Treasure in heaven, what is it? How does one obtain it?

It is recounted in the Gospels that Jesus told the rich young man to go and tell sell what he had and give to the poor and he would have treasure in heaven. This passage appears to be a key to understanding the question of treasure in heaven, but too often we pay attention to the wrong part of the verse.

It’s true that Jesus depicts earthly riches as a hindrance to obtaining heavenly treasures. But, he is not saying that just getting rid of earthly treasures is going to give us treasure in heaven. It seems to me that the most important thing here is not negative, but positive. The way to gain heavenly treasures is to give. I believe this is the key to understanding the whole question of treasure in heaven.

This doesn’t just mean giving money or earthly possessions, that is part of it. but the heart of it is to give our time, our love, our care to other people and to do it from the heart. Jesus said of the Pharisees that if they desired to attract attention when they were giving then they already had their reward here on Earth and they didn’t need to look for one in heaven.

What we give, according to Jesus, can be as small as a cup of cold water. Someone who does that from the heart is laying up treasure in heaven. I don’t think we are necessarily conscious of all the little things that we do that lay up treasure in heaven. In Jesus description of the last judgment he showed that those who were on his right hand had no consciousness of having done any great thing, but they had treasure in heaven and the gates of Heaven were open to them.

Those who boasted of all they had done were turned aside. It appears that they had done those things, not because of the prompting of the Holy Spirit, but out of a desire to gain the applause of fellow believers or their fellow man in general. They had their reward on earth, they had not stored up any treasure in heaven.

Let’s not make this complicated; the key is to love God with all our heart, soul and being and to love our fellow man as ourselves and to have the Holy Spirit in our heart to guide us moment by moment. Then we will often do little things, perhaps just opening a door for somebody, but those are the things that will gain us treasure in heaven.

Yes giving of our money is part of the way that we will store up treasure in heaven; but we cannot buy treasure in heaven. We have responsibilities here on earth to our families, neighbors, loved ones and the way in which we go about doing that is part of laying up treasure in heaven. But we also need to give of our time. Our children and our spouses have need of our full attention from time to time, let’s not skimp on that. There are lonely and hurting people around us, we don’t have to do great things, we don’t need to have eloquent or flowery words, just being there with somebody who is hurting, somebody who is lonely, is giving giving them what is the most important thing at the moment.

We’re never going to be conscious of our Heavenly bank account, we have no way of keeping track of it. It is just a simple matter of obedience, of being genuinely Christ-like in our day-to-day life. That is how we lay up treasure in heaven.