1 Timothy 6:6-19 Commentary

Robert Frost entitled his arguably most well-known poem “The Road Not Taken.” It begins, famously, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” That phrase likely, in turn, helped inspire M. Scott Peck’s arguably most famous book’s title: The Road Less Taken.

While much might be (and has been) said about both Frost and Peck’s works, their most famous titles might help inspire this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s preachers’ own message title. In 1 Timothy 6, after all, Paul summons his son in the faith Timothy to follow a kind of road that relatively few people follow, in part because it makes “all the difference.”

Preachers want to continue to listen for the Spirit’s prompting as we consider how to preach on this passage. Some may choose to deal with the text expositionally as we systematically proclaim it from its start to its finish. Others may choose to organize our message loosely around the two “roads” Paul describes in 1 Timothy 6.

In either case, however, preachers might begin by noting that Paul begins this Sunday’s Lesson with verse 6’s culturally radical assertion: “But [de*] godliness [eusebeia] with contentment [autarkeias] is great gain [porismos megas].” Its de (“but”) signals a contrast between what Paul has just written to Timothy and what he’s about to write.

In this case it seems that the apostle is comparing verse 5 and 6’s “roads.” In verses 4-5 he writes that ungodly teachers “have an unhealthy interest in … constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.” These are folks whose life’s goal, whose road’s destination is to, in the words of The Message, “make a fast buck.”

In verses 9-10 Paul insists such a goal is nothing more than a “road” that leads to a dead end. “Those who want [boulomenoi] to get rich [ploutein],” he warns there, “fall into temptation [peirasmon] and a trap [pagida] and many foolish [anoetous] and harmful [blaberas] desires that plunge [bithizoun] people into ruin [olethron] and destruction [apoleian].”

The apostle’s vivid language describes the behavior not of people whom God creates in God’s image but animals who simply follow their natural impulses. He warns that people who wish to become rich stumble into something like the traps that humans set in order to capture and kill animals. Lusting for wealth, such people stumble into trouble that easily leads to death.

But that leaves unanswered the question of what exactly Paul asserts is the nature of greed’s destructiveness. It’s tempting to assume that it’s material. Paul may, in fact, be insisting that people who make it their life’s goal to become wealthy easily fall for all sorts of schemes that can ultimately destroy their financial wellness.

But what if Paul is also, if not solely, referring to a kind of spiritual destruction that lies at the end of greed’s road? What if he’s asserting that greed is spiritually destructive in part because it tries to deny our fundamental dependance on God for everything good thing we’ll ever have?

After all, in verse 7 the apostle reminds his son in the faith Timothy, “We brought [eisenenkamen] nothing into the world, and we can take [exenenkein] nothing out of it.” To be human is, in other words, to have nothing more when we die than we had when we were born. Paul reminds us when we die, we’ll have to surrender to someone or thing everything our greed and love of money fueled us to spend our lives chasing.

Thankfully, then, the apostle reminds God’s adopted children we aren’t just utterly dependent creatures whose material possessions have an expiration date that’s our death. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson also insists those who receive God’s grace with our faith are also those whom God richly graces.

God gives Jesus’ friends everything we need, and, often, so very, very much more. “God,” insists Paul in verse 13, “gives life [zoogonountos] to everything.” In making that assertion, the apostle implies that God graces God’s dearly beloved people with not just life, but also everything we need that sustains that life.

However, our greedy pursuit of material gain denies God’s astounding generosity. God, sings the apostle in verse 17, “richly [plousious] provides [parechonti] us with everything for our enjoyment [apolausin].” We don’t have to put our hope in accumulating as much “stuff” as possible. Paul insists Jesus’ followers can, instead, put our hope in God who, in the paraphrase of The Message, “piles on all the riches we could ever manage.”

God, in fact, isn’t stingy or just utilitarian in God’s distribution of good gifts. God also lavishes on us everything for our apolausin (“enjoyment”). God longs for God’s adopted children to take pleasure not just in our almost countless gifts, but also in their generous Giver.

