1 Timothy 6:6-16
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 9 Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
11 But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you 14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
It Pays to Be Content
Do you ever think about the profitability of your Christianity? Maybe you don’t necessarily attach a dollar sign to your faith. Maybe you don’t count the hours you spend in church or calculate the cost of doing Christian things. Maybe you simply ask the question, “What’s in it for me?”
I can’t speak for you, but I don’t often say those words out loud. It doesn’t sound particularly Christian to look to get something out of your faith, but have you ever gone through a tough time and gotten frustrated with God, “Look, God, I’m doing everything you’ve asked. Why is this happening to me?” Well, that’s just another way of saying, “God, I kept my end of the bargain, now it’s time for you to pay up, for my faith to pay off.”
It’s a sad reality but it’s a reality nonetheless that greed can infiltrate the one organization on earth that has the most reason not to be greedy. The church has every reason to be content and so do all the Christians who comprise it. And in the short 11 sentences that we read from Paul’s letter to Timothy, I counted no fewer than 15 reasons for Christians to be content, all supporting the overarching theme that Paul states right at the beginning: Godliness with contentment is great gain. In other words, It Pays to Be Content.
Now that may seem a little counterintuitive. Contentment means being satisfied with what you have. A businessperson would not go very far if they were content to stay where they were, i.e. if they didn’t expand into more or larger markets, if they didn’t evaluate how to maximize their earnings or their efficiency. Contentment seems like the enemy of profit and gain.
What Paul writes to Timothy, however, is that contentment is really the enemy of greed, the endless desire for more, the attitude that is never satisfied. Paul gives us all kinds of rational reasons why greed is not worth our time.
He says that “we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.”[1] Like the old saying goes, there are no hitches on hearses. Or, as Solomon says in the book of Ecclesiastes, “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me.”[2]
Dissatisfaction, the endless drive for more, is not a profitable way to live. It’s very short-sighted and ignores the fact that wealth, money, property, power, influence are all temporary; and, compared to the eternity we have waiting for us after death, it’s a significantly tiny portion of our overall lives. Chasing after the dollar, picking up every extra shift and overtime hour, may be necessary at times, but is no way to live – even from a merely rational perspective – because you’ll only be able to enjoy your earnings for a limited amount of time.
Paul goes on to say, “If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that.”[3] There are basic needs in life that we dare not neglect in the name of faith or trust in God. He has given us abilities and responsibilities in this life. But no gaming system, new model car, or cabin at the lake is necessary for life, nor is it even the cure for craving more. Once you have one gaming system, you want the next. New model cars are made every year. A cabin at the lake turns into a boat and a pool table and a remodeled loft.
Those things aren’t evil in themselves, but it’s the basic difference between wants and needs. Every one of us has what we need. God has seen to that for you. The question is, is that enough for you, or will you be dissatisfied until you also have what you want as well?
That’s why Paul says, “Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.”[4]
Did you catch the motion of that sentence? Paul starts with a fall and ends with a splash. The desire for more doesn’t just trip us up. The picture that Paul paints here is of the proverbial millstone that gets tied around our necks as we’re tossed into the sea. It drags us down, faster and faster, into ruin and destruction. It is that downward spiral out of control and into foolish and harmful desires.
You’ve seen it, I’m sure – if not only in movies and television and novels, also even in your own life and in the lives of those around you. I was just talking to my mechanic this week and he was explaining how difficult it was for him to work in a setting where the company fabricated lies to earn more money and where his former accountant was advising him to work around the law to maximize his profit. I don’t know my mechanic’s spiritual condition, but he could recognize and articulate the foolishness and the harm that our desire for more creates; it puts you in danger of prison and litigation.
But it’s worse than just getting in trouble with the CRA or losing customers because of questionable ethics. Paul says, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”[5]
Money isn’t the problem; it’s our love for it that spawns all kind of sin. We can think of fraud, and dollar-sign marriages and divorces, robberies, murders and wars that have all been born of greed. But by only considering the big-name evils, we run the risk of thinking that this warning doesn’t apply to us. The reality is that Paul is talking to a man of faith – a pastor, in this case – and Scripture addresses the malcontent of believers time and again.
