Equal Pay for Equal Work!

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. Then there will be equality, as it is written: "He who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little."

2 Corinthians 8:13-15

My mother spent a lot of her time making sure that she showed no favoritism between my brother and me. I remember her talking about the fact that our birthday and Christmas presents had an equal dollar value. To be perfectly honest, and this is not a complaint about my mother, it seemed she was more interested in equality than in meeting out blessings according to our needs.

Of course, a parent does not want to lavishly bestow gifts on one child while ignoring another, but the other extreme is problematic as well.

These verses in 2 Corinthians 8 provide fuel for those who want to construct society in a way that “redistributes the wealth.” It sounds great on the surface but when you look below the skin it is reprehensible. The sharing of wealth associated with the Gospel of Jesus is not mandated nor is it directed by regulation. It happens because brothers see the needs of brothers and out of love they strive to fulfill the needs of others.

When you go to a Broadway play and watch a perfectly scripted romantic relationship being portrayed, you can know for sure that it is not real! Sharing of wealth based on command and regulation is as unreal as all husbands being commanded to tell their wives they love them and kiss them at least once a day. It is like government printing money and pretending that they have created wealth by doing so.

That is the counterfeit, so what is the real? In Jesus Christ, there is equality which is beyond your comprehension. You have been given the Holy Spirit the same as every other believer. There are no “super Holy Spirit” Christians and then the regular ones. Your salvation is not “coach” class! There are no bargain tickets to heaven. And all the first class seats are paid for not by your effort, but by the Blood of Jesus. It is not easy to comprehend.

So as we live in this world as citizens of the next we find these two worlds colliding. We try to force the realities of this world on Heaven or we try to impose Eternal truth on this world system. Here is the difference in the temporal world and the eternal one. The cancer of Sin is eating this temporal world and has imposed a terminal status on everything we know here. Eternity has rid itself of the problem of Sin through the Blood of Jesus. And so we wait and hope for our translation into Eternity where you will be paid what Jesus is worth! That is truly equal pay for equal work!