The Danger of Loving Money
1 Timothy 6:6-10
Let's open our Bibles this morning then in our on‑going study of 1 Timothy to chapter 6 and we come to verses 6 through 10, 1 Timothy 6:6 through 10. In this particular portion of Scripture there is a very familiar statement, it comes in verse 10. Let me read it to you. "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." That is the statement really which is the focal point of the text. Everything else in verses 6 to 10 before and after that statement is, in a sense, an exposition of the significance of that statement itself.
Before we look to the text, let me just back up a little bit and give you a broader perspective on the subject. As I have said to you many times in the study of 1 Timothy, there is about this epistle a certain polemic flavor. That is, Paul is correcting issues in the church at Ephesus where Timothy is now laboring. So when he brings up a subject, it is a subject that is being abused in the life of the church. Obviously, looking at verses 6 to 10 we can conclude in the Ephesian church that there were some people who were suffering the terrible tragic results of loving money. That's not, however, isolated just to that church, it's a problem of equal concern in this age as it would be for any church in any age.
In terms of what the Bible has to say about this matter of loving money, the Scripture is replete with injunctions against loving money of one kind or another. Perhaps the most telling statement in all of Scripture related to money are the words of our Lord, "Where your treasure is there shall your heart be also." To put that into common language, "Show me where your money is and I'll show you where your affections lie." To make it even more mundane, "Go through your checkbook and find out what you really care about." Your spiritual life can be measured probably better by what you do with your money than any other single thing.
Experts tell us that the average person thinks about money 50 percent of his or her waking time. Amazing isn't it? How to get it, how to keep it, how to save it, how to spend it, how to find it, whatever it might be, we're tremendously occupied with the matter of money. Jesus in saying where your treasure is there your heart is also tells us that what we do with our money is the measure of our hearts.
What should be our attitude toward money? Well Scripture has a lot of things to say about that. First of all we're not to think that having money is wrong in itself. After all, Proverbs 8:21 says, "God said to those who love Me I will fill up their treasuries." So one attitude is the attitude that money is wrong but the Bible does not advocate that. It's not wrong to have money.
Secondly, the Bible says that we are not to imagine that we are the sole reason that we have money. In fact, in Deuteronomy it says in chapter 8 that it is God who gives you the power to get wealth. So in terms of building a sort of biblical attitude toward money, the first thing would be we are not to think that having it is wrong in itself, and secondly, we are not to think that if we have it we gained it all on our own, apart from the providence of God.
Thirdly, Scripture teaches that we are not to cling to it against God's will. There may be times when God takes it away from us, that certainly happened to Job, that even happened to the Apostles and Peter says in Matthew 19:27 to 30, "We have forsaken all and followed You." We are not to cling to it if in God's will He wants to separate us from it.
Furthermore, Scripture says in building our attitude about money we are not to cater to people who have it for some selfish reason. James chapter 2 verses 1 to 10 warns us against being more favor...showing more favor to the rich than we do the poor. And the truth is we ought to show more favor to the poor because their need is greater.
Scripture also tells us that we are not to find pride in the money that we possess or the things which it can buy. In the very chapter we're looking at, 1 Timothy 6 verse 17 says we are not to be high minded. If we are rich we are not to be conceited about our riches.
Scripture also indicates that we are not to seek riches. We are to seek the Kingdom, says Matthew 6:33, and let God add the rest. Furthermore, Scripture says we are not to substitute money for trust in God. Verse 17 of chapter 6 again says that we are not to allow rich people to get away with trusting in uncertain riches rather than a living God.
So in putting together some kind of attitude toward money, it's important for us to realize it's not wrong to have it. We're not to think that if we have it we gained it for ourselves. We're not to cling to it. We're not to cater to people who have it. We're not to use it as a source of pride. We're mot to seek it. We're not to trust it in the place of God. And I might add further we're not to hoard it in a selfish way. The liberal soul shall be made fat, it says in Proverbs. Give, said Jesus in Luke 6:38, and it shall be given unto you. Generosity, sacrificial generosity should be a mark of every believer.
