“Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.”
James, in this verse and the next, delineates three systems of wealth that show how hoarding for self will undermine the soul:
Hoarding of rotting stuff.
Hoarding of heirlooms.
Hoarding of precious metals.
Your riches are corrupted,
James clarifies that he is denouncing a specific group of wealthy people, not all rich people. “Your riches,” as opposed to other people’s riches, is the idea. Some wealthy people do not allow wealth to corrupt them.
The very sphere of self-confidence of the wealthy places them in a vulnerable position. Riches, as an ultimate value, corrode because they lack lasting intrinsic value. The word “corrupted” means destroyed. Wealth tends to corrode one’s life by rotting values. The Greek tense indicates that this believer, with distorted values, entered a state of corruption and destruction.
PRINCIPLE:
If a believer adopts the political and economic belief systems of this world as his core value, his soul will rot.
APPLICATION:
The Christian must stand independent from all political and economic worldviews. His belief system must transcend these human worldviews. The free enterprise system is the goose that lays the golden egg, providing material benefits to those who live under it. Big government produces parasites that destroy their personal dignity by dependence on government (except for those who cannot help themselves). Liberals gerrymander for the power of big government because it puts people under the dependence of government leaders. They gerrymander against the free enterprise system as if it were evil in itself. This is not a biblical viewpoint.
Although the Bible does not assail the free enterprise system, it warns against a materialistic attitude toward riches. Free enterprise is not God’s ultimate view for values in society but a God-centered hope. Evangelicals face a great danger in putting all their eggs in the basket of free enterprise: “If the United States or Canada would just reduce the size of government or adopt free enterprise principles, then everything will be fine.” No, the Christian’s ultimate value does not rest in any human economic system but in God Himself.
Both of these economic views result in soul rot if the believer does not act on God’s transcendent values. Those who make big intrusive government a panacea make its citizens parasites of society, a belief system that puts its trust in big government. That is just as bad as the free-entrepreneur who puts his trust in material wealth. Both systems are wrong as ultimate answers for man from God’s standpoint. The Bible does not primarily present a political worldview for man, but rather a theocentric worldview.
