Proverbs 22:1-2

Set your priorities by this verse and you will never be poor. A good name — a character men can trust — is worth more than great riches, and being genuinely loved is worth more than silver and gold. But be exact about the order underneath it, because there is a third thing higher than both: a clean conscience. Reputation outranks money, and a clear conscience outranks reputation — so it is far better that others should blot your name than that you should wound your conscience to keep it shining. And here is the calibration to hold onto: gold is good and reputation is better, but an idol is vile whether it is made of gold or of a good name — neither one may sit on the throne of your heart. The good name worth having is not the one you build for yourself, and certainly not the kind where "all men speak well of you" (Luke 6:26 makes that a bad sign); it is the quiet byproduct of a godly life, usually carried by a man too humble to notice he has it. And the highest name of all is the one God writes — "I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father" (Revelation 3:5).

The rich man and the poor man have far more in common than the gap between their bank accounts suggests: same blood, same air, same dust at the end, the same right to salvation through the same Saviour, and one Maker over both. They enter the world the same way and leave it the same way, and they will stand together before the same Judge. So the poor man has no business envying, and the rich man has no business despising — they share a Father. (Read it carefully, though: this is equality of worth and standing before God, not a flattening of every social rank — God never meant to level the world, and the verse is no charter for resentment.) The deepest place rich and poor truly meet as equals is at the foot of the cross, where both come empty-handed and both are clothed in the same borrowed righteousness. In heaven there will be no rich men, for all who enter were utterly bankrupt sinners — and no poor men, for all who enter are rich in faith.