What It Means to Love Money
by John Piper
What It Means to Love Money
By John Piper
The love of money is a root of all kinds of
evils. (1 Timothy 6:10)
What did Paul mean when he wrote this? He couldn’t
have meant that
money is always on your mind when you sin. A lot
of sin happens when
we are not thinking about money.
My suggestion is this: he meant that all the evils
in the world come
from a certain kind of heart, namely, the kind of
heart that loves money.
Now what does it mean to love money? It doesn’t
mean to admire the
green paper or the copper coins or the silver
shekels. To know what it
means to love money, you have to ask, What is
money? I would answer
that question like this: Money is simply a symbol
that stands for
human resources. Money stands for what you can get
from man instead of
God.
God deals in the currency of grace, not money:
“Come, everyone who
thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no
money, come, buy and
eat!” (Isaiah 55:1). Money is the currency of
human resources. So the
heart that loves money is a heart that pins its
hopes, and pursues its
pleasures, and puts its trust in what human
resources can offer.
So the love of money is virtually the same as
faith in money — belief
(trust, confidence, assurance) that money will
meet your needs and
make you happy.
Love of money is the alternative to faith in God’s
future grace. It is
faith in future human resources. Therefore the
love of money, or trust
in money, is the underside of unbelief in the
promises of God. Jesus
said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two
masters. . . . You cannot
serve God and money.”
You can’t trust in God and in money at the same
time. Belief in one is
unbelief in the other. A heart that loves money —
that banks on money
for happiness — is not banking on the future grace
of God for
satisfaction.
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