Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Money from 1 Timothy 6:3-19
“If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.
Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
As for the rich in this present age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.”
This is God’s Word.
Several years ago, there was a pastor who was forced to resign his ministry, owing to several really morally perverse steps in his life. One of those was financial. That is, he had become addicted to Internet gambling, and he had refinanced his house and then lost the money he had gained by the refinancing. He had lost his retirement, and he ended up embezzling money from the poor fund of the church.
That’s a rather extreme case, of course. On the other hand, one begins to see how attractive money can be, how intoxicating it can be, how it can draw us on and on. How people who name the name of Christ have thought about money has tended to go in one of two opposite directions. On the one hand are those from the heritage of the “health, wealth, and prosperity gospel” side who argue something like this …
“You’re the child of the King. The King owns everything. Would the King want his children to be poor and impoverished? All you have to do is ask him. He wants you to abound. Just as any parent here wants his or her child to flourish, so our heavenly Father wants us to flourish. Name it and claim it.”
Of course, that sort of approach doesn’t handle texts like this from Isaiah 2 very well. “Their land is full of silver and gold; there is no end to their treasures. Their land is full of horses; there is no end to their chariots. Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made. So man will be brought low and mankind humbled—do not forgive them.”
Or again, Isaiah 5: “Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field till no space is left and you live alone in the land,” or similar denunciations in the prophecy of Amos or the insistence of the Lord Jesus that we lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not corrode and where thieves do not break through and steal. Then what shall we say about the many, many passages that insist if we suffer with him we will also reign with him? So that’s one extreme to which some people who name the name of Christ go.
On the other hand, there are others who begin with a passage like Matthew 19, verses 16 to 23, the account of the rich, young ruler. There Jesus tells the rich young ruler, “Go and sell all you’ve got and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven.” So beginning from this, then, it is sometimes argued, “Unless you live in penury you really can’t have any riches in heaven at all, and you may not actually get in. This is a gospel command. You must live in penury, or you show your heart is unrepentant.”
The difficulty with that, of course, is this is not what Jesus says to everyone. To the woman at the well, he does not say, “Go, sell all you’ve got and give to the poor.” He says, “Go call your husband.” In other words, he has this remarkable ability to stick his finger on the sorest spot of each life, the place where there are barriers toward repentance, toward confessing the sheer godhood of God.
Moreover, one has to face the stubborn fact there are some very rich godly people in Scripture. There’s Abraham, for example, with his vast herds, and Job who is acknowledged to be the richest man in the East with his vast herds and flocks. After everything is taken away and then ultimately restored, they’re all doubled in size, which made him super rich in the East, I suppose.
Then Solomon was not exactly known for poverty. Philemon in the New Testament has a large enough household the whole church can meet in his home and so forth. The truth of the matter is both of these positions are based on a narrow selection of texts and sometimes a slightly distorted reading of them, and then we have extrapolated them to the nth degree and constructed our understanding of wealth.
Then, once we start seeing both emphases are there, we fall into another danger. We start saying, “Well, if the Bible says, ‘On the one hand this and on the one hand that;’ therefore, it all depends, and so I don’t really have to think about it or try to integrate too much,” and you just maintain your own views and don’t feel challenged by the Bible anymore, as if the Bible really has nothing to say to us on this business. That perhaps is the worst of all.
If you are interested in this subject, a book I strongly urge you to read is one by Craig Blomberg, Neither Poverty nor Riches, a really excellent book for getting to grips with the thrust of what the Bible says on this subject. One passage on this subject that establishes a great deal of coherence is the one that has just been read in 1 Timothy, chapter 6.
At one level, of course, Paul is still dealing with the errors of the false teachers. That’s how he begins. “If anyone teaches false doctrines,” and so on. What is so interesting is how quickly the apostle links together corrupt teaching, corrupt behavior, and corrupt financial motives, as if the three regularly go together.
So he begins with the corrupt teaching he has wrestled with from time to time in the entire epistle. “If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching,” then he moves to their corrupt behavior. “He’s conceited. He understands nothing. He has an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicion, and constant friction between people of corrupt mind.”
Then he ends up by insisting they think godliness is a means to financial gain. They have corrupt financial motives as well. If you have a bit of the gift of the gab and can talk a good theological line, a good spiritual line, a good religious line, there is money to be made. There was in the first century. There is today. Ask certain televangelists, and not just televangelists.
In the first century there were no universities as we think of them, but there were roving teachers, lecturers. They would set up in the marketplaces and, if they began to collect a crowd, then they would rent a hall. If they were any good, the numbers were such that they charged more. Besides if they charged more, this obviously meant they were good. Therefore, they would draw more crowds. Well-to-do people would send their sons to go and study with them because, obviously, they were good since they charged so much.
