WHY DID JESUS SAY IT'S HARD FOR THE RICH TO BE SAVED?

Can a rich person be saved? Should a Christ-follower seek wealth? It's a heart issue. Randy Alcorn's book, "Money, Possessions, and Eternity" helps us to understand the truth about money, materialism, and idolatry...

"Note the self-destructive nature of money love. It’s a life of self-mutilation in which we repeatedly pierce ourselves with grief after grief. The good we seek destroys us. We load our idols with expectations they cannot deliver. The happiness we try to wrest from them can only be found elsewhere.

Jesus said the rich are at a spiritual disadvantage (Matthew 19:23-24). The problem, of course, is not that God doesn’t love the rich. The problem is that the rich don’t love God. They simply have too much else to love. Who needs God, we think, when we’ve got everything? This is why Jesus didn’t say, “You should not serve both God and Money,” but “You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24, italics mine). Why? For the same reason a woman cannot have two husbands. When we carry on a love affair with the world, we commit spiritual adultery. We place God in the role of the jilted husband. He loves us and longs for our return but will not allow us in his intimate chambers when we are prostituting ourselves to another. God will not be a half husband. He will not be comforted by the fact that we call him “Savior” when we refuse to follow him as Lord.

Materialism consists of the two things God hates most—idolatry and adultery. The magnitude of God’s abhorrence for materialism surfaces in the final act prior to the return of Christ—the destruction of the money-loving system of this world, called “Babylon the Great.” It’s said of this Babylon, “The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” A voice from heaven pleads with God’s people—a voice that we would do well to heed today: Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. (Revelation 18:4-7)"

Alcorn, Randy (2011-11-13). Money, Possessions, and Eternity (Kindle Locations 1050-1066). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.