To most people, identifying someone as "a person of substance" means he or she has material wealth and material possessions, such as a fine house, cars, stocks, position, or title.
Was Jesus a man of substance? By every spiritual measurement he was the most substantial man who ever lived. Yet his substance wasn't determined by possessions. When a scribe said he would follow him, Christ Jesus said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."Matt. 8:20. So, obviously, the material things that mankind often considers substance were not substance at all to him. We can begin to see from Jesus' example that anything substantial must be eternal and good—it must, in fact, be entirely spiritual.
To illustrate: If I give you something material—an apple, for instance—you have it and I don't. The apple is spent; it is not true substance. But if I give you an idea, we both have it. And using the idea doesn't deprive either of us of it; the idea isn't spent. It is shared. It remains unspent.
