What Is the Love of Money?

Who has it? Why is it dangerous?

UNDER the present economic system how long could you live in your home without money? How would you be able to feed and clothe yourself and your family without it? Money is necessary for practically everything you need and do. In this world it is essential for daily living. But this very usefulness of money can have a damaging effect upon you.

When your pursuit of money for providing the necessities and comforts of life changes into a consuming desire to be rich, money ceases to be your servant and becomes your master, your god. It becomes the thing for which you live. Like a degenerative cancer, greed for money eats away Christian qualities, plunging you to a bestial level where your only code becomes self-interest. It can cause you to lose sight of justice, truth, honesty, generosity and mercy. Because of money’s usefulness extreme love for it can develop. Against this wrong attitude the apostle Paul gave warning a long time ago. Writing from Macedonia, Paul told Timothy, who was in the city of Ephesus, a big commercial center of that time: “Those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.”—1 Tim. 6:9, 10.http://biblize.com/search?q=1+Tim.+6:9,+10&q_scope=q_en
It was not money itself of which Paul gave warning. He did not say money itself was the root of injurious things or the cause of hurtful desires and destruction. What he warned against was the greedy love of money, the avaricious desire to be rich. The same warning had been given long before his day and is recorded in the book of Proverbs: “Do not toil to gain riches.” (Prov. 23:4http://biblize.com/search?q=Prov.+23:4&q_scope=q_enThis toiling for riches has caused no end of misery, unhappiness and bloodshed. Paul’s warning was especially appropriate for the Christians in the commercially prosperous city of Ephesus as well as Christians living in other prosperous cities, such as Laodicea, which was only forty miles east of Ephesus. Places such as these where there were big money transactions and lots of trade could be a materialistic quagmire for unwary Christians.

Apparently the Christians in Laodicea failed to keep Paul’s warning in mind. By the time John wrote the book of Revelation, a little more than thirty years later, the Laodicean Christians had succumbed to the love of money. Because of it they had lost their spiritual beauty and spiritual riches. Addressing them, Revelation 3:17http://biblize.com/search?q=+Revelation+3:17&q_scope=q_en

says: “You say: ‘I am rich and have acquired riches and do not need anything at all,’ but you do not know you are miserable and pitiable and poor and blind and naked.” They were spiritually poor and falling into spiritual ruin because they were placing a higher value on material wealth than on spiritual riches. Their attitude toward money had become bad.