03/11/2026
The Doctrine of Money
(Col. R.B. Thieme Jr,)
1. Definition:
a) Our English word “money” is derived from the Latin moneta which means a mint. It refers to a stamped coin of gold, silver, or other metals used in a medium of exchange.
b) Money is the medium in which prices are expressed, debts are discharged, goods and services are paid for, and bank reserves are held.
c) The term is synonymous with a circulating medium and may be regarded as comprising demand deposits, common money or currency.
d) Money is one of those concepts which is like a teaspoon or an umbrella but unlike an earthquake or a buttercup, definable primarily by the use or purpose which they serve. Money must be defined, then, in terms of its function and related to its value.
e) Money, then, is a medium of exchange whereby goods and services are paid for and debts are discharged. Money is the means of stating the prices of these goods and services as well as expressing debts, salaries, wages, rents, insurance, obligations, and innumerable contracts.
f) Money serves as a reserve for ready purchasing power. Therefore money is the only complete liquid asset.
g) In the ancient world money was used as a store of value.
h) The rise of commercial banking and central banking resulted in a corresponding increase in the importance of money used as reserves for a banking system.
i) Money is unique among economic goods. It is regarded not as wealth but as a device for exchanging and measuring wealth.
j) An increase in the quantity of money in a country does not necessarily constitute and increase in the country’s wealth.
2. The history of money. Different objects have been used for mediums of exchange in the past: slaves, gunpowder, in primitive areas the jawbones of a pig, in Homeric times the ox was used, the elephant in Ceylon, wool, barley, wheat, timber. The most widely used monetary system is gold and silver. Before coins money was used in terms of rings or ingots, bars or shekels, talents or other weight demarcations. Coin type money was first invented by Croesus, king of Lydia, who lived between 561-546 BC. Darius, king of Persia, picked up the concept from Cyrus the Great who had conquered Croesus. Three kinds of coinage actually existed in the New Testament at the time of writing. First of all, the imperial Roman coins. Secondly, the provincial coins, and then the Jews had their own money coined at Caesarea.
3. The Bible teaches the legitimate function of money.
a) For monetary transactions — Genesis 29:3; Jeremiah 32:44. In that span, from Genesis to Jeremiah, the principle is established many times over that money is a legitimate system for business transactions.
b) Money was used to pay taxes — Matthew 22:17-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26.
c) Money is necessary for the function of an economy, therefore it is not wrong or sinful for believers to possess money, even in large amounts.
d) Money, therefore, becomes a very wonderful slave or a cruel master, depending upon one’s spiritual condition — Jude 11.
e) The word for “deceit” in the Greek, planh, connotes three areas of deceit regarding money. First: Money is a means of happiness. But money is not the means of happiness, happiness comes from capacity for happiness and this comes from doctrine resident in the soul; second: Money is the means of security. But security is provided through living grace not through monetary principles — Matthew 6:24-33. Third: Money can buy anything. Anything money can buy that is corruptible is going to corrupt. Everyone has their price is not true of the super-grace believer. There is no price if you have maximum doctrine in your soul, but if you are in reversionism you have a price, and so it becomes a manifestation of reversionism.
f) There are many things, therefore, that money cannot buy. Salvation, for example, true love, security, peace of mind, happiness or stability.
f) While Balaam is an illustration of monetary reversionism the emphasis in doctrine is that money does not provide any of these things.
g) The giving of money is an expression of the royal priesthood is a legitimate function in the Church Age — 2 Corinthians chapters 8 & 9.
h) Consequently money is legitimate. It’s accumulation is legitimate, its spending is legitimate, its giving is legitimate.
i) Therefore it is not carnal, it is not sinful for the believer to possess money. The believer with wealth is not required, by the way, to give all of his money to the church to prove his spirituality. The illegitimate uses of money of bribery, to buy power, to buy love, to corrupt character, are all forbidden.
4. The dangers of money to the unbeliever. The unbeliever cannot purchase with all of the money in the world salvation. Salvation is paid for by Christ on the cross. Money causes the rich man to have the wrong priorities often — Mark 10:25, which deals with a matter of priorities. Money hinders the unbeliever from seeking salvation — Luke 16:19-31. Money has credit with people but no credit with God — Proverbs 11:4, 28. Money does not mean capacity for life — Proverbs 13:7.
5. The principle of monetary reversionism. Three cases: Solomon — Ecclesiastes 5:10-6:2; Balaam — Jude 11; Annanias and Sapphira — Acts 5:1-10. Cf. James 5:1-6.
6. Monetary prosperity is a part of super-grace blessing under paragraph SG2. Men like Abraham, David, and Solomon were all blessed with monetary prosperity. Proverbs 13:8.