Nathan came to David with a story of a rich man who stole his poor neighbor’s ewe lamb to feed a guest, to illustrate how David’s dissatisfaction with his sex life was threatening his eternal life. The rich young man who came to Jesus couldn’t bring himself to follow him because he loved his wealth too much. Jesus told several stories of greed, like our Gospel Lesson today,[6] as warnings to believers. Ananias and Sapphira died because they greedily lied about the wealth they offered in God’s house. Judas was one of Jesus’ own disciples and it was greed that inspired him to betray our Savior to death.
Greed, dissatisfaction, malcontent are not just problems for mega-millionaires or rank unbelievers. They are alive and well in the hearts of believers like you and me too, and Paul warns: “Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith.”[7] If we want to talk about ruin and destruction, the worst of it is not when the CRA catches up and takes your ill-gotten gain away; it’s not when you lose good ratings on your business or get tossed in prison for your fraud. The ruin and destruction that Paul warns us about is what we saw in the Gospel.
The rich man didn’t realize how much his wealth had stolen his heart from God until he died and woke up in hell. Discontentment is no small thing. It threatens our eternal lives, which is why Paul says to Timothy, “But you, man of God, flee from all this… Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.”[8]
Greed infiltrates every kind of life and every corner of our hearts, but all hope is not lost, because God does not define us by our sin; instead, he calls us by his name. “Man of God,” Paul calls Timothy. That’s what you are too. You are God’s own child and an heir of his grace. Like Timothy, you too have been called to faith and to eternal life. And no amount of dissatisfaction can disqualify you from the eternal life that has already been given to you in Jesus’ name.
It may sound strange how Paul immediately transitions into a commentary on Timothy’s confession: “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”[9] It almost sounds like Timothy earned that eternal life by virtue of his confession. But it couldn’t be further from the truth. What Paul is referencing here is Timothy’s baptism, when God put his name on Timothy and formally adopted him into his family. It’s baptism that qualifies us to claim the title “Man” or “Woman of God.” That’s God’s gift to us, and through it also the gift of eternal life in that name.
Our sins of greed, dissatisfaction and malcontent were washed away when we were baptized, because those waters connect us to the death of our Savior Jesus, who also made a good confession in the moments before he died, in the sight of Pontius Pilate.
There Jesus stood, betrayed by his own, handed over as a direct result of human greed, and facing certain death. He could have downplayed his role or denied it outright to save his life. But he made the good confession, that he is the King of the Jews but so much more. He is the only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal.[10] He would be crucified for his confession, and suffer death for crimes he did not commit. But the grave could not hold him in and after three days he rose to new life as a testament that your sins are forgiven and that you have new life in his name.
We can make that same confession – that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and that we are not governed by our greed anymore. We are men and women of God, baptized into his name, given the hope of eternal life, who fight the good fight of faith.
To be sure, it will be a battle. It will not be easy to deny the cravings that we have for more or better in this life, but contentment in God is not the same thing as complacency. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care or want to improve. It simply means that our desires and ambitions are for something else – something better – than wealth, possessions, power, influence.
Paul says, “Flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness,”[11] and, “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.”[12] These are more worth our time and effort because we can actually take them with us when we go. Pursuing these godly qualities don’t put us in danger of the temptations and traps or foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. As Paul says in his letter to the Galatians, “There are no laws against things like that.”[13]
Contentment in God does not result in complacency but in the concerted effort to labor for the Lord. To take hold of the eternal life that is ours by faith. To make the good confession for the world to hear that Jesus is our Savior and Sovereign King.
It pays to be content. There is great profit for being a Christian. It may not reflect in your bank account, but in God’s book you have the most precious treasure – forgiveness for your sin, salvation in Jesus’ blood, and eternal life in his name.
Now, to the blessed and only Ruler, to King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, to him be honor and might forever. Amen.[14]
[1] 1 Timothy 6:7
[2] Ecclesiastes 2:18
[3] 1 Timothy 6:8
[4] 1 Timothy 6:9
[5] 1 Timothy 6:10
[6] Luke 16:19-31
[7] 1 Timothy 6:10
[8] 1 Timothy 6:11,12
[9] 1 Timothy 6:12
[10] 1 Timothy 6:15,16
[11] 1 Timothy 6:11
[12] 1 Timothy 6:12
[13] Galatians 5:23
[14] 1 Timothy 6:15,16