Paul implies human’s searches for riches leave us with little time and energy enjoy that with which God has graced us. Those who “love … money” [philargynia] (10) are never satisfied with what they have. They’re always chasing more, with the result that they easily fall into traps or, perhaps more disconcertingly, “wander [orgomenoi] from the faith and pierce [periepeiran] themselves with many griefs [odynais] (10).

Those whom the Spirit has taught to be content, by contrast, realize they don’t have to spend their lives chasing material or any other kind of wealth. Paul reminds Jesus’ friends that we can sit and stand still long enough to enjoy and share the countless good things with which God graces us every day.

Of course, those who preach in countries that have free market economies realize that part of what fuels our countries’ economies is a kind of material restlessness and greed. The road of godliness with contentment is our cultures’ “road less taken.” We, in fact, proclaim 1 Timothy’s 6’s gospel of God’s generosity against the background noise with which advertisers bombard us. Our culture constantly summons even members of our churches to strive to buy bigger and better things that enhance their maker’s profits that they can use to research and develop even bigger, better and, often, more expensive things.

Preachers can be honest with our hearers about our own struggles with greed in such a consumptive culture. We might also look for ways to encourage open, honest and loving conversations with our fellow Christians about how contentment with godliness can fit into an often-consumerist culture.

In this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul basically announces that Jesus’ friends can be content in a godly way because God gives us everything we need, including life both now and forevermore. We can be “content with food and clothing” (8) because God gives us everything we need, including life both now and forevermore. We can flee rather than chase greedy lifestyles that expose us to all sorts of dangers because God gives us everything we need, including life both now and forevermore.

In fact, the apostle summons God’s adopted children who know that God gives us everything we need and more to invite others to join us in placing hope in God. In verses 17ff., Paul tells his son in the faith Timothy to “Command [parangelle] those who are rich [plousious] in this present world not to be arrogant [hypselophronein] nor to put their hope [elpikenai] in wealth which is so uncertain [adeloteti] … Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds [ergois kalois], and to be generous [eumetadotous] and willing to share.”

In writing this Paul commends a fundamental posture towards both God and our possessions. Greedy people assume that our possessions are the result of our hard work. They put their trust in the fruits of their labors. But the apostle reminds us that everything we have is a gift from God.

This generous God, Paul reminds his son in the faith Timothy, is a great, great God. The paraphrase of verses 15ff. of The Message calls God “the Blessed and Undisputed Ruler, High King, High God … the only one death can’t touch, his light so bright no one can get close … Honor to him, and eternal rule!”

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Paul insists that in many ways the recipients of this amazing God’s countless and diverse graces don’t get to choose how we use what we have. God gives us good things so that we may both enjoy and share them with those who don’t have them. Jesus’ friends don’t want to be rich in material things. We want to be wealthy in mercy.

“In this way,” after all, as Paul writes in verse 19, we “will lay up treasure [apothesaurizontas] for” ourselves “as a firm foundation [themelion kalon] for the coming age [mellon], so that” we “may take hold [epilabontai] of the life that is truly [ontos] life.” Instead of working to stockpile material treasures, Jesus’ followers work to stockpile the spiritual treasures that are contentment with godliness.

It’s almost as if the apostle suggests that those whose hands are full of earthly but temporary treasures are full to receive the only treasure that lasts, that is eternal life. To paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer, it’s only in giving away what we have that Jesus’ followers are free to follow the road that receives everything God wants to give us.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

Daniel Akst wrote a book entitled, Wonder Boy:Barry Minkow, the Kid Who Swindled Wall Street. In it he points out how in the 1980s people elevated money-making “to the level of a sacrament . . . the economists extended their hegemony far beyond the narrow realm of dollars and cents to claim dominion over political science, ethics, and philosophy, much as theologians ruled the intellectual roost in the MA.

“People in casual conversation talked about market solutions to problems in their love lives . . . a sense of entitlement was in the land. People were no longer abashed about things. Hypocrisy itself had come to seem archaic. Guilt – healthy, civilizing, ennobling guilt – was out, yet our sheer grasping selfishness didn’t interfere at all with our obsessive need to feel wholesome, to love ourselves. Echoing across the decade were the words of Ivan Boesky, that consummate crook, who proclaimed, ‘Greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself’.”