In 2001, former Enron employees testified before Congress, explaining how their life savings were wiped out by the collapse of the seemingly invincible energy company. Their retirement funds were gone. Their jobs and salaries were gone. Their life savings, in many cases, were gone.
If you invest money in a bad company, you will lose money. You might lose a lot of money.
The same is true spiritually, though most believers don’t realize it. If you invest your money, your time, and your talents in a church that is huge and popular and entertaining, but that is not teaching God’s Word accurately, your investment can have a negative result at the Bema. The same is true of giving to or aiding a parachurch ministry, women’s group, Bible study, or any ministry.
Most Christians have never heard of the Bema and don’t believe in eternal rewards.
Among those who know that we will be judged at the Bema, many do not realize that we will experience rebuke for some of the things into which we have invested our time, talent, and treasure.
At the Bema, our investments can reap great rewards. But they can also have no eternal value, or even negative eternal value.
Take as much care in your spiritual investments as you do your financial investments.
In the Greek text, 2 John is Beta (B) John. I use that to remember that Beta John tells his readers to be sure not to invest your time, talent, or treasure in Bad teachers. If you do, you own shares in a bad spiritual stock (2 John 7–11). There were many traveling teachers in the first century. John wrote, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house [i.e., don’t house and feed him] nor greet him [i.e., don’t bless him and his ministry]; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds” (2 John 10-11).
If you drive the getaway car for a bank robber, you are sharing in his crime of robbery. Worse, if he kills someone while committing the crime, you too are guilty of murder.
If you support a ministry, church, or missionary that is teaching falsehood, you are sharing in the evil deeds of that ministry or person. You too are guilty of their evil deeds.
The same basic teaching is found in other passages, such as 1 Cor 15:53; Gal 1:6-9; 5:7-10; Col 2:8-23; Jas 3:1; 1 John 2:24-28.
Invest your time, talent, and treasure wisely and you will be glad you did. But don’t forget that there is risk in spiritual investments. Make sure you invest in the truth.
The word truth occurs nine times in Alpha John, five times in Beta John, and six times in Gammai John. That is twenty uses of the word in just seven chapters. In his epistles, John emphasizes the importance of investing in the truth. If we do, then we “become fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). He also stresses that we must not invest in teachers who are “antichrists” (1 John 2:18, 22; 2 John 7), “deceivers” (1 John 2:26; 3:7; 2 John 7) and who “do not abide in the doctrine of Christ” (2 John 9).
Even if we have wonderful motives for giving to those who teach false doctrine, we are sharing in their evil deeds by doing so. Our good motives cannot undo the fact that by investing in a bad teacher, we are sharing in his deeds that displease God.
Keep grace in focus, and you will make wise spiritual investments of your time, talent, and treasures.
i The message of Gamma John, or 3 John, is: Do invest your time, talent, and treasure in Good teachers.
