Paul ends 1 Timothy with convicting warnings about the temptations of wealth and the danger of pursuing wealth. Godliness involves contentment and gratitude for the basics – food and clothing (1 Timothy 6:8). To reinforce the point, Paul reminds Timothy that we came into the world without anything, which is the way we will leave (6:7). Conversely, it is ungodly to be discontented with God’s provision.
When I imagine discontentment, I think of a man bitching at God as he struggles to pay the mortgage, feed and clothe his family, put a little money away for the future. Paul imagines something rather different. He imagines an entrepreneur starting a new business, a bond tradesman, a CEO obsessed with the bottom line. Paul warns about the dangers that lie in store for those who want (boulomai) wealth (1 Timothy 6:9). In this passage, discontentment isn’t dissatisfaction with little but the desire to have a lot.
Paul knows that there are rich believers, and his instructions later in the chapter presuppose that the church will include people who are “rich in this present world” (1 Timothy 6:17-19). Faithful entrepreneurs, CEOs, brokers will be found in the church, but Paul warns that they must give up the desire for wealth. To the poor who long to be rich, to the rich who want to get richer or who devote their chief energies to protecting their gains, Paul’s language is sharp: “those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction” (v. 9).
This is the context of his warning that the love of money is the root of many sorts of evils (1 Timothy 6:10). They aren’t all economic evils. Like the prophets of Israel, Paul knows that love of money and the desire for wealth lead to evil and injustice of many kinds. Greedy judges accept bribes. Politicians glut themselves on the winings and dinings of lobbyists and twist the law to enrich themselves and their dear friends. Businessmen and landowners who want to get rich ignore or trample down the weak who stand between them and their income projections. Bond tradesmen who want to get rich will create derivatives on derivatives on derivatives until the whole house of cards comes tumblin’ down. Love of money perverts justice, dissolves trust, undoes the knots that bind society, creates dissonance where there should be harmony, finally leads to poverty.
Somewhat surprisingly, one of the evils produced by love of money is apostasy. Some have followed wealth so far that they have “wandered away from the faith, and pierced themselves with many a pang” (v. 10). There are many reasons for apostasy – fear of persecution and exclusion, intellectual doubts, interpersonal hostilities, rebellion against pastoral authority. Paul, though, points to a factor that we may overlook: Some leave the faith because they are greedy.
The exhortations that follow in 1 Timothy 6:11-16 are often taken out of this context and turned into general exhortations to faithful living. These verses do have a general application, but they are surrounded by instruction about wealth (vv. 6-10, 17-19) and therefore are focused on that issue. “Flee from these things,” Paul says to Timothy. What things? In context, Paul tells Timothy to flee from wanting to be rich, from desires awakened by the desire for wealth, from the love of money. Instead, Timothy is to pursue “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, gentleness” (v. 11). These qualities are set directly in contrast to the pursuit of material wealth. Following a theme from the Old Testament (Psalm 37:21, 25-26; 112:9; Proverbs 29:7), Paul links righteousness with generosity. If we would be righteous, we must renounce the love of riches and the desire for wealth. “Fight the good fight” to “take hold of the eternal life” – again, the fight that Paul has in mind stands in contrast to the struggle for wealth and the desire to “take hold” of the riches of this world.
These are painful verses for Americans. Many Americans may have fairly modest desires, but we are surrounded by enticements to love and lust for riches. Our national myths are rags-to-riches, poor-man-makes-good myths. Our national heroes (today at least) are the fabulously wealthy and famous, the rock stars and movie stars and sports stars, the Mikes whom we all want to be like. Read students’ “Future Plans” in any high school annual, including annuals for Christian schools, and you’ll find a fair number have already made “being rich” a life goal. Though the American dream may not be a dream of gaudy gilded palatiality, it is also not the same as Paul’s dream of contentment with food and clothing and being rich in good works.
Pricked in conscience, we reach for qualifications and hedges. We point to verses 17-19, where Paul indicates that there are rich Christians in Timothy’s own church. Of course, those verses are important and show that it is not a sin to be rich. Paul doesn’t even exactly say that it is sin to desire riches. But that shouldn’t soften the main thrust of the passage: If you want to be rich you will be sorely tempted, and that desire for wealth generates other destructive desires, habits, and actions. If we desire to be rich, we put ourselves on the road to “all sorts of evil.”
What should we want? We should want food and covering (1 Timothy 6:8), and we should want to assist others. We should want to be rich “in good works” (v. 18), rich in heavenly treasures, which come through righteous, generous use of material treasures (Matthew 6:20; Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33; 18:22). Striving to be rich in good works usually requires an effort to gather material wealth. Wanting to do good works includes wanting the means to do those good works. To run a soup kitchen, you’ve got to have soup. But we need to beware the subtlety of the temptation of wealth: It is perilously easy to fool ourselves into thinking we want this and that “for the sake of ministry.” As monks throughout the ages have found, it is perilously easy to grow paunchy while technically adhering to a vow of poverty.
Treasures of good works – what we should want. How much wealth the Lord entrusts to us to enable those good works is up to Him.
Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, and a Senior Fellow of Theology and Literature at New St. Andrews College, Moscow, Idaho.