If enough sons went there, then obviously they could charge more, which meant they were very good. As the church began to expand and there were simply too few Bible teachers emerging from each church, the rapid growth means the need for itinerant preachers, then eventually there were preachers who travelled around charging for their fees. They fit into the cultural pattern very well. Some of these were just plain charlatans, false teachers of the very first water.
In the early second century, there was a document called the Didache, which sets out some rules for how to respond to these people. Although the rules insist on true doctrine, there are also some principles in there on what to do about these people who want money, and so this problem is not restricted to the first century. It comes along in culture after culture and time after time today.
There is money to be made, and where money is to be made, motives become ambiguous, popularity sells, and eventually it affects what we do, how we look at things, our evaluations. What does Paul lay down? He establishes three principles. I’ll tell you what they are, then we’ll deal with them one by one: first, the danger that springs from wanting material things; secondly, the devotion that springs from wanting eternal things; and thirdly, the duty that springs from possessing material things. Let’s take them in order.
1. The danger that springs from wanting material things.
Verses 6 and following: “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some people eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
The apostle begins with contentment. Contentment is a precious thing and easy to lose. You can have a desire for more, thinking if you simply get that bit more, then you’ll be all right. You will be content, but anyone with any sort of track record knows once you’ve had more then you want more again.
So you begin as a young couple, scrambling to put together the most basic mortgage to get a fixer-upper condo out somewhere on the far edge of town, and you think to yourself, “If we can just have that, we’ll be content. I’ll be happy there the rest of my life.” But, of course, it’s not long before you have to trade up and trade up.
How much is too much? And every time you trade up, it means a different set of friends, a different circle in which you’re moving, perhaps a better school district. It changes all of your friendships and relationships, and then you can edge up to the next level, can’t you? Linked with the lust for money is often a lust for power or prominence.
Then discontent can come the other way too. Not only may we be discontent because we want more, we may on occasion be discontent because we’re proud of doing with so little. There is a kind of inverted snobbery that can also generate discontent. When I was a young man, I had a very good friend who himself was born in China. His father had served up on the Manchurian border for many years, from 1931 on. Then during World War II his family and he were interned in China by the Japanese.
After the war they stayed on. They still didn’t come home. He was finally kicked out with his family, including his son, who was my friend. They had four children, but this particular son was my friend. When he returned to Canada in 1951, having been out of the country for something like 20 years, he was nevertheless a bit of a hero because of his missionary work. He was well known in Canadian Baptist circles. He was a bit of a hero in those circles, and he received offers for various church posts and so forth.
He looked around very carefully and turned them all down and took a job as a manual laborer on the Canadian Pacific Railway. His reason was quite simple. He had lived on the edge for such a long time he knew if he started preaching in the relatively well-to-do circumstances of Canada, then he would be very hard on people. He was going to have to learn to be content to have more. After two years or so then, in fact, he became pastor of a church in a small town in Fenelon Falls, Ontario, until his senior years. He was a wise man.
The apostle Paul likewise understands from Philippians, chapter 4, “I have learned in whatever state I am therewith to be content.” He has learned, he says, to be content when he has much and when he has little. In other words, he is content regardless of his material circumstances, precisely because his contentment does not depend on his material circumstances. His contentment is lodged elsewhere as we shall see in this passage likewise.
Nor does this contentment turn on a kind of stoic sense. The Stoics in the first century had a notion of contentment that is really very different from Paul’s. They wanted you to be content by crushing desire. “If you don’t want something, then you can’t be disappointed.” So the smart thing to do, the way to be content, to be stoic, is precisely by quelling any desires for things. “If you don’t have desires for things, then you can never be disappointed and you’ll always be content.”
But that’s not where this text is going. We’ll see in a moment what we may well do is live contentedly irrespective of circumstance but only because our contentment is grounded in something that transcends circumstances. Here then Paul initially provides some of the negative reasons to stop lusting after material things. Verse 7. Because they’re transient. They don’t last. “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”
One is inevitably reminded of what Job says in chapter 1. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” Because of this, therefore, we understand what the writer to the Hebrews says when he depicts some of the Old Testament saints as looking for the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. The Lord Jesus insists we’re to live with eternity’s values in view. If your contentment is built on things that only last for a few decades here when you have an eternal vista in front of you, you’re striking a bad bargain.
A number of years ago in the Bell Labs in Naperville, about 2,000 scientists working at a very high level, some of them Nobel laureates, a friend of mine working in one of the units noticed there were noon-hour clubs of many sorts, clubs for philately and clubs for discussion of homosexual rights and you name it. So he thought he would start a Bible club for his particular switching unit. It was a unit on switches, 37 scientists studying switches.
