1 Timothy 6 (Daily Bible Study – 1 Timothy)

1 Timothy 6

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They meant a frame of mind which was completely independent of all outward things, and which carried the secret of happiness within itself. Contentment comes from an inward attitude to life. In the Third part of Henry the Sixth, Shakespeare draws a picture of the king wandering in the country places unknown.

He meets two gamekeepers and tells them that he is a king. One of them asks him:. Not deck'd with diamonds and Indian stones,. Long ago the Greek philosophers had gripped the right end of the matter. Epicurus said of himself: Give me a barley cake and a glass of water and I am ready to rival Zeus for happiness. The great men have always been content with little. One of the sayings of the Jewish Rabbis was: He that is contented with his lot. A morsel with salt shalt thou eat, thou shalt drink also water by measure, and shalt sleep upon the ground and live a life of trouble while thou toilest in the Law.

If thou doest this, happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee --, happy shalt thou be in this world and it shall be well with thee in the world to come. Brown quotes a passage from the great preacher Lacordaire: The great men of antiquity were generally poor It always seems to me that the retrenchment of useless expenditure, the laying aside of what one may call the relatively necessary, is the high road to Christian disentanglement of heart, just as it was to that of ancient vigour.

The mind that has learned to appreciate the moral beauty of life, both as regards God and men, can scarcely be greatly moved by any outward reverse of fortune; and what our age wants most is the sight of a man, who might possess everything, being yet willingly contented with little. For my own part, humanly speaking, I wish for nothing.

A great soul in a small house is the idea which has touched me more than any other. It is not that Christianity pleads for poverty. There is no special virtue in being poor, or in having a constant struggle to make ends meet. But it does plead for two things.

It pleads for the realization that it is never in the power of things to bring happiness. All the things in the world will not make a man happy if he knows neither friendship nor love. The Christian knows that the secret of happiness lies, not in things, but in people. It pleads for concentration upon the things which are permanent. We brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of it. The wise men of every age and faith have known this. Two things alone a man can take to God.

He can, and must, take himself; and therefore his great task is to build up a self he can take without shame to God. He can, and must, take that relationship with God into which he has entered in the days of his life. We have already seen that the secret of happiness lies in personal relationships, and the greatest of all personal relationships is the relationship to God. And the supreme thing that a man can take with him is the utter conviction that he goes to One who is the friend and lover of his soul.

Content comes when we escape the servitude to things, when we find our wealth in the love and the fellowship of men, and when we realize that our most precious possession is our friendship with God, made possible through Jesus Christ. For the love of money is a root from which all evils spring; and some, in their reaching out after it, have been sadly led astray, and have transfixed themselves with many pains.

Here is one of the most misquoted sayings in the Bible.

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Scripture does not say that money is the root of all evil; it says that the love of money is the root of all evil. This is a truth of which the great classical thinkers were as conscious as the Christian teachers. Money in itself is neither good nor bad; but the love of it may lead to evil. With it a man may selfishly serve his own desires; with it he may answer the cry of his neighbours need.

1 Timothy 6:17

With it he may facilitate the path of wrong-doing; with it he may make it easier for someone else to live as God meant him to do. Money is not itself an evil, but it is a great responsibility. It is powerful to good and powerful to evil. What then are the special dangers involved in the love of money? There was a Roman proverbial saying that wealth is like sea-water; so far from quenching a man's thirst, it intensifies it. The more he gets, the more he wants.

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It is founded on the desire for security; but wealth cannot buy security. It cannot buy health, nor real love; and it cannot preserve from sorrow and from death. The security which is founded on material things is foredoomed to failure. If he is driven by the desire for wealth, it is nothing to him that someone has to lose in order that he may gain.

The desire for wealth fixes a man's thoughts upon himself, and others become merely means or obstacles in the path to his own enrichment. True, that need not happen; but in fact it often does.

The more a man has to keep, the more he has to lose and, the tendency is for him to be haunted by the risk of loss. There is an old fable about a peasant who rendered a great service to a king who rewarded him with a gift of much money. For a time the man was thrilled, but the day came when he begged the king to take back his gift, for into his life had entered the hitherto unknown worry that he might lose what he had. John Bunyan was right:. That is true even physically. He may so drive his body in his passion to get, that he ruins his health.

He may discover too late what damage his desire has done to others and be saddled with remorse. To seek to be independent and prudently to provide for the future is a Christian duty; but to make the love of money the driving-force of life cannot ever be anything other than the most perilous of sins. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith; lay hold on eternal life, to which you are called, now that you have witnessed a noble profession of your faith in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you in the sight of God, who makes all things alive, and in the sight of Christ Jesus, who, in the days of Pontius Pilate, witnessed his noble confession, that you keep the commandment, that you should be without spot and without blame, until the day when our Lord Jesus Christ appears, that appearance which in his own good times the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords will show, he who alone possesses immortality, he who dwells in the light that no man can approach, he whom no man has seen or ever can see, to whom be honour and everlasting power.

