The Use of Money

And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. LUKE 16:9

Wesley’s three rules about money are among the few sentences of eighteenth-century theology that ordinary people still quote, though they usually quote only one or two of them and often in the wrong order. In his sermon The Use of Money, preached on the parable of the unjust steward, he reduces the whole Christian duty concerning money to three plain rules: gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can. Each rule is qualified, and the qualifications are the point. Together they make one of the most practical and most demanding sermons he ever preached.

Money is not evil

Wesley begins by refusing a common religious prejudice. Poets and philosophers, he says, have railed against money as the great corrupter of the world. But the fault lies not in money but in those who use it. Money can be used ill, and so can anything. It can also be used well. In the hands of God’s children, “it is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked”. It gives the traveller and the stranger a place to lay his head. It can be a defence for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, and of ease to those in pain.

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 1 TIMOTHY 6:10

So the question is not whether a Christian should handle money, but how. And Wesley answers with his three rules.

Gain all you can

The first rule is a surprise from a preacher: gain all you can. Work hard. Use all possible diligence in your calling. Lose no time. Use common sense and all the understanding God has given you to do your work better today than yesterday.

But the rule is fenced at once. We must gain all we can without paying more for it than it is worth. We ought not to gain money at the expense of our life or health; no employment is worth that. Nor at the expense of our minds; we must not follow any trade that requires us to cheat or lie. And above all, not at the expense of our neighbour, in his substance, his body or his soul.

Here Wesley becomes very specific. We may not gain by ruining a neighbour’s trade to advance our own. We may not take such interest as the law forbids, or grow rich by gaming or by overgrown bills. He condemns pawnbroking as, on balance, doing more harm than good. And he denounces the trade in cheap distilled spirits, which he calls liquid fire, saying that those who sell them in the common way to anyone who will buy are poisoners. Nor may we gain by anything that corrupts the souls of others.

Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work. JEREMIAH 22:13

Save all you can

The second rule is save all you can, and Wesley means something different by it from what we usually mean. He does not mean hoard, or invest for security. He means do not waste. Do not throw away this precious talent, he says, in gratifying the desires of the flesh with delicate food, or the desire of the eye with expensive clothes, furniture and gardens, or the pride of life by buying the admiration of others. Every such expense, he says, not only wastes money but feeds the very desires that lead the soul away from God.

He has a sharp word too for parents who think they can never leave their children enough. Why should you leave them the means of increasing their sins? If a child is likely to waste an inheritance on folly, it would be kinder to leave him little.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. MATTHEW 6:19

Give all you can

And then the third rule, without which the first two would be dangerous. Gaining and saving are not the end. “Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then ‘give all you can.’”

Wesley grounds this in stewardship. When God brought you into the world, he says, He placed you here “not as a proprietor, but a steward.” Everything you have is His, lent for a season. So first provide what is needful for yourself and your household. Then, if there is anything over, do good to those of the household of faith. And if there is still more, do good to all men. In so doing you give all you can; nay, in a sound sense, all you have. For all that is laid out in this manner is given to God.

Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. 1 CORINTHIANS 4:2

He goes further than the tithe. Render unto God, he says, not a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is God’s. And he offers four questions to test any expense: Am I acting herein as a steward and not a proprietor? Am I doing this in obedience to His Word? Can I offer this expense as a sacrifice to God through Christ? Have I reason to believe that for this very work I shall have a reward at the resurrection of the just?

The danger he foresaw

Wesley knew that his rules, if followed only in part, would produce a strange result. Methodists who worked hard and lived plainly would grow rich. And if they did not give, their riches would destroy them. In his last years he returned to this again and again. In On the Danger of Increasing Riches, preached in old age, he warns that unless charities increase in the same proportion as income, a person has set his heart on his gold. And in Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity he writes a sentence that reads like a verdict on much of later Protestant history: “The Methodists grow more and more self-indulgent, because they grow rich.”

Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. 1 TIMOTHY 6:17

His own example

Wesley practised his rules with remarkable consistency. His books earned him large sums over the years, but he held his own expenses nearly level as his income grew, and gave away the rest. When he died, he left almost nothing. It is one of the most credible things about him: he did not ask of others what he refused himself.

Where to read with care

Some of Wesley’s applications belong to his time and place, and readers should not make every detail into law. His rule against leaving children much money, for instance, assumed a world without pensions or care homes. But the principles are timeless: work hard and honestly, harm no one in the getting, waste nothing on vanity, and give the rest to God and to the poor. Most modern Christians follow the first rule enthusiastically, the second selectively, and the third hardly at all. Wesley would say that the first two without the third will sink a soul lower than the grave.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Examine how you earn your income. Does it harm anyone in body, mind, soul or livelihood?

2. Look at your spending for the past month and mark anything bought to feed pride or the desire of the eye.

3. Ask Wesley’s four questions of your next significant purchase.

4. If your income has risen in recent years, ask whether your giving has risen in the same proportion.

5. Read The Use of Money in the Ochorus library, and discuss it with someone you trust.

A PRAYER

Lord of all, everything I have is Yours. I am not a proprietor but a steward.

Teach me to gain honestly and without harming anyone, to save by cutting off every expense that serves only vanity, and to give all I can to You and to those in need.

Guard me from the love of money and from the slow self-indulgence that comes with ease.

Let me so use what You have lent me that I may give a good account of my stewardship at the last. Amen.