A Root of All Kinds of Evil

“Lovers of Money”

(2 Timothy 3:2, October 9, 2011)

1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money,...

For people will be lovers of

Concerning the New Testament era known as “the last days,” Paul warns Timothy that people will not only be self-serving, they will also be money-loving. These qualities will be on display in the world, but they will also be seen in the church.

We might have some reasonable confusion about whether it is a good thing to be a lover of self. Does anyone want to defend the goodness of being a lover of money?

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The love of money is not only found among the irreligious, but also among the most religious. It is not only exhibited among the outwardly successful, but even among those who consider themselves middle class or poor.

So many people live their lives with money accumulation as their chief goal. Because of this, the love of money, particularly for young and ambitious people, seems absolutely normal.

The Greek word translated here with the English phrase “lovers of money” has this range of translation possibilities: money-loving, avaricious, and covetous. It is used in only one other passage in the New Testament, where Luke says that the Pharisees were lovers of money.

One of the challenges with the love of money, which is a root of all kinds of evil, is that it blinds the person attacked by it. See Matthew 6:19-24. It is easier for others to see the love of money in us than it is for us to see it in ourselves.

One of the remedies to the problem of loving money is to give it away with a generous heart.

Christ is our eternal example of the cheerful giver, and the message of giving is at the heart of the Christian gospel. As the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”