Every commercial business seeks to make a profit. Its goal is to have more income than outgo. It hires accountants to carefully track every debit and credit.
The kingdom of heaven has its own accounting system. Because its profits are measured by the currency of genuine righteousness, its reckoning of a debit and a credit is far different than the unrighteous and the self-righteous.
Matthew 5:29-30 clearly demonstrates this fact. Here, it is written: “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.”
Note the accounting concepts of profit and loss in these words. An impure heart, a lustful eye, an offending hand, a hell-bound body and soul are liabilities in the kingdom of righteousness. A pure heart within a maimed body is an asset.
In commenting on Moses’ decision recorded in Hebrews 11:25-26, F. F. Bruce once wrote, “Moses weighed the issues of time in the balances of eternity” (Hebrews, 321).
That’s what faith does.
That’s what Moses did.
That’s what the righteous do.
When enticed by the temptation offered by the passing pleasures of sin focus on the kingdom of heaven’s definition of profit and loss, and don’t be a loser.
