1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does– comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

I once had an opportunity to counsel with a remarkable lady who was in a dilemma about how to use the money which she had received from her brother’s life insurance policy. Since she was named as executor of his will, she originally thought that she must use the money in the same manner as the rest of his estate. All of that had been bequeathed to his church. When she later learned that benefits received from the insurance policy were not counted part of the estate, the freedom to use them in whatever manner she chose left her in a quandary.

This dear lady was by no means wealthy in a worldly sense. She lived in a small apartment with old, rather dated furniture. Her clothing was simple and fell out of fashion long ago. She owned no car.

Her uncertainty about how to use the money arose out of the encouragements of family members to spend a little something on herself for once. They suggested that she would be foolish to give it all away. Why shouldn’t she have something nice for once?

She, however, had learned to be content with the way in which the Lord had taken care of her. She had never had much, but she had never needed to impose upon others for help, either. Her Jesus had done so much for her. It seemed to her that the children suffering from leprosy in India to whom she intended to send this little windfall needed it much more than she did. If God had been so good to her to give her Jesus, and bring her to faith, and take care of her all these years, she was certain he would take care of all her needs in the future, too.

What would you have done?

We New Testament Christians live in real freedom to use the gifts God gives us in the way we think is wisest and most useful. Since Jesus has paid for every sin, and heaven has been given as a free gift, we cannot pay our way into God’s favor even if we were to devote every cent we have for the mission of his church. Nor has God delivered to us the exact budget he wishes each of us to follow. He does not outline exactly how much to spend on mission work, how much for charity, for savings, for rent or mortgage or groceries, etc.

But in that same freedom, Jesus has set us free from sin’s hold on our life. We are free from all the secret idolatries that compete for God’s love. The Apostle John calls them “the world.” Jesus referred to our “treasures on earth” in the Sermon on the Mount.

It is good for us to examine our hearts each day and seriously consider the hold his world has on us. Do we really mean it when we sing in A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:

And take they our life–
Goods, fame, child, and wife–
Let these all be gone.
They yet have nothing won.

Or are there, in fact, many items lying around our houses or garages whose loss would make our hearts sink? Letting them go might send us into depression, because they have become our own little idols.

Then it is good for us to remember how good our Jesus has been to us. Not only has he given us our many things. He has given us his very self. He has literally loved us to death, and his love is never stolen, it never breaks or wears out, it doesn’t become outdated or obsolete. His love sets us free to love, not our things, but to love our dear Lord Jesus and the people whom he has made.