The princes of Moab came to Pethor a second time, and this time there were more of them, and they were more honourable than the first. They brought a message from Balak, their king, who was terrified of the vast company of Israelites camped on his border. Balak wanted the famous seer Balaam to come and curse them. The first delegation had been sent home with a refusal, because God had told Balaam plainly, “Thou shalt not go with them; thou shalt not curse the people: for they are blessed” (Numbers 22:12). Now Balak raised his offer. “I will promote thee unto very great honour, and I will do whatsoever thou sayest unto me” (Numbers 22:17). Name your price.
Balaam’s answer sounded magnificent. “If Balak would give me his house full of silver and gold, I cannot go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more” (Numbers 22:18). Then, in the very next breath, he asked the princes to stay the night, “that I may know what the LORD will say unto me more” (Numbers 22:19). God had already spoken. Balaam wanted a different answer. That night God allowed him to go, on the condition that he speak only what he was given. And in the morning Balaam saddled his donkey and rode off with the princes of Moab, his mind full of silver and gold. Scripture adds a chilling sentence: “God’s anger was kindled because he went” (Numbers 22:22).
The road ran out through open fields and then between the walled vineyards. Suddenly the donkey swerved off the path and into a field. Balaam beat her back onto the road. Further on, where the path narrowed between two vineyard walls, she pressed herself hard against one of them and crushed his foot against the stones. He beat her again. Then, in a place so narrow that there was no room to turn either way, she simply lay down under him. Balaam, in a fury, took his staff to her.
Then the donkey spoke. “What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times?” (Numbers 22:28). And the great seer, the man whose words kings paid fortunes for, argued with her as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee” (Numbers 22:29).
There was a sword. It was in the hand of the angel of the LORD, who had been standing in the road all along, and it was pointed at Balaam. The donkey had seen it three times. The prophet had seen nothing at all.
The wages of unrighteousness
When God finally opened Balaam’s eyes, the truth came out:
Then the LORD opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the LORD standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face. And the angel of the LORD said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive.
“I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me.” The animal Balaam had been beating was the only reason he was still alive. Her swerving, her crushing of his foot against the wall and her refusal to go on were all acts of protection. The man who could see visions could not see the sword in front of him, because his eyes were fixed on the reward at the end of the road.
Balaam never did curse Israel. Each time he opened his mouth on the heights of Moab, blessing came out instead. And yet the New Testament remembers him for one thing above all. Peter, writing about false teachers in the church, describes them this way:
Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls: an heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children: Which have forsaken the right way, and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam the son of Bosor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet.
“Who loved the wages of unrighteousness.” That is Peter’s verdict on Balaam. Jude says the same, warning of those who “ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward” (Jude 1:11). Balaam’s religious language was impeccable. His heart was for sale. And when he could not earn Balak’s money by cursing Israel, he found another way. Numbers later records that Israel was led into idolatry and immorality at Peor “through the counsel of Balaam” (Numbers 31:16). He had taught Moab how to make Israel curse itself. Not long afterwards, Balaam was killed with the sword among the Midianites (Numbers 31:8), the very sword he had narrowly escaped on the road.
That is the shape of the danger Paul warned Timothy about. The love of money is a desire that wounds the very person who pursues it. It crushed Balaam’s foot against a wall, and in the end it cost him his life.
What Paul actually wrote
Few verses are misquoted as often as 1 Timothy 6:10. People say, “The Bible says money is the root of all evil.” It does not. Paul’s sentence is more precise and more searching: “For the love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).
The Greek word Paul uses is philargyria, literally “fondness for silver.” It describes an attachment of the heart, an affection that has fastened onto money itself. Paul’s warning reaches beyond the possession of money to the devotion of the heart. A rich man may hold his wealth loosely and use it well. A poor man may think about money every waking hour. The size of the purse matters far less than where it sits in the affections.
It also helps to notice that Paul’s phrase is not as sweeping as it sounds in English. There is no definite article before root in the Greek, and all evil is more naturally read as “all kinds of evils.” Pride, lust and cruelty have their own roots, and Paul makes no claim that every sin in the world flows from greed. His point is that the love of money is a root from which every kind of evil can grow. Lying, theft, betrayal, injustice, broken families, compromised churches: all of them have, at one time or another, grown out of this one root.
Timothy was ministering in Ephesus, a wealthy commercial city with a great temple, a busy harbour and a thriving trade in religious goods. Acts 19 records how the silversmiths of Ephesus rioted when Paul’s preaching threatened their income from making shrines of Diana. Money and religion were already closely entangled there. Paul knew that the church would face that same entanglement from the inside.
When gain is mistaken for godliness
The warning about the love of money does not appear in isolation. It comes at the end of Paul’s description of a certain kind of teacher:
If any man teach otherwise, and consent not to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which is according to godliness; He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.
PunchlineThese men had abandoned “wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.” They loved controversy and verbal battles. Their ministries produced “envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings.” And underneath it all was a fundamental confusion: they were “supposing that gain is godliness.”