But the overarching attitudinal principle related to money is right here in verse 10. The watershed of all other attitudes is all really covered in this matter of not loving money. Now this is a very familiar truism, the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. That's the proper translation of that pantoum, all kinds of evil is really the proper understanding of it rather than just a translation of it. We are to understand that that really covers everything. It's the same as..the same idea as when the Scripture says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength." And that's the sum of all the commandments. If you just love God consummately, all the other commandments are a moot point. And if you don't love money, if you're not attached to money with strong affection, then those other attitudes are going to take care of themselves. You're not going to cling to it. You're not going to cater to the people who have it. You're not going to find your pride and security in it. You're not going to seek it first. And you're not going to hoard it.
The overarching principle for the life of a believer related to his money is not to love it...not to love it. This is axiomatic, I think it kind of goes without saying that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. But think it through with me for a moment. The term "love of money" is one word in the Greek, aphilarguria, it means affection for silver. And the idea here is not money but the love of it. You understand that, don't you? There's nothing inherently wrong with money, money is very dangerous, it's like a gun, it can be used to kill an animal for food, it can be used to protect you against an invader, or it can be used to harm somebody or even take a life. It's a dangerous thing and you go around, as it were, with money and you go around with a loaded gun by which you can accomplish good ends or by which you can accomplish disaster. The issue is your affection. The issue isn't money, the issue is how you feel about money. And the sin here is the sin of greed. Another way to say that is the love of money.
Now he says it is the root, and by that he means the source, of all kinds of evil which become the branches and whatever is hanging on them in this metaphorical tree. The root is the love of money and it produces all kinds of evil. To give you the simple understanding of that, what he means to say is that if you love money there's usually nothing that can stop you in the pursuit of it and therefore it leads to all kinds of sins. There is no kind of evil, frankly, there is no kind of evil that could be imagined which could not be the result of loving money. For the love of money people have committed every conceivable sin...every conceivable sin.
People who love money in order to get money will take bribes. They will distort justice. They will manipulate. They will take advantage of the poor. They will lie. They will cheat. They will extort. They will deceive, steal, rob. They will abuse. They will commit every imaginable sin...fornication, adultery, if they think it will gain them money. They will do bodily harm. They will kill for money. They will teach false doctrine for money. Every imaginable category of sin can flow out of loving money because if you are consumed with the love of money then that's the driving force of your life, you will do whatever it takes to get that. If you are consumed with loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, then you will set aside anything that thwarts that and therefore you're on a path of righteousness. And you cannot love and you cannot serve both God and money. There's no sin excluded from the list of what people might do for the love of money. So, if you can just deal with the affection, you've really won the battle.
Now how do you know if you love money? And I had to do a little inventory in my own life so I just posed some questions to myself this week as I sat in my study. And the first thing that I thought was a test that I would put to myself is this: do you spend more time thinking about how to get money or how to do a good job? That's the first test. Do you spend more time thinking about how to make money than you do about how to do a good job? In other words, are you more concerned on your job with how much you make or the quality of your service? Are you into excellence or into money? Is your job a means to finance your indulgence or is it a means by which you can show the excellence of your commitment and glorify God? It's a basic principle. So when you spend more time thinking about how to get money than you do how to do a good job, you love money.
One of the things that I decided early in my ministry from the very beginning was that I would never put a price on my ministry. And by God's grace and I don't know He overruled my humanness in that regard but from the very start all through these years there has never been a time in my ministry when I have told anybody that I charge a certain amount to do anything. I never ever wanted to be a position to look at ministry with a price tag. That is just too overwhelming a problem for my flesh to deal with. And so I would rather ask for nothing and be surprised. And if nothing comes, then nothing was expected.
I remember one time I was speaking across the city and I drove about 80 miles three nights in a row to a special series of meetings I was giving before about a thousand college students and they were mostly unbelieving at Whittier College. And I was speaking about the veracity of the Bible and the authenticity of the Christian faith and then having an answer...a question/answer time for an hour afterwards. And after doing that for three weeks, they sent me a thank you note in the mail with a check in it for $3.00...which I thought was very curious...a dollar a night. My first reaction was, "That's outrageous. I mean, 80 miles and all that preparation of a dollar a night." My second thought was, "You're not worth that and if you're going to put a price on yourself and you're going to be based on your own worth, you're dead...because I have nothing to offer but that which God has given me and if anybody ought to be rewarded for it it should be Him, not me." Every time I'm right, beloved, it's God. Every time I'm wrong, it's me. So the glory is His.
