In chapter 10 of his book Sex & Money, Paul Tripp transitions from matters of sex to primarily matters of money. He continues his painful and necessary examination of the human heart, and pointing to the gospel as our greatest and only hope.
As we noted previously, there is no small amount of money insanity in our time. Just think about it. The U.S. government is deeply in debt and that debt grows at an exorbitant rate with no hope of slowing because our elected officials can’t stop spending it. It seems as if every bill includes numerous amendments that include “pork” to pay off a Congressman for his vote by something for his district. And the President travels making promises of all sorts of spending.
It isn’t just our politicians who have a problem. We do. The average U.S. household has over $7,000 of consumer debt and indebted ones over $15,000. That is not mortgage debt or car loan debt, but just credit card debt. Per person, it was $162 in 1952, but over $8,500 now. We are spending way more money than we have. And this is not an American problem. It is a people problem.
He brings us, as he should, to 1 Timothy 6:
9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
Money is not evil. It can be a blessing. But so often, because of the sin in our hearts, it can be a curse. Money, as an idol, offers us things that only the gospel can really provide. But we often succumb to the temptation to seek security, peace or significance through money. Jesus spoke about money so much because “he knows how quickly we can lose our way.”
“The war of money is not first a battle about the amount of money you make or the degree to which you have constructed a rational budget to follow. No, this battle is a deeply spiritual battle. … No amount of money, education, or budget construction has the power to free me from the ravenous greed of my sinful heart.”
Years ago a friend asked me to help her put together a budget. She was living at home but working full time. Somehow she had managed to spend too much. So, I helped her put together a budget to pay off her debts and begin to save money in what I thought was a reasonable amount of time (a year, I think). She came back to me a few weeks later. It was too austere for her. She was not able to buy enough new clothes. Having a never-ending supply of new clothes was more important than getting out of debt. A spiritual problem.
“A grateful heart is a heart at rest. A grateful person is aware that he deserves nothing that he possesses and enjoys.”
Money is not the issue so much as our attitude toward money. Are we asking it to deliver more than it can? This reveals something about our hearts: content or continually dissatisfied? Money can provide us with many opportunities, including the opportunity to forget God (Deuteronomy 8). There are many ways it can be a curse, and Tripp lists and expounds on quite a few. He helps us see the ways in which money can distract us like a siren so that we go off course.
“Either you are working to fund the success of your kingdom, or you are giving yourself in service of the kingdom of God.”
He reminds us that we are all treasure hunters. We only differ in the treasure we seek. All earthly treasures, and pleasures, are intended to point us to the eternal pleasures and treasures found only in Christ. But, as he notes and most parents are all too aware, like children we prefer to play with the box instead of the real gift. We miss what God really offers because we are captivated by stuff that ends up in the recycle bin.
Conversion changes our hearts, calling us to a completely different view of things. It calls us out of our kingdom to partake of and participate in God’s kingdom. This means leaving our covetousness, greed, and self-centeredness. But our hearts are not yet completely changed. We can forget who we are (Tripp talks much of amnesia in this book, like the last few) and “relapse” into the old way of looking at money and possessions. I am reminded of the words of Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing:
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Never discount the truth of these words. We have not arrived. We live in the already/not yet, so we still have “fickle hearts” Our hearts and minds and eyes wander when it comes to both sex and money.
“My need of grace is so profound that I need grace in order to properly value the grace I need.”
Tripp then brings us back to the love of money. That money problems are actually love problems; we love the wrong things too much. He keeps up his painful analysis of our hearts. These are things that are difficult for us to face. We want our problems to be superficial and easily addressed. But the roots go deep. But Christ is deeper still!
“It is only when you live for God that you have both the grace-given desire and the power to say no to yourself, to exercise daily self-control, and to live as God has called you to live.”
As in his book on marriage, he repeatedly returns to the clash of kingdoms. We ultimately are caught in the battle between the kingdom of me and the kingdom of God. Our fickleness is one of the arguments “for our foundational need for grace.”
He also brings us to contemplate eternity. When we forget (more amnesia) our destiny, we get locked into short-term pleasures and treasures. We think this is it, and we have to grab as much as we can. When we live in light of eternity, we recognize we don’t have to grab it all now, but our future entails even greater things than the one we may miss out on now. The wedding supper of the Lamb will be far grander than the grandest dinner party or restaurant you could pine for now. Our eternal rest will be more restful and beautiful and pleasurable than any cruise you may take tomorrow. Eternity matters, now. Particularly if you want money and sex sanity.
“God has chosen to keep you in this broken world in order to use its brokenness to prepare you for what is to come.”
Tripp then moves on to the problem of poverty. Not the actual poverty itself, but how it shapes a person’s identity and locks them in the cycle of poverty. When our identity is in Christ we have faith in God’s goodness and hope in His faithfulness. We have “buoyancy”. Trials do not sink us. Despair does not sink us. Defeat does not sink us. We keep rising to the surface filled with joy and thanksgiving despite our circumstances (a little collision of Keller and Tripp here). It is not a natural buoyancy at work here. It is a gracious one- one given to us by the merit of Christ instead of one we labor for on our own.
“It is only the heart-satisfying riches of the grace of Jesus that can protect and free you from the deceptive and dissatisfying “riches” of this fallen world.”
And this is Tripp’s point and method. He is at work to strip us of all the excuses, false hopes and functional saviors we might try to rely upon in addressing our sex & money insanity. He relentlessly (ruthlessly?) strips us of everything so we will look for it all in the supreme and sufficient Christ as he is presented to us in the gospel. Yeah, it’s a gospel thing.
Cavman Considers 
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