<p>19:26 <i>I say to you, that to everyone that has, shall be given- </i>This repeats the Lord&rsquo;s earlier teaching in Mt. 13:10-12 about the giving of understanding to those who have some: &ldquo;And the disciples came and said to him: Why do you speak to them in parables? And he answered and said to them: To you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.&nbsp; For whoever has, to him shall be given and he shall have abundance, but whoever has not, from him shall be taken away even what he has&rdquo;. Clearly there is an upward spiral in spiritual life, and this will come to ultimate term in the outcomes of judgment day.</p><p><i>But from him that has not, even that which he has shall be taken away from him</i>- This is a paradox. Does the rejected man have minas, or not? He did, of course, have a mina; but as far as the Lord is concerned, we only have what we have developed. If we don't develop, we have nothing; the fact we received the talent at baptism won't save us. It&rsquo;s only what a man has developed from that in the service of others which counts as truly &ldquo;his&rdquo;. This likewise is the sense of &ldquo;To him that has shall be given&rdquo;; all we have is what we have developed.</p><p><i>&quot;</i>Taken away&quot; is perhaps a special reference to the Kingdom of God being &ldquo;taken away&rdquo; s.w. from Israel and given to the Gentiles (Mt. 21:43). The same Greek word is used about the taking away of the rejected individuals at judgment day (Mt. 22:13; 24:39). But here, it is the unused mina that is &ldquo;taken away&rdquo;. The man was therefore to be identified with the mina- it was to be him. And yet he is most careful to speak of the mina as not his, but the Lord&rsquo;s: &ldquo;Here you have what is yours&rdquo;. The Lord intended that we identify with the mina, rather than see it merely as His.</p><p>At judgment day, the rejected who have nothing will find that even what they have is taken from them. This surely means that the spirituality they appeared to have, what they thought they had, actually they never had, and even the appearance of it will be taken away from them. We can appear to have spirituality, when in fact we have nothing, nothing at all. The man who built his house on the sand had the sensation of spiritual progress; he was building, he was getting somewhere, apparently. Likewise Israel were an empty fruitless vine, but they brought forth fruit- to themselves. In reality they had no fruit; but they went through the fruit-bearing process (Hos. 10:1). In Jer. 5:13, God mocks the false prophets as being &quot;full of wind&quot;, or 'ruach'- with which His true prophets were filled. This play on words reveals that spirituality is either the real thing, or a being filled with wind in such a way that apes the true spirituality.</p>