The letter comes to an end with a tremendous challenge to Timothy, a challenge all the greater because of the deliberate sonorous nobility of the words in which it is clothed. Right at the outset Timothy is put upon his mettle. He is addressed as man of God. That is one of the great Old Testament titles. It is a title given to Moses. God's messenger to Eli is a man of God 1 Samuel 2: Samuel is described as a man of God 1 Samuel 9: Shemaiah, God's messenger to Rehoboam, is a man of God 1 Kings Here is a title of honour.

When the charge is given to Timothy, he is not reminded of his own weakness and sin, which might well have reduced him to pessimistic despair; rather he is challenged by the honour which is his, of being God's man. It is the Christian way, not to depress a man by branding him as a lost and helpless sinner, but rather to uplift him by summoning him to be what he has got it in him to be. The Christian way is not to fling a man's humiliating past in his face, but to set before him the splendour of his potential future. The very fact that Timothy was addressed as "Man of God" would make him square his shoulders and throw his head back as one who has received his commission from the King.

The virtues and noble qualities set before Timothy are not just heaped haphazardly together. There is an order in them. First, there comes "righteousness," dikaiosune Greek This is defined as "giving both to men and to God their due. Second, there comes a group of three virtues which look towards God. Godliness, eusebeia Greek , is the reverence of the man who never ceases to be aware that all life is lived in the presence of God. Faith, pistis Greek , here means fidelity, and is the virtue of the man who, through all the chances and the changes of life, down even to the gates of death, is loyal to God.

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Love, agape Greek 26 , is the virtue of the man who, even if he tried, could not forget what God has done for him nor the love of God to men. Third, there comes the virtue which looks to the conduct of life. It is hupomone Greek , The King James Version translates this patience; but hupomone Greek never means the spirit which sits with folded hands and simply bears things, letting the experiences of life flow like a tide over it.

It is victorious endurance. Fourthly, there comes the virtue which looks to men. The Greek word is paupatheia. It is translated gentleness but is really untranslatable. It describes the spirit which never blazes into anger for its own wrongs but can be devastatingly angry for the wrongs of others. It describes the spirit which knows how to forgive and yet knows how to wage the battle of righteousness.

It describes the spirit which walks at once in humility and yet in pride of its high calling from God. It describes the virtue by which at all times a man is enabled rightly to treat his fellow-men and rightly to regard himself. As Timothy is challenged to the task of the future, he is inspired with the memories of the past. In the circumstances of the early Church, baptism was inevitably adult baptism, for men were coming straight from heathenism to Christ. It was confession of faith and witness to all men that the baptised person had taken Jesus Christ as Saviour, Master and Lord.

The earliest of all Christian confessions was the simple creed: But it has been suggested that behind these words to Timothy lies a confession of faith which said: So, then, first of all, he is reminded that he is a man who has given his pledge.

The Christian is first and foremost a man who has pledged himself to Jesus Christ. When Jesus stood before Pilate, Pilate said: Jesus had witnessed that he was a King; and Timothy always had witnessed to the lordship of Christ. When the Christian confesses his faith, he does what his Master has already done; when he suffers for his faith, he undergoes what his Master has already undergone.

When we are engaged on some great enterprise, we can say: He is to remember that his life and work must be made fit for him to see. The Christian is not working to satisfy men; he is working to satisfy Christ.

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The question he must always ask himself is not: And what a memory that is! He is to remember the One who is King of every king and Lord of every lord; the One who possesses the gift of life eternal to give to men; the One whose holiness and majesty are such that no man can ever dare look upon them. The Christian must ever remember God and say: Charge them to do good; to find their wealth in noble deeds; to be ready to share all that they have; to be men who never forget that they are members of a fellowship; to lay up for themselves the treasure of a fine foundation for the world to come.

Sometimes we think of the early Church as composed entirely of poor people and slaves. Here we see that even as early as this it had its wealthy members. They are not condemned for being wealthy nor told to give all their wealth away; but they are told what not to do and what to do with it.

Their riches must not make them proud. They must not think themselves better than other people because they have more money than they. Nothing in this world gives any man the right to look down on another, least of all the possession of wealth. They must not set their hopes on wealth. In the chances and the changes of life a man may be wealthy today and a pauper tomorrow; and it is folly to set one's hopes on what can so easily be lost.

They are told that they must use their wealth to do good; that they must ever be ready to share; and that they must remember that the Christian is a member of a fellowship. And they are told that such wise use of wealth will build for them a good foundation in the world to come. As someone put it: There is a famous Jewish Rabbinic story.

A man called Monobaz had inherited great wealth, but he was a good, a kindly and a generous man. In time of famine he gave away all his wealth to help the poor. His brothers came to him and said: I have laid it up above. My fathers laid up treasure of Mammon: I have laid up treasure of souls. My fathers laid up treasure for this world: I have laid up treasure for the world to come.

Every time we could give and do not give lessens the wealth laid up for us in the world to come; every time we give increases the riches laid up for us when this life comes to an end. The teaching of the Christian ethic is, not that wealth is a sin, but that it is a very great responsibility. If a man's wealth ministers to nothing but his own pride and enriches no one but himself, it becomes his ruination, because it impoverishes his soul. But if he uses it to bring help and comfort to others, in becoming poorer, he really becomes richer. In time and in eternity "it is more blessed to give than to receive.

