Preconditions:
- Take care of your dependents financially.
- Fulfill your financial responsibility of your home church.
- Don't go against your conscience in your purchase.
- Ask God about the purchase.
- Bless others with your purchase. Share it occasionally.
If you can satisfy the above conditions, then go ahead with it and thank God for it.
Jesus wore a seamless garment. In his day that was a "luxury item." Furthermore, when Jesus was born he was given three extraordinarily expensive gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh. If those were invested with the bankers when he was young, then by the time he began his earthly ministry he was an exceedingly wealthy man.
I will also suggest there is one item missing from the list:
give cheerfully and generously. This is particularly applicable to the bullet list's second point because the tithe was done away with. The word "
tithe" is nowhere found in the epistolary. The tithe was a tenth of one's gross. The New Testament epistolary standard is much, much higher. In the epistolary you yourself have been bought and you are not your own. You and everything you have is God's. You don't owe 10%; you owe 100%. God, in His grace, let's you be the steward with what He has blessed you.
Give, and give cheerfully and generously according to real need and God's leading.
That is the New Testament standard.
By the way, I didn't just make these conditions up. I followed them. In 1991, when I first got my well-paying job as a professor, and before I had a wife, I bought a red-hot RX-7. It ran on a Wankel engine instead of the usual piston engine. I let some of my Christian friends use it on occasion.
You were not married. Were your parents and sibling cared for?
John 19:25-27
Therefore the soldiers did these things. But standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother, and His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus then saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" Then He said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" From that hour the disciple took her into his own household.
Philippians 2:19-24
But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, so that I also may be encouraged when I learn of your condition. For I have no one else of kindred spirit who will genuinely be concerned for your welfare. For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus. But you know of his proven worth, that he served with me in the furtherance of the gospel like a child serving his father. Therefore, I hope to send him immediately, as soon as I see how things go with me; and I trust in the Lord that I myself also will be coming shortly.
Ever consider sending your son or daughter to a neighbor to help in time of need, teaching them to set an example for others you have set for them? To the poor man a bicycle may be a luxury item. To the farmer a tractor. What use has a man with a Mazda RX-7 for a bicycle or tractor, professor?
Mark 12:41-44
And He sat down opposite the treasury and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, "Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on."
Jesus taught stewardship. In the end, material luxury items all end up in the same place. We cannot take them with us. Wherever blessed and obedient, enjoy them without guilt or shame while possible
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