1 Timothy 6:6 to 10 · Passage · Contentment
Godliness with Contentment
Paul wrote these lines to Timothy at Ephesus, between a warning about false teachers and a charge to the rich.
Job lost his flocks and his children in one day and said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return” (Job 1:21).
Of course, godliness with contentment is great gain.
- The passage
- 1 Timothy 6:6 to 10
- Book
- 1 Timothy
- Hold in memory
- 1 Timothy 6:6, 1 Timothy 6:10
Summary
In 1 Timothy 6:6 to 10 Paul answers teachers who used godliness to get money. He names godliness joined to contentment as the true gain and sets the limit of need low. He then warns that the desire for riches leads into a snare and that the love of money has drawn some away from the faith.
- Paul grounds contentment in birth and death, since no one brings anything into the world or carries anything out.
- The desire for wealth, more than wealth itself, is the snare Paul names.
- Readers since Tertullian have disagreed whether the love of money is the only root of evil or one root among several.
Godliness as a Means of Gain
Some of the teachers at Ephesus had turned godliness into a trade.
Godliness with Contentment studies 1 Timothy 6:6 to 10, where Paul sets the gain of godliness against the love of money. It belongs to the value of contentment, because here Paul names the measure of enough and the danger of wanting more.
The question the study answers is what Paul means by great gain, why food and clothing are enough, and what the love of money does to those who crave it. It gives the setting at Ephesus and the two kinds of gain set side by side. It then gives the Greek of the passage, the Old Testament behind 1 Timothy 6:7, the charge to the rich, the voices of the church and the two readings of Paul's word root.
Paul urged Timothy to “stay on at Ephesus to instruct certain men not to teach false doctrines” (1 Timothy 1:3).
If anyone teaches another doctrine and disagrees with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and with godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing. Instead, he has an unhealthy interest in controversies and semantics, out of which come envy, strife, abusive talk, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind who are devoid of the truth. These men regard godliness as a means of gain.These verses stand first because the passage answers the claim they report.
Two Kinds of Gain
The false teachers and Paul used one word for gain, porismos (G4200), and meant opposite things.
Paul answers the gain the false teachers sought with a gain that asks little and lasts.
| Point | The false teachers' gain | The gain Paul names |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Godliness used as a way to make money | Godliness joined to a heart that has enough |
| What it asks for | More wealth than a person needs | Food to eat and something to wear |
| Where it leads | Temptation, a trap and at last destruction | A sure footing for the age to come |
| What it brings | Wandering from the faith and many griefs | A hold on the life that lasts |
We Brought Nothing into the World
Ecclesiastes says the same of every life before Paul.
For we brought nothing into the world, so we cannot carry anything out of it.The verse is Paul's first reason for the contentment he has just named.
The Teacher of Ecclesiastes had said of every man: “As a man came from his mother’s womb, so he will depart again, naked as he arrived” (Ecclesiastes 5:15).
Food and Clothing
Paul's verb for being content is the verb of sufficiency, and his word for clothing stands only here.
But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.The verse is the measure Paul gives for the gain he has just named.
The Greek reads, word for word, “having sustenance and coverings, with these we will be content”. The verb is from arkeo (G714), and the word for coverings is skepasma (G4629).
Agur prayed for the same measure: “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the bread that is my portion” (Proverbs 30:8).
Those Who Want to Be Rich
Paul names the snare in the wish for wealth and gives the wealthy a better hope.
Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction.The verse explains why the wish for wealth is dangerous before any wealth is gained.
The Greek participle boulomenoi, desiring, governs the verb ploutein, to be rich. Jesus said that “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
Instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be conceited and not to put their hope in the uncertainty of wealth, but in God, who richly provides all things for us to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, and to be generous and ready to share, treasuring up for themselves a firm foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.The verses stand beside the warning because they speak to those who are wealthy already.
The Root of All Kinds of Evil
Paul names the love of money and the sorrows it brings on those who crave it.
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.The verse gives the reason for the warning before it, and its first word, for, ties the two together.
The noun for the love of money, philargyria (G5365), stands only in this verse. The Greek begins the verse with rhiza, a root, without the article, and the American Standard Version renders the phrase with a root where the Berean text has the root.
Voices on the Passage
Four readers from the third century to the fifth, each under the line it teaches.
died 215 · Clement of Alexandria
The Instructor Book 2
The quotation1 quotation
“But the best riches is poverty of desires; and the true magnanimity is not to be proud of wealth, but to despise it. Boasting about one's plate is utterly base. For it is plainly wrong to care much about what any one who likes may buy from the market. But wisdom is not bought with coin of earth, nor is it sold in the market-place, but in heaven. And it is sold for true coin, the immortal Word, the regal gold.”