Avoid irreligious empty talking; and the paradoxes of that knowledge which has no right to be called knowledge, which some have professed, and by so doing have missed the target of the faith. It may well be that the name Timothy is here used in the fullness of its meaning. It comes from two words, timan Greek , to honour, and theos Greek , God and literally means he who honours God.

It may well be that this concluding passage begins by reminding Timothy of his name and urging him to be true to it. The passage talks of the trust that has been entrusted to him. The Greek word for trust is paratheke Greek , which literally means a deposit. It is the word for money deposited with a banker or with a friend. When such money was in time demanded back, it was a sacred duty to hand it back entire. Sometimes children were called a paratheke Greek , a sacred trust. If the gods gave a man a child, it was his duty to present that child trained and equipped to the gods.

The false teachers, whose doctrine and way of life Timothy was to flee, were into self. They were puffed up with pride 6: I am ashamed to say that earlier in my ministry, I promoted some of false teaching on self-esteem that has flooded the church. The entire work is edifying, but he has two wonderful chapters that would get us back on track if we would read and follow them: To quote him briefly,.

There is no other remedy than to tear out from our inward parts this most deadly pestilence of love of strife and love of self, even as it is plucked out by Scriptural teaching Whenever a teaching appeals to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes or the boastful pride of life, we need to take off as fast as we can in the opposite direction. To persevere in the Christian life, the man of God must flee worldliness, especially the love wofcz money that simply furthers the love of self.

It implies effort, diligence, and determination. When we trust in Christ as Savior, God declares us righteous in our standing before Him based upon the atoning sacrifice of His Son. But, having been justified declared righteous by faith, the Christian must then pursue a life of righteousness. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: Obviously, Christians sin 1 John 1: But the pursuit of the Christian is not toward sin, but toward righteousness.

The word is closely related to righteousness. As we saw in 4: You have to diligently discipline yourself to pursue godliness. But it also can refer to the trust in God that consciously relies on Him in every situation of life. As Hebrews 11, the great chapter on faith, shows, men and women of faith believe the promises of God and live in light of them, even in the face of not receiving what is promised, because they trust that God will fulfill His sure word in heaven if not in this life Heb.

Again, you need to pursue faith. How do you pursue faith? By trusting God in the frustrations, irritations, and trials that He sends your way. Instead of learning to trust God with the little trials, many Christians grumble and chafe under them.

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We need to pursue faith in our daily circumstances. We often have the mistaken notion that love just flows effortlessly. If we have to work at it, it must not be love. But the Bible assumes that we all love ourselves quite well. The command to love our neighbor as ourselves is built on that premise. And obviously, since men were born in such a state that they are all too much inclined to self-love--and, however much they deviate from truth, they still keep self-love--there was no need of a law that would increase or rather enkindle this already excessive love.

Hence it is very clear that we keep the commandments not by loving ourselves but by loving God and neighbor; that he lives the best and holiest life who lives and strives for himself as little as he can, and that no one lives in a worse or more evil manner than he who lives and strives for himself alone, and thinks about and seeks only his own advantage II: We only can pursue perseverance by daily trusting in God as we hope in the promise of His coming and the blessings we will enjoy throughout eternity with Him.

Rather, it means strength under control. As the very next word shows, a gentle man must fight. To persevere, the man of God must flee worldliness and pursue godliness as expressed in these six qualities: So Satan attacks sound doctrine, often with subtle errors and truth out of balance.

The history of the Christian church consists of repeated battles where the enemy introduces destructive heresies, those heresies are confronted, and the truth is clarified and proclaimed. Many other New Testament letters have the same polemic thrust. The great church councils and creeds, while not carrying Scriptural authority, were attempts to correct false teaching and to set forth sound teaching.

The Reformation consisted of godly men like Luther and Calvin combatting the corruption and false doctrine that had permeated the Roman Catholic church and setting forth the great truths of Scripture. In every age, there are peace-lovers who promote unity, love, and tolerance as the chief Christian virtues.

Gresham Machen, who stood valiantly for the truth earlier in this century, observed, not only was Paul a great fighter, but also all the great men God has used down through the centuries: To persevere, we must flee worldliness; pursue godliness; and, fight the good fight of the faith. Why does Paul tell him to take hold of it? First, God calls us to salvation or the obtaining of eternal life. Salvation never begins with man, but with God. We all were dead in our transgressions, not only unable to call on God, but hostile and opposed to God, objects of His wrath Eph.

If you have eternal life today, it is not because you first decided to call upon God, but because God, being rich in mercy, first called you and imparted eternal life to you as His free gift, according to His sovereign purpose Eph. Faith is a matter of the heart, but it is expressed outwardly through a public confession in baptism. Third, we take hold of the eternal life God has graciously imparted to us.

This refers to the process of laying hold of that for which we were laid hold of by Christ Jesus Phil. God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Eph. Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, tells of a time when he was especially discouraged during a political campaign: A thousand pictures flashed through my mind, but one scene came sharply into view. The Cuomo family had just moved into a new house, their first house with some trees.

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