In a World of More, We Need a Theology of Enough

“How much is enough?” someone asked.

“One more dollar,” the man answered.

While this is often (and probably wrongly) attributed to John D. Rockefeller, it might as well be attributed to all of us. Ask most people when they’ll finally have enough money, and the honest answer is “When I have a little more.”

The goalposts never stop moving. We compare ourselves to a neighbor, a college roommate, an influencer—sure, we’re doing alright, but we don’t have as much as he or she does. The number we once called a dream becomes the number we call a starting point.

Call to Define Enough

You don’t have to be a Christian to see the danger. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel devotes an entire chapter to the problem. He tells stories of people like Bernie Madoff who “already had everything: unimaginable wealth, prestige, power, freedom” and threw it all away because they wanted more.

His diagnosis is simple. They “had no sense of enough.”

Housel’s larger argument is that money is a soft skill: “How you behave is more important than what you know.” Your best shot at keeping your reputation, your family, your friends, and your happiness, he writes, is “knowing when you have enough.”

But when our desires keep expanding, how are we supposed to know that?

God Is Enough

Christians should be natural leaders in this pursuit. Scripture speaks about money more than almost any subject except God himself, and it consistently warns against greed, that restless appetite for more.

I first came across the term “theology of enough” in Craig Blomberg’s excellent work Neither Poverty nor Riches. It begins with considering the complete fullness of God. Theologians have a word to describe this: aseity, from the Latin a se, “from himself.” This means God depends on nothing outside himself for his existence, his purposes, or his joy. A.W. Tozer and other theologians call this God’s self-sufficiency.

In Psalm 50:12, God says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.” He has no needs, no wants, no lack. He receives no upgrades. Everything flows out from a God who is already, eternally, full. God is enough in himself for himself.

It’s important that God has chosen to reveal himself in this way. He is Lord, a title John Frame defines as identifying God’s “control, authority, and presence in blessing and judgment,” and is LORD, the covenant-making and covenant-keeping God (Ex. 3:14). We only know that God is enough because he has revealed himself as such as Lord of all creation and as LORD in covenant with his people.

We should depend on Scripture and the Holy Spirit to help us constantly remember this truth. Paul writes in Romans, “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen” (11:36).

This is a refrain of remembrance of who the one true God is. It’s the beginning and continuing call to worship him, which is where a theology of enough must start.

God Is Enough for Us

God has no need for our money, our wealth, or our stewardship. When we make decisions about our money and possessions, we’re only working with what he has first given us (Luke 16:1–8; Titus 1:7). We’re like children who take money they’ve received from their dad to buy him a gift. God doesn’t need the number of zeros at the end of our balance sheet or written on our check to the local church.

Not only that, but his generosity to us is like an overflowing cup (Ps. 23:5), finding its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. The fall was a clear declaration by man that God wasn’t enough. Since then, man’s search for meaning has always included the endless pursuit of enough in different ways—usually in more money or power, and always leaving us wanting.

Instead, Jesus calls, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden [or who never have enough] . . . and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matt. 11:28–29). All our striving, self-justification, and declaration of “not enough” was buried deep in the ground at Christ’s death. He conquered it with the final declaration in his resurrection that he is enough for us.

Resting in Enough

God’s generosity finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

A theology of enough, grounded in this truth, is the foundation of contentment. In 2 Corinthians 9:8, Paul writes about giving and stewardship: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” The Greek word behind “sufficiency” was a term often used in Stoic ethics for self-reliance. But Paul turns it inside out. Our sufficiency isn’t from ourselves; it is, as Blomberg puts it, a “God-sufficiency.”

God is at the center of it all. He’s the One who is enough in himself, who provides us his grace and sufficiency at all times. From that position of “enough in God,” we can abound in every good work.

That includes the good work of self-discipline and stewardship. Blomberg challenges Christians to “establish a voluntary consensus on both minimum levels of income and resources . . . and maximum levels of consumption and expenditures on self.” This challenge is best answered in discipleship, as individual Christians work through these issues together in the context of the local church.

We can give freely, save wisely, and live prudently because it’s all from God alone, who is enough for us.