Clement of Alexandria · The Instructor Book 2 · on 1 Timothy 6:10Patristic
died 325 · Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius
The Divine Institutes, Book 5, Chapter XXIII
The quotation1 quotation
“But the just and wise man, because he deems all these things as human, and his own goods as divine, neither desires anything which belongs to another, lest he should injure any one at all in violation of the law of humanity; nor does he long for any power or honour, that he may not do an injury to any one. For he knows that all are produced by the same God, and in the same condition, and are joined together by the right of brotherhood. But being contented with his own, and that a little, because he is mindful of his frailty, he does not seek for anything beyond that which may support his life; and even from that which he has he bestows a share on the destitute, because he is pious; but piety is a very great virtue. From this cause the unjust, and those who are ignorant of God, abound with riches, and power, and honours. For all these things are the rewards of injustice, because they cannot be perpetual, and they are sought through lust and violence. But the just and wise man, because he deems all these things as human, and his own goods as divine, neither desires anything which belongs to another, lest he should injure any one at all in violation of the law of humanity. From which we understand that we are an object of regard to God, since He is angry when we sin. For when He might have bestowed upon His people both riches and kingdoms, as He had before given them to the Jews, whose successors and posterity we are; on this account He would have them live under the power and government of others, lest, being corrupted by the happiness of prosperity, they should glide into luxury and despise the precepts of God. He foresaw how far He would afford rest to His worshippers if they should keep His commandments, and yet correct them if they did not obey His precepts. […]”
Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius · The Divine Institutes, Book 5, Chapter XXIII · on 1 Timothy 6:8Patristic
died 386 · Cyril of Jerusalem
Catechetical Lecture 5:2
The quotation1 quotation
“For those who in appearance are rich, though they have many possessions, are yet poor in soul. The more they amass, the more they pine with longing for what they lack. But the believer, paradoxically, is rich even when poor. Knowing that we have need only of raiment and food and being content with these, he has trampled riches underfoot.”
Cyril of Jerusalem · Catechetical Lecture 5:2 · on 1 Timothy 6:8Patristic
died 407 · John Chrysostom
Homily on 1 Timothy 17
The quotation1 quotation
“‘But they that will be rich’; not those that are rich, but those who wish to be. For a man may have money and make a good use of it, not overvaluing it, but bestowing it upon the poor. Such therefore he does not blame, but the covetous. ‘They that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.’ He has justly said, ‘they drown men,’ since they cannot be raised from that depth. ‘In destruction and perdition.’ But what is the ‘temptation and snare,’ which he says, those that would be rich fall into? It causes them to err from the faith, it involves them in dangers, it renders them less intrepid. ‘Foolish desires,’ he says. And is it not a foolish desire, when men like to keep idiots and dwarfs, not from benevolent motives, but for their pleasure, when they have receptacles for fishes in their halls, when they bring up wild beasts, when they give their time to dogs, and dress up horses, and are as fond of them as of their children? All these things are foolish and superfluous, nowise necessary, nowise useful. ‘Foolish and hurtful lusts!’ What are hurtful lusts? When men live unlawfully, when they desire what is their neighbor's, when they do their utmost in luxury, when they long for drunkenness, when they desire the murder and destruction of others. From these desires many have aimed at tyranny, and perished. Surely to labor with such views is both foolish and hurtful.”
John Chrysostom · Homily on 1 Timothy 17 · on 1 Timothy 6:9Patristic
Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom
The Root or a Root
Two readings, each with two holders, answer whether the root Paul names stands alone.
The only rootAmbrose of Milan; John Wesley
Ambrose of Milan, in his second letter, called avarice the root of all evil. John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), called it “The parent of all manner of evils”.
The objection: the Greek noun stands without its article, and many evils grow from pride, lust and other roots.
One root among othersTertullian; Jamieson, Fausset and Brown
Tertullian, in On Idolatry, called covetousness “a root of all evils”. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, in their Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), wrote that “Love of money is not the sole root of evils”.
The objection: Paul writes of all kinds of evil, and a root that bears every kind needs no rival.
Flee These Things
Paul turns from the lovers of money to Timothy himself.
But you, O man of God, flee from these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.The verse turns the teaching on money into Timothy's own charge.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, American Standard Version (1901)
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible TBESG lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0, based on Abbott-Smith, Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament (1922)
- John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (1755), on 1 Timothy 6:10.
- John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Timothy, homily 17, on 1 Timothy 6:9 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 13)
- Tertullian, On Idolatry, on 1 Timothy 6:10 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 3)
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 1 Timothy 6:10.
- Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, book 2 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2)
- Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, book 5, chapter 23 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 7)
- Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lecture 5, section 2.
- Ambrose of Milan, Letter 2.15, on 1 Timothy 6:10 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 10)
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