He invited them to come, and 12 or 13 came for eight weeks or so. In each week I was supposed to give a 20- or 25-minute exposition of Scripture. I passed out sheets in advance so people had them, and then it was a free for all. The rule was I would talk based on these texts for a little while, and then the question and answer could come.
They munched their sandwiches during the first part and discussed freely during the second part. In one of the talks, I was dealing with what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, and halfway into it, before the discussion time, an Indian who was there said, “Do I understand what you’re saying?” I said, “What do you think I’m saying?”
He said, “Well, most of us in these labs have a pretty good idea of where we’re going and what we’re doing. We’ve worked hard to get here. We have good research projects. We would like to develop our careers here. Some of us even have the cheek to have aspirations of Nobels. We’ll publish papers. We’ll do research, and eventually we’ll turn 65 and we’ll retire.
We may continue to serve as consultants here or there and maybe a little more research and publishing. We’ll play with our grandchildren. Then the future becomes just a little more obscure. But you’re saying Jesus says you’re to lay up treasure in heaven and plan your whole life into eternity, but that changes everything, doesn’t it?” I thought he had got the text pretty well.
That’s what’s at issue here too, isn’t it? The transient things of this life are not the most important things if we are eternal beings. The author acknowledges in verse 8 these transient things nevertheless come with degrees of necessity. He mentions here food and clothing, but that’s merely emblematic of other necessities.
If you live in Nome, Alaska, you’re going to have to have heat and shelter as well. Elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles, if we don’t provide for our families, we’re worse than infidels. That means we start looking after education and other matters. Suddenly, there is an array of pretty necessary bills.
I understand that, and so does the apostle Paul. Nevertheless, these things so easily elicit greed, the incessant cry for more. Verse 9: “People who want to get rich …” That is, living way beyond necessities, no matter how generously defined. “… fall into temptation and a trap, into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.”
The fact of the matter is we eventually get into some pattern of one-upmanship, of wanting more. It becomes part of our self-identity, doesn’t it? As soon as we are identified with what we possess, then our ultimate delight is not being identified as forgiven sinners, God’s children. Our ultimate delight is being identified as belonging to a certain economic social stratum. The thing is so subtle, isn’t it? Even when you think you’re beating it, you start off, and you’re really content to have that beat-up rattletrap, that 15-year-old rust bucket of a Chevrolet.
But somewhere along the line, you have the money for an Audi or a BMW. It goes up, and then without in any sense trying to be condescending or arrogant or the like, it’s just so easy to pull up at a stop sign and see a rust bucket of a Chevrolet next to you and think you’re a little better. Or you fly economy class, and then you get bumped up to business class and you feel just a wee bit of pity for those people back in the cattle car. Isn’t that right? Our self-identity begins to get connected with these things.
It’s at every level, isn’t it? It’s painful. So sinful, are we. Instead of being justified by grace through faith before God, we’re justified at least in part, in our own eyes and in the eyes of those around us, by how well we’re doing. No, this will not do. These are the dangers that spring from wanting material things.
2. The devotion that springs from wanting eternal things.
Verses 11 to 16: “But you, man of God, flee from all this …” That is, all that has been described in the previous verses. “… and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession.” In other words, it is not enough to turn away from sin. It is not enough simply to try to squash bad desires.
You must actively pursue what is good. Flee from all this on the one hand and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Actively pursue these things. In other words, if you simply drift and sort of give yourself a gentle moral reminder you mustn’t be too greedy then you will succumb again and again. You must overcome evil with good. You must actually pursue other things, and those things are essentially Christian virtues.
By the end of this paragraph, moreover, you are pursuing Christ himself, who is appearing, in verse 14. “This appearing, which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.”
Yes, you see, we do need controls. There is a place for negation. Don’t misunderstand me. I have been involved with a few people who have tried to break, for example, some of the shackles of porn. Do you know in this country more money is spent on porn than on hard drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol combined? Can you imagine the impact of that on our families? I guarantee some of you in this room are hooked. Part of breaking that sort of slavery is setting controls in place. I understand that.
So, for example, when people want to break it, we insist any computer to which they have access is password controlled and somebody else has the password, that the computer is put in a public place so everybody can see what they’re looking at, that they subscribe to some program like Covenant Eyes, which sends the URLs to some monitor on the side. I monitor for some people in this business who want to break these things. There are some things you can do to break the addiction. I understand that, but at the end of the day, all of that is just stopgap.
At the end of the day, what you must have is such a transformed heart by the gospel you cherish instead what is good, that God himself becomes so lovely, the Christ of the cross becomes so precious, that Christian virtues are so wonderful you start pursuing what is good, what is faithful, what is loving, what is gentle, what is pure, so the sleazy begins to look sleazy, the mediocre looks mediocre. It breaks your desire. You don’t want it because it’s sleazy. It’s enslaving. It’s not who you are as a blood-bought child of God.