That phrase can mean two things, and both are dangerous. It can mean that these teachers treated godliness as a means of gain, a way of making money. Religion had become a business. Or it can mean that they regarded gain as the evidence of godliness, so that whoever had the most money must be the most favoured by God. In practice, the two errors usually travel together. The preacher who uses the pulpit to enrich himself will soon point to his own wealth as proof that God is with him.
We need to say this carefully, because there is a truth here that must not be lost. God is not against His people prospering. He gives “power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18). He blesses diligent hands. It is right to pray for provision, to expect His blessing on honest work, and to thank Him when it comes. A believer who prospers is not automatically suspect, and a ministry that is well resourced is not automatically corrupt.
But financial gain can never become the measure of godliness. Wealth is not a spiritual report card. The richest man in the congregation is not necessarily the holiest, and the widow who cannot pay her rent is not under God’s displeasure. When a church begins to rank people by their income, seat them by their giving, or teach that a believer’s bank balance reveals their faith, it has adopted exactly the error Paul is describing.
The same error lies behind manipulative appeals for money. When a congregation is told that a particular “seed” will guarantee a particular financial breakthrough, or that withholding a certain sum will bring a curse, godliness is being treated as a means of gain. Peter warned that false teachers “through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you” (2 Peter 2:3). Make merchandise of you. People become a market. Paul’s instruction to Timothy is short: “from such withdraw thyself.”
The will to be rich
After the false teachers, Paul turns to the ordinary believer and describes the same desire at work in everyday life: “But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition” (1 Timothy 6:9).
The word translated will is boulomai. It means to resolve, to purpose, to set the will on something. Paul is describing people for whom becoming rich has become the organising goal of life. That is different from wanting to provide for your family, wanting to build a business or hoping for a better income. Those are good desires. The danger begins when wealth becomes the thing the whole life is reaching for, the thing that decides every other question. Proverbs gives the same warning:
Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom. Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.
“Labour not to be rich.” The proverb does not forbid hard work; elsewhere Proverbs praises the diligent hand again and again. It forbids making riches the object of your labour, wearing yourself out for wealth as an end in itself. And it gives a reason: “riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.” Every Nigerian who has watched savings lose half their value in a single year knows how quickly money can fly.
Paul traces what happens next. First comes temptation: situations in which the desire for money pulls against what is right. Then a snare: a trap, like the ones used to catch birds, that closes before the victim realises what is happening. Then “many foolish and hurtful lusts.” The desires multiply and grow stranger. Finally, they “drown men in destruction and perdition.” The verb pictures a ship being sunk to the bottom of the sea.
A young woman I will call Oge described that slow sinking to me after she had lost almost everything. She had graduated from university in Enugu with a good degree and no job. A friend introduced her to sports betting on her phone. At first she won a little and felt clever. Then she lost, and borrowed to win it back. Then she began staking her rent money, then money borrowed from her sister, then money she had collected for her church women’s group. “I was not thinking about the money any more,” she said. “I was thinking about the next win. It was the only thing in my head.” She described a feeling of being pulled under water.
Oge never set out to love money. She set out to escape poverty. Many people who fall into this snare are not greedy in the usual sense. They are desperate. That deserves compassion, and the church should be the first place such people find help, not condemnation. But Paul’s warning still stands. When the desire for money becomes the master, it leads somewhere none of us wants to go. Yahoo schemes, fraudulent contracts, padded invoices, betting, Ponzi platforms, and even the horrors of money rituals that the Nigerian press reports from time to time, all begin with the same quiet decision: I must be rich, whatever it takes.
Pierced through with many sorrows
Paul finishes the sentence with an image of self-inflicted injury: “which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows” (1 Timothy 6:10).
Two consequences are named. The first is spiritual: they “erred from the faith.” The word means to wander away, to be led astray. Paul has in mind a gradual drift more than a dramatic renunciation of Christ. The pursuit of money slowly crowds out prayer, Scripture, fellowship and the voice of conscience, until a person who once followed Jesus finds that he no longer recognises the path.
The second is personal: they “pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Pierced themselves. Nobody else did it to them. The love of money is a weapon that turns on the one who holds it. The sorrows are many: sleepless nights, broken trust, families torn apart over inheritance, friendships destroyed by debts, reputations lost, consciences that will not be quiet.
Scripture shows us this pattern again and again. Achan saw the spoils of Jericho, and “then I coveted them, and took them” (Joshua 7:21). He hid them in the earth under his tent, and he and his family were destroyed. Judas, the disciple who carried the money bag, began by helping himself to its contents. John tells us plainly that “he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein” (John 12:6). That small, hidden dishonesty grew until he sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver. Within hours he had flung the silver back on the temple floor in despair.
Balaam, Achan and Judas each obtained something of what they wanted. Each of them found that what they had reached for had hold of them.
NuggetThe love of money promises to serve you and ends by wounding you. Every one who runs after it is eventually caught by it.
A rich man who was a fool
Jesus told a parable about a man whose problem was not dishonesty at all. He had done nothing illegal. He had simply placed his whole security in his wealth:
And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.
