What Shall It Profit a Man Is an Accountant's Question

A man showed me a number on a piece of paper and asked me what he was supposed to do with it.

The number was what one client is worth to him in a year. It is a real client, a decent one, and the relationship works because of one particular thing he does that he has decided he is not going to do any more.

He was not being dramatic about it. He is not talking about anything criminal. It is a thing everybody in his trade does, that he has done for a long time, that he has recently found he cannot keep doing.

And the arithmetic is not complicated. If he stops, that account goes somewhere else within about two quarters, and the number on the paper is a real number attached to a real mortgage.

He said: I want somebody to tell me God will replace it.

I did not tell him that, and I am not going to tell you that either, because I do not know and neither does anybody else, and a man who is handed that promise and does not get it has been damaged in the name of God.

What I can do is read him the question Jesus asks, which is, of all things, an accountant's question.

He asks it in the language of trade

Here is the question.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36, King James Version)

Profit. Gain. Lose. Three words from a ledger, in one sentence, and He chose all three.

He is not asking for a feeling and He is not asking anybody to be less practical. He is proposing a calculation and expecting it to be run.

And the next verse presses it: what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? That is a question about an exchange rate, which is what my friend was actually staring at on a piece of paper.

So the man with the number is not being unspiritual by doing arithmetic. He is doing exactly what he has been asked to do. What Jesus adds is a column he had not been putting in the sum.

You are being asked to run the calculation rather than to stop calculating. Mark 8:36 uses profit, gain and lose in one sentence. It is the same Spirit, John 16:13 the Spirit of truth, who supplies the column a person cannot see from inside the trade.

Jesus is the only teacher who tells you to add it up first

There is a passage where He tells people to sit down and cost the thing out before they start.

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? (Luke 14:28)

Counteth the cost. He is not recruiting on enthusiasm. He is telling a crowd to work out what it takes before they commit, which is the opposite of how almost anybody sells anything.

I have never been able to get over that. The man asking for everything is the one telling people to check the price first.

Which means the counting my friend is doing on his paper is not resistance. It is obedience to an instruction, and the fact that he is doing it seriously is a good sign rather than a bad one.

You are following an instruction when you sit down and count. Luke 14:28 tells people to count the cost before they start, and it is the Spirit of God, John 16:13 who guides into all truth, who does the guiding while somebody is working out a real number.

Paul does the sum out loud and names both columns

Paul had a career with an actual value and he writes the arithmetic down.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

I have suffered the loss of all things. He does not pretend nothing was lost. He states it plainly and in the past tense, which means it actually happened and stayed happened.

And notice the vocabulary again: count, loss, win. Paul is running the same ledger Jesus proposed.

What he does not do, anywhere in that passage, is claim the material things came back. Read it. There is no restoration of his standing, his position or his security in it. What he claims is that the sum comes out in favor, on the other column, and he says so as somebody who paid.

I am going to be plain, because this site is the one place I refuse to be vague. Nothing in Scripture promises that what a man loses for obedience is returned to him in the same currency. Mine was not. My income did not come back the way it went, and I count the loss as worth it and not as an investment.

You are looking at a sum that comes out in favor without anything coming back in the same currency. Philippians 3:8 says I have suffered the loss of all things in the past tense and never claims a return. It is His Spirit, Romans 8:23 called the firstfruits, who is named as the down payment on the column that does pay.

Moses is described as valuing something before he could see it

There is a line in Hebrews about Moses that uses the same commercial language and adds one word.

Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward. (Hebrews 11:26)

Esteeming. It is a valuation word, an act of assessment, and the writer says Moses performed it.

And what he weighed was not nothing. The treasures in Egypt is not a small phrase; he had access to the wealth of an empire, and Hebrews does not pretend otherwise.

He had respect unto the recompence of the reward. He was looking at something on the other side of the sum, and he had not yet received any of it, and Hebrews 11 spends its whole length saying that most of the people in it died without receiving what was promised.

That is the honest version and it is the one I will preach. Not: it pays off by Friday. That there is a column, that it is real, and that people have staked serious things on it without seeing the outcome in their lifetime.

You are looking at a column that Scripture treats as real without promising delivery on your schedule. Hebrews 11:26 says he had respect unto the recompence of the reward in a chapter where most of them died still waiting. It is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 1:14 called the earnest of our inheritance, who is named as the deposit on it.

And if the arithmetic has begun to sit on your chest at three in the morning, say it out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. A man alone with a mortgage and a conscience is in a hard room and does not have to be in it by himself.