That’s only possible if God becomes the kind of God he is for Paul, the mysterious God, the unapproachable God, the God of all light, the God who alone gives life and immortality, the God who is to be praised forever, so you learn to delight in him and delight to spend time in his presence, delight to know him and think about him and talk about him. Do you see? You overcome evil with good.
Salvation, in other words, is not simply an escape to get out of hell. It’s massively transforming. It breaks the power of cancelled sin and sets the prisoner free. So when you read these texts carefully, you discover then the point of verse 11 is we must pursue these good virtues. It’s not we simply negate the bad, but we pursue the good.
We begin to maintain an eternal perspective. Verse 13. We follow the example of Jesus who endured all the way to the cross despite temptations. Verse 13. We hunger for Jesus’ return at the end of the age, knowing he shall usher in the new heaven and the new earth. Verses 14 and 15. And we never, ever forget the sheer godhood of God.
Do you remember John’s remarkable ending to his first letter? First John is quite a remarkable little book, five chapters. There he deals with some very important doctrinal matters, truth matters regarding Christology, the doctrine of Christ. He deals with the nonnegotiable importance of love in the Christian way. If we don’t love one another, then the truth is not in us, he says very frankly.
He insists too there must be genuine obedience, submission to Christ’s Word and command. So there’s a doctrine test. There’s a truth test. There’s a love test. After he has finished it all, he has gotten to the very end of his book, the last chapter, the last verse. He has one short line thrown in: “My dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” He hasn’t mentioned idolatry all through the book. Where does this come from?
Except you see anything else than what he has been mentioning in the book is idolatry, for a doctrine, right living, right obedience all hang together. Anything else is the de-Godding of God. It’s the pursuit of idolatry. You either pursue God and his Christ and the cross and the gospel and all the virtues that come from it, or you’re an idolater. So here then is the devotion that springs from wanting eternal things.
3. The duty that springs from possessing material things.
Verses 17 and following: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”
So then granted there are some rich people, what are we to think of them? That includes, relative to the standards of the whole world, virtually everybody in some measure or another in this room. How should we be thinking about wealth? The text does not say here, “Go and sell all you’ve got and give to the poor.”
What it does say is, first of all, don’t be arrogant about what you have. Don’t tie your self-identity to these things. It’s a form of idolatry. Rather, recognize its transience. Wealth is so uncertain. And put your hope in God. That is, not in the stock market or in the quality of your retirement plans but in God himself. He is the only one who is secure enough, not only for this life but for the life to come.
Then he says this God richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. He actually says we should be grateful for what we’ve got. Instead of thinking we’re a little better because we have a little more, these things are, nevertheless, good gifts, so be grateful for them. Put your hope in God and be grateful for them instead of stroking yourself.
In addition, then, you must be generous. Verse 18. “Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share.” John Wesley used to say, “Earn as much as you can. Give away as much as you can.” You honor neither his memory nor Holy Scripture if you only do the first bit. That’s what the text says.
These things are gifts from God. Don’t trust them. Put your hope in God. Thank God for the gifts, and then command them to be good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous and willing to share, “For in this way …” Verse 19. “… they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so they may take hold of the life that is truly life.” This is not saying, of course, that you earn your salvation by being generous. What it is saying is genuine Christianity issues in this kind of transformed living.
It’s the very paradox of the gospel, isn’t it? Under the gospel you learn by dying you live, by losing your life you find it, by denying yourself you discover yourself, by going to the cross daily you enjoy resurrection life, and by giving you receive. It is such elementary gospel principle, for we follow the Christ who did exactly all of those things explicitly for us. If we follow in his train, those are the things to which we aspire.
So let me end with some practical notes. This means integrity in all business matters. It means quiet self-denial. That is, not living at the edge of your possible financial resources but learning to live more simply precisely that you may be more generous, looking for ways to be strategically generous. It means faithfulness in giving. Above all, it means understanding God is the greatest Giver.
Five minutes into eternity, no one will say, “I wish during my life I had kept more for myself.” Many will say, “I wish I had given him more.” When I was a boy in Sunday school we learned a chorus, “By and by when I look on His face, beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face; by and by, when I look on His face, I’ll wish I had given Him more,” for God is the greatest Giver. Let us pray.
Merciful God, save us, we pray, from idolatry, and grant we may look to the Lord Christ, not only as our Redeemer but as our example, pursuing him and all the virtues he has brought to us, living in the light of eternity, delighting in you, our Maker and Redeemer. Grant, Lord God, by your Spirit, the strength to overcome evil with good. For Jesus’ sake, amen.
