PROFITEERING
[An exposition of 1Timothy 6:
9-11 by D. M. Panton , with Scripture quotations from the N.I.V.]
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"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last
days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful,
proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love,
unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure
rather than lovers of God - having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Have nothing to do with them" (2
Timothy 3: 1-5).
"Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept
pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep
your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,
because God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.'
So we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What
can man do to me?' "
"Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word ["the message about the kingdom" (Matt. 13: 19)] and at once
receive it with joy. But since they have
no root, they last only a short time.
When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall
away. Still others, like seed sown among
thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of
wealth and the desires of other things come in and choke the word,
making it unfruitful" (Mark 4:
16-19).
"At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he
had great wealth. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How
hard it is for the rich to enter the
"For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy
person - such a man is an idolater - has any inheritance in the
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No sympton of the Age is more deeply
embedded than the passion for money. Extraordinarily dominant before the War - which
gave it a God-given and tremendous shock, hitting the passion in all nations
with stunning force - it has yet survived, and to-day underlies the war of
classes, and the rivalry of nations. "In
the last days men [men universally] shall be
LOVERS OF MONEY" (2Tim. 3: 2).
Therefore
the Holy Spirit’s warning sinks at once to the very heart of the sin. "People who want to get
rich" - it is remarkable that the apostle does not say, "People who inherit riches"; the words want or ‘desire’ A.V., means a purpose formed after mature
deliberation - "fall into temptation"
(1Tim. 6: 9). It is the
desire to be wealthy, not wealth; it is the love of money, not
money: for money in itself, possessing no moral character,
is morally immaterial: so that the poorest man can be far deeper in this sin
than the wealthiest. It is a lightning flash on every heart. Covetousness
has nothing to do with our bank account: it is our heart-attitude towards
wealth; and all the consequent peril springs, not from the hand that
accumulates the wealth, nor from the brain that plans it, but from the heart
that desires it: and the peril is, that the love
of money can pass muster, and does, as high morality. The Pharisees,
universally taken as models of sanctity, were unmatched as lovers of
money. For covetousness can masquerade as thrift, prudence, foresight: it
can consume a soul that has not a single coarse or sordid sin: it puts within a
man’s reach the possibilities of vast good: it even gives him high standing
in the
The
Holy Spirit unveils to us the consequences of this secret lust. "People who want to get rich fall into temptation"
- temptation to unjust gain, to doubtful business, to dangerous speculation,
to absorbing self-centredness; in a word, to profiteering.
Not that the temptation is always yielded to. Paralyzed from head to foot,
a millionaire to whom health is the one unpurchasable boon, Sir Jesse Boot, gave £250,000 to a
philanthropic scheme, offered it to commemorate "seventy
years of a happy life." Money and misery are by no means
inseparable. Nevertheless the Spirit defines the peril still more
closely: "and a trap," a
Satanic trap; that is, a temptation with an entangling power, out of which
it is not easy for the trapped soul to escape (Ellicott). A rich man
once said: "I owned £10,000, and was a happy
man. Now, £100,000 owns me. It says, ‘Lie awake at nights and
worry.’ It says, ‘Run here,’ and I run. It says, ‘Trust in me,’ and
I trust in riches. I am rich, unhappy, and hankering after
more." "But," someone asked him, "why
don’t you give away the £90,000, and be happy again?" "Ah," he answered, "did
you ever hold the handle of a galvanic battery? The stronger the current
the tighter you hold." So the snare breeds hateful
consequences for the victim on whom its steel trap has snapped: "many foolish and harmful desires, that plunge men into ruin [of
body] and destruction [of soul]"; such as
love of luxury, love of worldly company, love of the pleasures of the table,
love of every kind of indulgences - damning lusts. "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,
because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you’"
(Heb. 13: 5)
The
Holy Spirit next analyses the underlying fact. "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of
evil": that is, it is root-sin; there is no crime which has not
sprung from a love of money; which is more than a desire for wealth - it is not only coveting what I have not
got, but the hoarding of what I have. What evil it breeds!
