine. There is no other need for money specified anywhere in the new covenant. An amount was set aside to help those in need. That's what the passage taught then and all it has ever taught. Our service to God insofar as 'money' goes is simple. It is this: everything we have belongs to God already. He does not need or want our money! But, we are to love one another! Loving one another and showing compassion to one another has ever included helping one another. (Matt. 25:40)
So, what has happened? Has something been instituted here that the apostle never intended? Has some twisting been done here, claiming the Scripture's "authorize" such a thing as "the Lord's treasury" when, in reality, such a thing is nowhere found in the New Covenant? Has not this Scripture, as well as others (through the power of hermeneutics -- the man-made rules of Biblical interpretation) been used to justify something that is already being done? Having justified the treasury, we can turn around and use the "Lord's money?" to pay expenses on a building made of wood, stone or brick that we say we need, and in which to "worship God"? I don't think so! Where's the "pattern" on this one? It's on the other side of the cross! Expediency, you say? Again, you've got to go to man's rule book of hermeneutics to justify it, or you have to go back to the law of Moses to justify it, because it isn't found anywhere under the New Covenant! We wouldn't pervert the word of God? Wake up dear brothers and sisters!
Don't we know that we humans are the building with which the Lord is concerned? We are the temple for which He shed His precious blood. We are the living stones joined to God's Chief Cornerstone. My, my. Why do we worry about how much we need to "give to the Lord" to take care of a building we built in which to worship Him? The disciples were impressed with the beauty of one such man-made structure, you'll recall. Jesus simply wasn't impressed. He told them there wouldn't be left one stone upon another. At His death, He tore open the curtain (the veil of the temple) and, later, during that generation (about 70 A.D.), He brought the whole thing down (not one stone was left upon another) when the Romans totally dismantled it. It was literally the final end/fulfillment of the special system of worship (i.e., no more special place, no more special time, no more special way of worship under the law of Moses). Jesus was the fulfillment of the law and the end of that way and that system of worship. (John 4:7-24). No more special treasury! Instead, Jesus became and is the way to God, the Father (John 14:6). Thank God through Jesus that through the law of liberty we can worship Him in spirit and in truth, any time and any place -- no more stone/wood/brick/ church building required to serve the Living God. We are built up as living stones because the Father seeks such to worship Him.