Don’t Be a Mercenary

At a time and place when worship of the Living God should have consumed the people of Israel, what actually held more sway was a commitment to make worship profitable. The Passover was a time for the people to delight in the gracious salvation of their God—with heart, mind, and soul—and to remember how He saved them. Instead, it became a rebellious spectacle of how a place of worship could be lost for pragmatism and profitability. 

What happens—then, and now—when God’s people become more consumed with making worship practical, profitable, and efficient, rather than basing worship on the God they love, adore, and find their joy in? They become mercenaries. And mercenaries Christ drives from the church. 

“And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:15-16).

On the other hand, we’re not mercenaries when what motivates us is our desire to be satisfied in God. A mercenary fights because he gets paid, but a patriot and a true soldier fights because his joy is in the country or cause he fights for. So a Christian’s joy is in worshiping and adoring God, not in turning the church into a profitable business.    

The only way not to be a mercenary Christian is to be motivated by our pleasure in God. The church needs more worshipers—people consumed with the beauty and worth of God—not more entrepreneurial types who have another end motivating them. The church needs godly men, not businessmen.

Wherein Lies the Problem

With amazing insight and searing exposition of biblical texts, J.C. Ryle’s volume on Holiness is a breath of fresh, Scriptural air in an age of selfishness that has left the modern church, and the Christian, trapped in its own nightmare of repulsive sin.

As I reflect on the last few days in which I’ve loaded boxes, driven half way around Louisville, and spent a lot of time in the company of others—away from the regular silence and solitude I enjoy—one thing has become glaringly obvious: I am more sinful than I thought.

It’s easy to treat my own wounds lightly, to soft-pedal my own sins and to say, in essence, ‘Oh, you’re not that bad.’ And it doesn’t work. Ryle makes the point perfectly with an illustration about a boy:

“Of all the foolish things that parents say about their children, there is none worse than the common saying, “My son has a good heart at the bottom. He is not what he ought to be; but he has fallen into bad hands. Public schools are bad places. The tutors neglect the boys. Yet he has a good heart at the bottom.” The truth, unhappily, is diametrically the other way. The first cause of all sin lies in the natural corruption of the boy’s own heart, and not in the school” (Holiness, p. 4).  

The problem isn’t with my busy schedule. It’s not with the limited amount of time to spend with God. And it isn’t because I’m tired or because I’m not in my own house. It isn’t even because there’s been more pressure lately. It’s because of my heart. The first cause of all sin lies in this boy’s heart.