Prayerlessness, worldliness, lies, thefts, jealousies, law-suits; it estranges
friends, divides families, hardens hearts; it nurses extravagance, pampers
appetite, fosters pride; it "sweats"
labour, freezes up charity, and indulges lust; in countless cases it has been
the direct cause of murder: "A stingy
man," says Solomon, "is eager to get
rich" (Prov. 28: 22). Yet what manna from heaven money
unloved can be, and how it can reveal a softened heart! "Why," Lord
Grey once asked Cecil Rhodes, "do you always
give away cheques of £20, £30, £50, or more, to every ne’er-do-well who wines
to you for help?" "Well,"
said Rhodes, "a man once came to me in
Once
more, and finally, the Spirit emphasizes His warning. "Some people, eager for money" - literally,
reaching out hands eagerly to take (Ellicott) - "have
wandered from the faith." Nothing so hardens a
man against all truth - and especially God’s truth on laying up treasure - as
the love of money; it is an absorbed egotism, the enemy of all higher
love. No Church grows in hoarded wealth, and whose members are amassing
riches, which is not also growing in unbelief: the love of money and the love of truth are incompatible: "You cannot serve both God and Money" (Matt. 6:24; Luke 16: 13); it is covetousness [idolatry] or
Christ. So the sorrowful conclusion ends in sobs: "and pierced themselves with many griefs";
pierced themselves round about (as a hand plunged into a hornet’s nest) with
many pangs. "Millionaires
who laugh." Said Andrew
Carnegie, "are rare." Sir Earnest Cassel, who spend vast fortunes for the benefit of mankind, a
multi-millionaire, the friend of kings and emperors, said to one of his
visitors: "You may have all the money in the
world, and yet be a lonely, sorrowing man. The light has gone out of my life. I
live in this beautiful house, which I have furnished with all the luxury and
wonder of art; but, believe me, I no longer value my
millions. I sit here for hours every night grieving for my beloved daughter."
How much keener must be the sorrow which wakes up to the shame of how the
wealth was amassed! Conscience is crucified on a cross of gold. Of
four wealth-seeking Christians that I have known, one never enters the doors of
a church of which he was once a deacon; the second is living in open sin; the
third ended in a lunatic asylum; and the forth died in the conviction that he
had committed the unpardonable sin. The
true wealth lies in making others wealthy. Mr Charrington, who renounced a fortune
for Christ, once wrote: "In early life I might
have inherited a great fortune, which would have enabled me to live in luxury
and ease; but, happily for me, I think I chose the better part in relinquishing
great wealth and devoting my life in working and living on a small income in
the East End of London, I trust for the benefit of my fellow creatures. I
can assure all, after fifty years experience, that my life has been a far
happier one in living for others, than if I had spent my whole life for my own
personal gratification." No life is so charged with joy as
the self-renouncing life: "Poor, yet making
many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything" (2 Cor. 6: 10).
So
Paul sums up in words of extraordinary vigour. "But you, man of God"- is there a sublimer description of a Christian in the world? - "flee from all this" - the love of money, and all
its brood of sin: man of the world, pierce yourself through with many ‘griefs’; man of God, shun
the love of money as you would shun leprosy. "With such words before him, one would think that any
Christian man would as laying up money, or is planning to do so, would at once
abandon his project. But how many such cases have been heard of? I
cannot remember one" (J. P. Gladstone). How remarkable that even a
Timothy has to be warned against a love of money! If (Paul says)
you would be a man of God - a man who belongs to God, who lives for God, who is
like God - flee the desire to be rich: "AND
PERSUE RIGHTEOUSNESS, GODLINESS, FAITH, LOVE, ENDURANCE AND GENTLENESS."
-
D. M. Panton.
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CONCLUDING REMARKS ON WHAT APPEARS TO
BE A CONTRADICTION
Immediately
the disciple is faced with a problem, and some serious questions may
immediately spring to mind. Is it worth
while to follow Christ? Does not such a lifestyle involve one in great
personal loss and persecution? Is it not
written: "In this world you will have trouble,"
and "everyone who wants to live a godly life in
Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (John
16: 33; 2 Tim. 3: 12). "Is there adequate compensation for such a sacrifice and
endurance?" A correct
interpretation of he following words hold the answer to these questions: "Fight the good fight
of faith. Take
hold of the eternal* life to which you were called" (1Tim. 6: 12).