Listen, our response to the daily task will tell us a lot about whether we love money. Do I seek to make money or to do a good job? Secondly, you know you love money when you never have enough...you know you love money when you never have enough. In other words, you're never satisfied. You haven't learned in whatsoever state you are to be...what?...content. Thirdly, you love money when you want to flaunt it and what it provides. In other words, you get some kind of silly joy out of wearing it, or driving it, or living in it, or showing it off. When you want to flaunt it and what it provides, you're loving money.
Fourthly, you love money when you resent giving it. It kills you to give it away because you're in the mode of using all your money to make sure you get something for it. And the idea of giving it away is very distasteful. A person who loves money holds it for his own gratification, her own gratification.
Finally, and here's the ultimate test, you love money when you sin to obtain it...when you will lie on your Income Tax, when you will cheat on your Expense Account, when you will pull it out of the till at work, when you will compromise your convictions to do something you know is not really right but you know you'll get a lot of money if you do it. Anytime you sin to get money, you betray a heart that loves money more than it loves God, righteousness, truth.
So, those are fairly simple tests, ask yourself: do I spend more time thinking about how to get money than I do how to do a good job? Do I never have enough? Am I prone to want to flaunt what I have and what it produces? And do I resent giving it? And will I sin to get it?
Paul says in verse 10, if that's your attitude that will produce all manner of evil. And you have fallen as another sucker to the deceitfulness of riches, to put it in the words of our Lord in Matthew 13.
Now what brought this subject up in verses 6 to 10? Well Paul had just in verse 5 been talking about false teachers who are motivated by gain. He said they suppose that their kind of godliness which is a fake godliness is going to bring them material gain, that's their motive. And then he transitions and says, "Well, godliness with contentment," verse 6, "is great gain." In other words, when I say that the false teacher who supposes that his godliness will bring gain is wrong, I don't mean that true godliness isn't great gain because it is. And that's the transition and so he takes off in verse 6 to talk about it in a general sense and goes right on down to verse 10 to warn us all about the danger of loving money. The false teachers and their inordinate love for money trigger the subject in a general sense from verses 6 to 10. And he has just rejected the perverted idea that godliness is to be used as a means of material gain but he doesn't want you you to misunderstand the point that there is in true godliness a true gain. And so he launches into a discussion of the subject which relates to everybody in the Ephesian church and particularly those abusing it and it relates to all of even today. Loving money results in all kinds of evil, that means money is dangerous if you love it.
And may I suggest to you, you can have an awful lot of money and not love it and you can have none of it and love it? I know people who have a tremendous amount of money and don't love it. In fact, they don't spend their life trying to make money, they spend their life trying to do their best to glorify God. They don't flaunt what they have in money on what they have in possessions. They're not consumed with the pursuit of money, they're consumed with the pursuit of God. And they will never sin or compromise to get it. But God in His sovereign choice has determined to give them much.
And I have met people who have absolutely no money and are desperately in love with it. Spend all their time trying to figure out how to get more of it. That's the danger and it has nothing to do with what you have.
Now let's go into the exposition of the principle from verse 10 by going back to verse 6 and, first of all, money is dangerous because of the nature of money love, because of the nature of money love. And secondly, we'll look at the effect of it. It's dangerous twofold...its nature, its inherent essence makes it dangerous. And secondly, not only its inherent essence but what it produces makes it potentially dangerous...when loved.
First of all, let's look at verse 6. The nature of money love, it is dangerous because it ignores the true gain...it ignores the true gain. He says indeed, and de can be translated indeed or well or but, if you were to use the word indeed he would be saying playing off his prior statement, "Indeed godliness with contentment is great gain." Or it may be in an adversative sense, "But as over against a false godliness that doesn't provide any gain, true godliness does provide gain." That's what he's saying. There is great gain with true godliness. What is godliness? That's that very familiar word used in the pastorals, eusebeia, it means reverence, piety, godliness, all those good things that I like to think of as God‑likeness. Where there is true God likeness with contentment, there is great gain. Now if all you want is money, you'll never have that because you'll never be content. The genuine great gain comes from true godliness which is inseparably linked to contentment. The word autarkes means self‑sufficiency, it was used by the cynics and the Stoics to speak of self‑mastery, the person who was unflappable, the person who was not moved by circumstance, the person who lived immuned to external distraction, oblivious to outside troubles, the person who had that most noble of human virtues, the ability not to control his environment but to properly react to it. That's that idea of that word. It basically means to be sufficient, to seek nothing more, to be content with what you have. And it is a noble human trait but Paul takes it further and takes that concept and that word and sanctifies it.
