High-mindedness is the first offspring of a foolish relation to wealth. God gives wealth, and if He is not pleased to give it, you will not become rich, however much you strive. Yet the way God gives is invisible. One’s own efforts are visible, tangible, and perceptible.
When a man fixes his attention on the latter, on what is his own, and forgets to discern beneath it the former, what is God’s, he begins to ascribe everything to himself. Naturally, he then begins to think highly of himself.
Again, wealth provides ways to surround oneself with comfort and splendid appearance, in house, clothing, maintenance, and everything else. This glittering display has nothing essential in itself. Yet it fills the mind with the thought that, as all this outward show is good, so its possessor is good in himself.
This thought then passes into a feeling of personal excellence, or self-satisfaction. From it there immediately springs a new shoot of exalted opinion about oneself, and from this all the manifestations of pride.
The same result follows from the honor which everyone involuntarily pays to wealth. For when others honor a man, how can he fail to honor himself? He begins to honor himself as some highly worthy person, and to look down on others. This is high-mindedness.
Thus wealth is a very slippery path. In itself it presents many obstacles to retaining the Spirit of Christ, as the Savior also declared: “Hardly shall a rich man enter into the Kingdom” (cf. Mt 19:23). Hardly, not impossibly.
The Apostle guides him toward this and clears for him the path to the Kingdom. First, do not be high-minded. Wealth is not yours. It is fluid. Today it exists, and tomorrow it is gone. It is outside you and is not your personal dignity.
Therefore it is extreme foolishness to be high-minded because of wealth, when wealth is nothing. Since it is difficult for the rich man himself to keep such wise thoughts, it is the pastor’s duty to remind him of this more often.
Sound the trumpet, good pastor, to the rich, that they not be high-minded. To those who are rich in this present age, that is, in corruptible goods which have place only in the present age.
But by adding this word, the Apostle hints at wealth which has place beyond the present age, precious even beyond its limits, though acquired in this age. Chrysostom says, “The Apostle rightly said, in this present age, for there are other rich men also in the age to come.”
Blessed Theodoret adds, “For there are rich men of the future age, possessing enduring and permanent wealth.” These, blessed Theophylact and Oecumenius add, are “the righteous.” A little later the Apostle shows how even the rich may acquire such wealth, namely through corruptible wealth, by turning it to beneficence.
The second offspring of a foolish relation to wealth is trust in it. Wealth gives power to the rich man, both among people generally and before authorities. It does this not by its own nature, but through the same weakness of love of gain.
When the rich man has managed one matter and another by means of wealth, he begins to feel that wealth is power. With it, he thinks, everything can be arranged and everything attained. Repeated success inclines him to lean upon wealth, and then to put his whole trust in it.
Thus wealth becomes his god. This is ruin. By such a relation to wealth, the inner order required and determined by human nature is perverted. What ought to have been at the feet is placed at the head.
By nature man must live in God and, having surrendered himself to Him, place his whole trust in Him. He should keep everything created beneath himself or around himself, either as wholly unnecessary or as a secondary means and aid.
But for the rich man this unnecessary, worthless thing, this footstool, has taken the place where one ought to have the one God. He has become like a man walking upside down on his head.
This is the inward harm from trusting in wealth, a thought indicated by the word “trust.” But to turn him away from it, the Apostle next presents a more tangible motive, the uncertainty and instability of wealth.
Nor to trust in perishing wealth, μηδε ηλπικεναι επι πλουτου αδηλοτητι, that is, not to place all one’s hope upon the uncertainty of riches, or upon uncertain wealth. Ηλπικεναι means to put one’s hope wholly upon something. Αδηλοτης means obscurity, invisibility, unclearness.
Can it be clearly seen what will happen to wealth in a day, or even in an hour? No one knows this. No one can say it with certainty. In that case, does it make sense to rely on it?
That it is unstable and inconstant you see all around you. “Now it comes to one man, now it passes to another” (blessed Theodoret), and at the door of the grave it leaves everyone. “Why then do you hope in a thing that is unstable?
Why do you trust in that on which no hope can be placed?” (Chrysostom). See how he exposes those who trust in wealth as senseless. For who among the sensible would place hope in what is uncertain? (cf. Oecumenius).
Our Slavonic translation expressed the Apostle’s thought well: in perishing wealth. It is already perishing, though it seems to stand. It is on the verge of collapse.
Therefore, rich man, feel as though you were walking through a bog, or on fragile ice, or along a weak pole over an abyss. At any moment you may collapse and be swallowed up. Wealth is an extremely fragile support, “uncertain, easily ruined, unstable” (blessed Theophylact).
But wealth powders the eyes of the rich man, and he does not see this. To lead him to see it is the pastor’s work. Explain to him more often, he says, that he must not trust in wealth.
Yet since a man cannot live without hope, for the feeling of his weakness lies deep within him, the Apostle does not leave the rich man without support or help. After driving out hope in perishing wealth, he commands him to transfer it where it ought to be placed, to the living God.
The soul is naturally inclined to hope in God. If the passions, especially attachment to wealth, do not disorder it, it always manifests its hope in God.
Attention to the course of our life awakens, sustains, and enlivens such hope. The Apostle directs the mind to these experiences, to persuade us that he proposes nothing hard to believe when he says that they should hope in the living God.
For He gives us all things richly to enjoy. “He rightly said, all things richly, pointing to heaven, water, air, light, the various plants, and everything else. Do you see how richly and with what generosity He provides all this for us?” (Chrysostom, blessed Theophylact, Oecumenius).
From what has been given and received, understand the rest also. Saint Paul more than once turned in his speeches to these natural bounties of God, to awaken in his hearers faith in God and hope in Him.
Thus, persuading the Lystrans to turn to the living God, he said that God “did not leave Himself without witness, doing good, giving us rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (cf. Acts 14:17).
So also he explained to the Athenians that although God is invisible, He gives to all life and breath and all things. He is not far from each one of us, and one cannot fail to touch Him in the natural bounties poured upon us from Him.
“For in Him we live, and move, and have our being” (cf. Acts 17:27-28). Appearing in the world for a temporary life, we are like a traveler entering the house of a wealthy owner.
There he finds shelter, food, rest, service, and everything needed. In case of some special need, he is told, “If anything else is needed, turn to the owner. He will provide everything.”
Seeing such care for himself, what traveler, if he is of sound mind, would not be disposed to have full trust in such an owner? So also we, entering the world, find everything needful for life already prepared for us beforehand.
We also have the promise from the Master of the world Himself that He is ready to fulfill whatever we ask. After this, would it be reasonable if we trusted not in this Master, all-merciful and all-bountiful, but in something else?
THEOSIS