[* It should be evident to all regenerate believers
that there is an apparent contradiction in the above text, for we read in Romans 6.,
that "eternal life" is a “free gift” of God: and we don’t ‘fight’ in order to ‘take hold’
if it! "For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made
sinners, so also through the obedience
of the one man [Christ Jesus] the many will be made [‘declared’] righteous" - That is, by being accredited with Christ’s
righteousness - justified by faith. - "The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased grace increased
all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace
might reign through [imputed] righteousness
to bring eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5: 18-21): ‘eternal
life’ is therefore a ‘free gift’ of ‘grace’. Again: " For
you granted him [Jesus Christ] authority over
all people that he might give eternal life
to all those you have [by grace] given him" (John 17: 2).
What
appears to be a contradiction, is overcome when the
Greek word (‘aionios’), (in the context
above) is translated ‘age-lasting’ instead
of “eternal”.
A. L Chitwood commenting on Hebrews 5: 9 says:-
"The word ‘eternal’ in the English text is misleading. Those for whom Christ is the source
of salvation (i.e., Christians,
regenerate believers) already possess eternal salvation; and, beyond that, this salvation was not acquired through obedience to Christ, as in the text. Rather, it was acquired through believing on the Lord Jesus Christ
(John 3: 16).
Obedience to Christ, resulting from suffering, can come into view only following belief, never before.
Only the saved have ‘passed from death unto life’ and are in a position to suffer and
subsequently obey. The unsaved are still
‘dead in
trespasses and sins’
(John 5: 24; Eph. 2: 1).
1. ETERNAL
“The Greek language, from which our English versions have
been translated, does not contain a word for ‘eternal.’ A person using the Greek language thinks in the
sense of ‘ages’ ; and the way this language is normally used in the New
Testament to express ‘eternal,’ apart from textual considerations, is through the use of
the Greek words eis tous aionas ton aionon, meaning, ‘unto [or ‘with respect to’] the
ages of the ages’ (ref. Heb. 13: 21; 1Pet.
4: 11; Rev. 1: 6; 4: 9, 10 for several examples
of places where these words are used, translated ‘forever and ever’ in most
versions).
Another less frequently used way to express ‘eternal’ in the Greek New
Testament, apart from textual considerations, is through the use of a shortened
form of the preceding - eis tous aionas, meaning
"unto [or, ‘with respect to’] the ages" (ref. Rom. 9: 5; 11: 36;
2Cor. 11: 31; Heb. 13: 8
for several examples of places where these words are
used, translated ‘forever’ in most versions).
The word from the Greek text translated ‘eternal’ in Hebrews
5: 9 is aionios. This is the adjective
equivalent of the noun aion, referred
to in the preceding paragraph in the plural form to express ‘eternal.’ Aion
means ‘an aeon [the word ‘aeon’ is derived from aion] or ‘an era,’ usually understood
throughout the Greek New Testament as ‘an age.’
Aionios, the adjective
equivalent of aion is used seventy-one
times in the Greek New Testament and has been indiscriminately translated ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’
in almost every instance in the various English versions. This word
though should be understood about thirty of these seventy-one times in the
sense of ‘age-lasting’ rather than ‘eternal’; and the occurrence in Heb. 5: 9 forms a case in
point.
Several good examples of other places where aionios
should be translated and understood as ‘age-lasting’ are Gal.
6: 8; 1Tim. 6: 12; Titus 1: 2; 3: 7.
These passages have to do with running the present race of the faith
in view of one day realizing an inheritance in the kingdom,
which is the hope set before Christians.
On the other hand, aionios
can be understood in the sense of ‘eternal’ if the text so indicates.
Several good examples of places
where aionios should be so translated
and understood are John 3: 15, 16, 36. These passages
have to do with life derived through faith in Christ
because of His finished work at
Textual considerations
must always be taken into account when properly translating and understanding aionios, for this is a word which can be
used to imply either "age-lasting" or "eternal"; and it is
used both ways numerous times in the New Testament."
Textual considerations ‘leave no room to question exactly how aionios should be understood and translated
in 1 Timothy 6: 12. Life during the
coming age, occupying a position as co-heir with Christ in that coming day’,
is what our context is all about: "But you,
man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith,
love, endurance, and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of" [‘age-lasting’ or ‘life for the age’] "to
which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of
many witnesses" (1 Tim. 6: 11, 12).
The
rich young ruler asked Jesus what he most do in
order to inherit the kingdom, and when he heard the words: "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, ... the man's
face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth" (Mark 10: 21,22).
"How hard [but not impossible] it is for the rich
to enter the
It
was the love of riches which disqualified the Rich Young Ruler
from attaining an inheritance in "the
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