In 2 Corinthians 3 he talks about our sufficiency not being in ourselves but our sufficiency, verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 3, is of God, he says. It's God's sufficiency in us. Later on in chapter 9 of the same epistle in verse 8, God is able to make all grace about toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work, and again emphasizes that our sufficiency is of God. That familiar section in Philippians chapter 4 where he says, "I know in whatsoever state I am, I have learned to be content, I know how to be abased‑‑ that's put down‑‑I know how to abound, everywhere in all things I'm instructed to be full, to be hungry, to abound, to suffer need, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Then down in verse 19, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in Christ Jesus."
So, Paul sanctifies this idea of contentment by saying it is a God contentment, it is a Christ contentment in the sense that the provision of God and the provision of Christ bring about the contentment. It's more than just self‑mastery, it's more than just some human virtue. Our contentment is related to the sufficiency of God, it's related to the sufficiency of Christ, it's related to the confidence that says I want to be godly and take whatever God wants to give me. I want to live within His sovereign providential will and seek to be like Him and let the other things find their own level. And so what Paul is saying to us here in this passage is that if you love money, you really ignore the true gain. If you love money, you're pursuing something you'll never find.
True godliness, on the other hand, brings about true gain. Why? Because true godliness produces contentment. Now listen carefully. Riches is not related to how much you have, it's related to whether you're content with what you have. You understand that? The person who is rich is the person who doesn't need anything else. That's the issue. The Greek philosopher Epicurus said "The secret of contentment is not to add to a man's possessions but to take away from his desires." That's the issue. He is most rich who desires least, right? You are rich when you are content. That's riches. You have enough. Paul says it's irrelevant to me, I know how to be abounding, that is to have an abundance, I know how to be abased, that is to have less than an abundance, I know how to be full, I know how to be empty, I know how to be rich and poor and I don't really care either way because I am content to be in the will of God.
Proverbs 30 verse 8 says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with the food that is my portion, give me exactly what You and Your sovereignty desire me to have, I don't want too much, I don't want too little. If I have too much I might be full and deny You and say, Who is the Lord? And if I had too little, I might be in want and steal and profane the name of my God. So, God, don't give me too much and don't give me too little, give me what You want me to have with a contented heart." That's riches. That's riches. That's the kind of godliness that makes a person rich because it produces satisfaction.
True godliness and true gain is unrelated to how much you have, it is only related to how much you want. And if you are content with what God gives, you're rich...you're rich.
In Hebrews 13 verse 5 we read, "Let your manner of life be without covetousness." That is without seeking something that's not yours. "And be content with such things as you have...why?...for He has said...that is God has said back in Deuteronomy 31...I will never leave you or...what?...forsake you." Now what more could you want than to have what God has given you and to have God? That's the issue...that's the issue. That's to be content. But if you spend your whole life chasing money, you will forfeit the true gain because you will never get enough and you will never be satisfied and you'll never have contentment.
A truly godly person is motivated not by the love of money but by the love of God. He seeks the greatest riches and the greatest riches are spiritual contentment and complete trust in the ever‑present, ever‑able God. The only thing that makes people rich is contentment...that's the only thing. And contentment is a spiritual virtue born as the fruit of godliness.
John B. Rockefeller once said, "I have made many millions and they have all brought me no happiness." He's a poor man. Cornelius Vanderbilt said, "The care of millions of dollars is too great a load, there is no pleasure in it." Jacob Astor said, "I am the most miserable man on earth." Henry Ford after having made all of his millions says, "I was happier when doing mechanic's work." And John D. Rockefeller said, "The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money." The only thing that makes you rich is satisfaction. The only thing that makes you rich i