City Life Starter

I. The Word

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness. I Timothy 6:10-11

II. Questions

1.Are you chasing after wealth or chasing after God?

2.In what way is wealth deceitful?

3.What should we pursue if not wealth?

III. Commentary

My father is a sort of pop philosopher. He never went to college, but he is a keen observer and thoughtful man, and I never will forget something he told me when I was young. “Son,” he said, “it doesn’t matter how much money you have, there will always be someone with more.”

My father wasn’t saying I would never be the richest man in the world. That’s not worth saying. His point was that if I was chasing after wealth believing that having more than those around me would make me happy, I would always be disappointed. It’s great advice, and it’s advice I have come back to over the years whenever I was tempted to chase after money.

After I became a Christian, I realized Jesus had said something very similar. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus spoke about the different responses people have after hearing the Gospel. One seed he described as having fallen among weeds, “but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Matthew 13:22 (emphasis added).

Wealth, Jesus was saying, is deceitful. It promises something it cannot deliver. It promises to make you happy, to make you feel good about yourself, to be the answer to all your problems, but it does not deliver. However much you have, you will be inclined to believe if you just had more you would be happy. The problem is if you listen to them the deceitful promises never end. And only those few who end up with more than they can ever spend learn by experience how fraudulent those promises are and that happiness and contentment is not a certain level of income or a threshold number on a net worth statement but something wholly unrelated to both.

When the Apostle Paul wrote to his disciple Timothy, he gave Timothy advice very similar to what my father gave me. Paul told Timothy that the love of money was the root of all sorts of evil and that those who longed for money would only cause themselves grief and perhaps even abandon Jesus. See I Timothy 6:10. Instead, Paul said, Timothy should pursue those character traits that make one more like Jesus. In other words, Paul was telling Timothy that instead of pursuing wealth, he should pursue sanctification.

Jesus said the same thing. After going through a list of materialistic pursuits of the first century, Jesus told His followers, “the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things . . . .But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matthew 6:32-33. Instead of wealth, Jesus said we should (1) pursue God’s righteousness, that is, the character of God, also known as sanctification and, (2) pursue the advancement of the kingdom of God on earth.

In other words, instead of seeking wealth, we should seek to change ourselves and to change the world.