“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:3434For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:34)). The moral principle here laid down by our Lord calls for our deep and constant heed, and the more, because the flesh always deceives, and struggles against it, to indulge itself under fair disguise. But we walk by faith, not by sight, and rightly so.
Where there is not faith, a present object engages the heart and becomes the treasure. It is self in one shape or another, whereby Satan is the master, and not God: What then must be the end for eternity? The most prevalent object is what our Lord calls “filthy lucre,” for money is the most ready means of gain for gratifying carnal lusts. Or it may be the heart abandoned to the pleasures of sin for a season. Power is the ambition of some, as fame is of others. Also it may take a religious direction just as readily, with a desire for worldly honor. In such ways men perish, even where no grossness appears, but rather the nicest refinement.
Christ alone delivers and preserves from all such snares. He is given and sent by God to win the heart by His ineffable grace, adapting itself to our guilt and misery and worthlessness through sin, to save the vilest from his evil, to reconcile unto God, to be life as well as righteousness to him who had neither, and to associate him with heaven. Thus He separates from the world, not only in all that is evidently bad, but in all that claims to be good or its best, that we should no longer live to ourselves, but to Him who for our sakes died and rose again. And as this is for the Father’s glory, so is it accomplished by the Spirit’s power who is here, sent forth now from heaven on and since Pentecost, to glorify Him who never sought His own will but rather that of God.
Christ Is the True Treasure
Christ is, therefore, the true treasure, and to the praise of the glory of God’s grace He will make us like Himself before Him, not only in nature but in relationship as far as this can be. But we have this treasure, meanwhile, in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves. “Wherefore we faint not; but though our outward man is consumed, yet the inward is renewed day by day. For our momentary and light affliction works for us in surpassing measure an eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things that are seen are for a time; but those that are not seen eternal” (2 Cor. 4:16-1816For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. 17For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; 18While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16‑18) JND).
Hence our Lord urges our not laying up for ourselves treasures upon the earth where moth and rust spoil and where thieves dig through and steal, but to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust spoils and where thieves do not dig through nor steal. “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be” (Luke 12:3434For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:34) JND). The heart follows necessarily the object of its affection; Christ, the treasure of the Christian, was not of the earth but comes from above, from heaven, and above all. “He that cometh from heaven is above all” (John 3:3131He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all. (John 3:31)).
Where Is Our Treasure?
It is not only, then, what the treasure is, but where it is that the Lord presses on our attention. And this truth of the treasure in heaven derives great force from our Lord’s ascending where He was before (John 6:6262What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? (John 6:62)), no longer Son of God only as He came down, but Son of Man as He is now also in heavenly glory. This is the proper and full way in which the Christian knows Him. “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor. 5:16-1716Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. 17Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:16‑17)).
The Christian is united by the Spirit to Christ glorified, now that he rests on redemption accomplished, for “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” Only then and there could it be. Hence having died with Christ and being raised together with Him, we are exhorted to seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, to set our mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are upon the earth, for we died, and our life is hid with Christ in God. And we wait that, when Christ our life shall be manifested, we too shall then be manifested with Him in glory.
Our Heart
We may notice that in Luke 12 the connection of this truth is expressed more broadly (“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”), not only with the warning of the precariousness of everything but a treasure in the heavens, but with the Lord’s coming as a present hope. “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord, when He will return from the wedding; that when He cometh and knocketh, they may open unto Him immediately” (Luke 12:3636And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. (Luke 12:36)). These words clearly indicate the call to be constantly looking out for Him.
Altogether the aim is unmistakable if we are walking in the Spirit. We are now “heavenly” in title (1 Cor. 15:48-4948As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. 49And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (1 Corinthians 15:48‑49)), and we expect on the surest authority to realize it even for our bodies at His coming. Let us see to it, meanwhile, that we live, serve, walk and worship consistently with our faith and our hope. Nothing short of this is the Christianity of the New Testament, when many things were known which the disciples could not bear till they had redemption through His blood and the gift of the Spirit. When the Spirit was come from Him on high, He did not fail to guide them into all the truth.
W. Kelly (adapted)