For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. - 1 Timothy 6:10a
A lot of people know this Bible verse – even if they didn’t realize that it was from the Bible. Some people tend to misquote it as “money is the root of all evil”, but even if this variation is consistent with a lot of what we encounter in life, it misses the point of this biblical truth.
Paul, born Saul, was Jewish, but he wasn’t from Israel. His mother and father raised him in what is today southern Turkey, in a city called Tarsus, just north of the island of Cyprus. His parents sent him 560 miles away to Jerusalem to study under a respected rabbi named Gamaliel. This was only the beginning of Paul’s extensive exploration of the known world.
Paul traveled all over the eastern Mediterranean – to Greece and Macedonia – and had visited the great city of Ephesus in western Turkey. Paul had left a young pastor named Timothy in that city to guide and lead the fledgling church.
In Paul’s first letter to his friend and student Timothy, Paul gave encouragement in how to deal with organizing sinners saved by grace. Even in the church – especially in the church – we encounter people with worldly habits. In his travels, Paul saw people in all walks of life. This familiar verse talks about loving money and cultivating evil. Paul’s point is not so much about money as it is about covetousness – loving and desiring something that is not yours.
In the mid-1500s, John Calvin summarized it this way: “no thought should steal upon us to move our hearts to a harmful covetousness that tends to our neighbor’s loss.” It is one thing to admire something that your neighbor has, it is quite another to criticize God’s decision to provide it for him instead of for you. Covetousness, at its heart, is being dissatisfied with God’s graciousness.
Are you more gracious than He is? Are you a better giver? Said differently, the tenth commandment – thou shalt not covet – highlights that a truly loving heart delights in God and has no need to look elsewhere for delight. Covetousness is thinking that we need some thing more than we need God; it is a lack of gratefulness to the One who provides all that we need.
In a fallen and broken world, in a difficult and unforgiving economy, it is easy to think that we need more stuff to ensure that our lives are comfortable. It is easy to think that we deserve more than we have. We work and feel like we deserve to reap benefits. We see others driving cool cars and living in nice houses and we imagine that we ought to be as ‘successful’ as they are. Then, we wish that those things were ours. We covet. Our covetousness is the root of all kinds of evils.
Covetousness leads to shortcuts. We lie, cheat, and steal to get what we want. We develop clever explanations – creating gossip and bigotry – for why others don’t deserve what they have. Our covetousness gets in the way of seeing that Jesus gave Himself freely to cover the sins of sinners.
God provides all that we need to have joy. If He didn’t, He would not be a loving God. Today, love God, for the love of God is a root of all kinds of righteousness. Today, help your neighbor to love God. When you love your neighbor, not his stuff, you rejoice in God’s blessings on him.
