As the political election season approaches, both Republicans and Democrats are heating up the rhetoric of accusations about using taxes and government policies to redistribute the people’s wealth. Republicans accuse Democrats of using taxes and new laws to take wealth from the hard-working middle-class and wealthy Americans to redistribute it to the poor. Democrats accuse Republicans of tax policies and laws that allow the wealthy to take from the middle-class and poor and redistribute it to themselves. In truth, all government taxes are a form of forced redistribution of the people’s wealth (but Scripture admonishes God’s people to pay them anyway—Matt. 22:15-21).
God has a plan for redistribution of His wealth that He has repeatedly fulfilled throughout history. That plan was best exemplified in the person of Jesus Christ.
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich (2 Cor. 8:9).
In the person of Jesus Christ, God took His own wealth and purposefully redistributed that wealth to His church. Man often limits the meaning of wealth to the concept of money, property, or holdings. God includes these things in the wealth that He transferred to the church through the person of Christ, but the foundation of His wealth is not material; it is His knowledge, revelation, grace, character, and the like.
Scripture reveals characteristics of God’s plan for redistribution of wealth.
1. He works through the willing.
In contrast to the government tax of forced redistribution of wealth, God works in the lives of His people to make them willing to give. “For if there is first a willing mind,” says the apostle Paul when asking the Corinthians to give away from their monetary wealth to meet the monetary needs of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (2 Cor. 8:12). He continues the thought with,
So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver (2 Cor. 9:7).
2. He imparts abundance, that it may supply the lack.
When Paul wrote to the Corinthians encouraging them to give to the need in Jerusalem, he said,
For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack — that there may be equality (2 Cor 8:13-15).
The Corinthians had an abundance of money but a lack of faith for godly living in Christ. The Jerusalem Jewish Christians had an abundance of faith for godly living, but their faith cost them their family inheritance and ability to participate in the marketplace of Jerusalem. Paul believed he had the mission from God to supply the lack in the Jerusalem church with a willing gift of money from the Corinthian church. He also believed the faith for godly living in the Jerusalem church could supply the lack of such in Corinth that he was trying to impart to them. The end result of each church’s willing giving would be equality.
3. He uses the principle of seed-faith to encourage expectation in the giver.
Paul’s passion was to help the Corinthians see that their monetary giving was like a seed that they would sow, not a debt or obligation that they owed. He wrote,
Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness (2 Cor. 9:10).
When a believer willingly participates in God’s plan for redistribution of wealth by giving away from their time, money, character, or revelation knowledge of God, they are planting seed. This seed is not only at work in the lives of the recipients, but also in the lives of the givers. God causes that seed to grow into good fruit of time, money, character, and further revelation of His knowledge.
I believe that any government law or program that forcibly taxes one to redistribute to another is a hindrance to God’s plan for redistribution of wealth through His church. I also believe God is calling His children to a life of willing redistribution of their imparted wealth in Christ.
by Benjamin Davis, Senior Pastor of Abundant Life Covenant Church
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