Economy In The Kingdom.

So I wanted to talk a little about Economy. Not “The Economy”: real-estate is down they say but the market does not bother me, that isn’t really what I am talking about (though in actuality it is EVERYTHING I am talking about, but we will get there later). This really was all inspired by the whole topic of the Sermon on the Mount, though truth be told I was thinking about economy long before that.
See it all started (I think) with this post that David Sliker wrote entitled “When Was the Law Rescinded?” Now that may seem like an odd topic to lead into economy but it really ties right in. What Sliker was talking about was simply what place the Torah’s (Old Testament) Law has today, how should we view it, what can we learn from it and when will it pass away. This topic is spread over several posts and in the third installment he finally gets to what I want to talk about, and more importantly, what this has to do on the Sermon on the Mount.
What he states, and what got me thinking this whole thing is; “The Law [is] a key revelation of God and His value system. What does God care about?” Now this may seem rather vague and uninteresting, but if we are to understand the Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes, I think it is crucial to understand the role of the Law as revelation of God’s character. Regardless if we are freed by grace from its legalism, the Law still serves to give us a glimpse into God’s character and value system, thus, God’s Economy.
We may be use to understanding the word Economy in the context of nations or global trade, in reality the word can have a much broader understanding as simply a value system. People therefore have their own individual economy. Yes, it governs how they spend money, but also how they use time and resources and what they hold as having worth and what does not have worth. Just as in our American economy there are products and services that people pay money for, just as the things that people really want are more expensive or have more labor put into producing them, just as there is a stock market telling us what is gaining worth and what is losing worth, so it is with people, there is a hierarchy of value in our minds. See, if we all have our own economy, then surely God has one, and that economy shows us where God places worth and value. The Law therefore is an indicator of what God’s value system is and what his economy would look like.
Now, while this is perhaps a rich vein to explore, I do not want to, at least presently, digress into a full-on discourse on the Hebraic Law and its full implications on God’s economy. What I do what to look at though is the whole subject I began this with, which is the relationship of the concept of Economy and the Sermon on the Mount, most specifically the Beatitudes.
The Sermon on the Mount is often read as Jesus’ maxim on how to live a better life. It is seen as Jesus fulfilling the Law and laying out the way people should live in order to experience better lives. Now this is perhaps not wrong, but to limit it to merely an exposé on better living is to miss the main point, namely the better living (at least now) is not the goal of this lifestyle (hopefully something to develop in the future). What this Sermon is really doing is doing is laying out again what the Old Covenant Law was doing before; it is the Economy of the Kingdom of God.
So when Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in Spirit (the humble) for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” he is not just being poetical, he is laying out the rules to the Economy of the Kingdom. In other words…in my Kingdom, in my Economy, being poor in spirit has value, so much value in fact that those who have it will become co-heir, owners, people with clout in Heaven. Jesus is talking to his disciples (there may be disagreement on this point, but I don’t think Jesus was talking to the whole crowd, but only those who had left there previous lives to follow him, his disciples) and he is basically telling them, guys, you want to rule with me, you want authority, to you want position, then this is how you do it, this is what I am looking for, these are the things that have worth, that have value in my Economy.
And this is where it gets into what I sort of began this whole thing with, how the real-estate market is down and that really has nothing to do with what I am talking about (and yet it has everything to do with what I am talking about). See the world does not operate by God’s economy, and people do not operate by God’s economy. If we are really going to believe what Jesus said then we have to see that God’s Economy is so much more real then ANY other economy, that it is not just something in or heads or hearts, but that it is a tangible, real thing with rewards and consequences and it is that Economy in which we need to be investing, not this farce of an economy that has been pulled over our eyes.

Hopefully I can get more on this later, because I basically only hinted on the first Beatitude and there is so much more to uncover in all of this…