The Money Trap
But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called … I charge you to keep this commandment without spot or blame, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Timothy 6:11-14
Our Western mind thinks compartmentally. We take this passage (the whole passage goes from verses 11 to 16; for brevity only part of it is outlined above) and look at it sentence by sentence or for the more studious, phrase by phrase.
That’s all well and good but we miss Paul’s central emphasis. He sandwiches these verses between two passages that have the common theme of the world’s attitude to wealth.
The preceding passage has the well known ‘People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap … for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil …’ (6:9,10) and the one after ‘Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is uncertain, but in God …’ (6:17 but the whole passage is verses 17 to 19).
Paul wanted Timothy’s attitude to money to be in sharp contrast to the world’s attitude. Timothy was called to live in the light of Christ’s triumphal return and the judgement to follow. The world cares nothing for either.
This doesn’t mean Timothy was to be perpetually poor. It meant he was to focus on what was certain. Money comes and goes but God doesn’t. Money is a wonderful servant but a cruel master and the world has made wealth its master.
Be honest. Have you ever been jealous of how much non-Christians have compared to what you have? We’ve all done that – but only because we haven’t seen wealth from God’s perspective.
If God gave you what He knew He could perfectly trust you with, how much would you have?
Why not pray God works greater faithfulness in you so you use what you already have to give Him maximum glory?
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