Notice how Jesus introduces the story. “Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” That is the foundational truth. Your life is not made up of what you own. Possessions can meet needs and bring enjoyment, but they cannot define who you are.
The rich man in the parable thought otherwise. Listen to his inner conversation. “What shall I do? ... This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater ... And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” He talks only to himself. There is no mention of God, no thought of his neighbours, no awareness that his life is not his own. He speaks to his soul as though his soul could be satisfied by a full barn.
This is what happens when money becomes the answer to personal worth and security. The man had made his barns the foundation of his identity and his future. And God’s verdict is devastating in its simplicity: “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?”
Jesus does not call him wicked. He calls him a fool. He had made a catastrophic mistake about what matters. He had prepared thoroughly for every future except the one that was actually coming. “So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”
There is a version of this man in every Nigerian city. He has built houses in three states and has not spoken honestly to his children in years. He has accumulated property but no peace. He can tell you the value of every plot he owns but cannot remember the last time he prayed without asking for something. He is not a criminal. He is simply poor toward God.
A devotion of the heart
The rich young man who came running to Jesus shows how deeply the love of money can grip a sincere person. He had kept the commandments from his youth, and Mark tells us that “Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest” (Mark 10:21). Jesus did not ask this of everyone He met; Joseph of Arimathea remained a wealthy man and gave his own tomb for the Lord’s burial. But for this young man, possessions had become God’s rival for his heart, and “he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions” (Mark 10:22).
This tells us that the love of money is not limited to the obviously greedy. It can live in a decent, churchgoing, rule-keeping heart. It can live in a rich heart or a poor one. The real test is what you would do if God asked you to hold what you have differently.
The psalmist gives a simple instruction: “if riches increase, set not your heart upon them” (Psalm 62:10). And Paul calls covetousness by its true name: “covetousness, which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5). Idolatry means giving to a created thing the trust, devotion and hope that belong to God alone. When money becomes the thing we trust to keep us safe, the thing we look to for our sense of worth, and the thing we would least like to surrender, it has become an idol.
A few honest questions can help us see our own hearts. What do I think about when my mind is free? What makes me most anxious? What would I find hardest to give away? Do I envy those who have more? Have I ever compromised honesty to gain or keep money? None of us answers these perfectly. But they show us where the root may be growing.
Flee, follow, and lay hold
Paul does not leave Timothy with a warning alone. He gives him a better path:
But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, whereunto thou art also called, and hast professed a good profession before many witnesses.
“But thou, O man of God, flee these things.” Some temptations are to be resisted. This one is to be fled. Run away from the love of money the way Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife. Do not stay close to it, play with it or test how near you can get without falling in.
What does fleeing look like in practice? It may mean deleting the betting app, leaving the WhatsApp group that keeps advertising “investment opportunities”, or refusing the contract that requires a kickback. It may mean asking a mature friend to hold you accountable for your finances, or choosing a simpler lifestyle than your income would allow, so that money has less room to rule you. For many believers, the most powerful act of fleeing is regular, deliberate generosity. Every time you give freely, you tell money that it is not your master.
But fleeing is only half the instruction. “And follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” The heart is never empty. If you want to be free of one desire, you must be filled with better ones. A believer who pursues godliness, faith and love will find that the grip of money gradually loosens, because the heart has found its true treasure.
Paul then turns to those who are already wealthy, and his words are remarkably balanced: “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). He does not tell the rich to give everything away. He tells them not to be proud, not to trust in what is uncertain, and to trust instead in the God who gives “richly all things to enjoy.” Enjoyment is allowed. God is generous. And then: “That they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate” (1 Timothy 6:18). The cure for the love of money is a heart that has learned to love God and people more.
At the centre of it all stands the gospel. Christ “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor” (2 Corinthians 8:9). He did not cling to what He had. He gave Himself. When we know that we have been made rich by His poverty, money can no longer answer the question of our worth. That question has already been answered at the cross.
Let us go back to that narrow road between the vineyard walls.
Balaam was furious with his donkey. He thought she was the obstacle between him and his reward. He beat her three times for doing the very thing that was keeping him alive. Only when God opened his eyes did he see what had been standing in the road: an angel with a drawn sword, sent “to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me.”
The love of money does that to us. It narrows our vision until we can see only the reward at the end of the road. It makes us angry at whatever slows us down. The deal that falls through, the door that closes, the friend who asks an awkward question, the conscience that will not stop troubling us: we beat them like a donkey, when they may be the mercy of God standing in our way.
Balaam was given a moment to turn back. “I have sinned,” he said, “now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back again” (Numbers 22:34). But his heart was still on the road to Moab, and in the end it took him there. You do not have to follow him. If God has been standing in your way, if your foot has been crushed against the wall and you have been angry about it, stop and look up. The sword was never meant to destroy you. It was meant to turn you around.
PunchlineGet off the road to Moab. The Father who gave His Son for you offers a treasure that no king can pay and no thief can take.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Where might God have been “standing in the road” in your financial life, and how did you respond?
- How would you explain the difference between money and the love of money to a new believer?
- Which of the warning signs in 1 Timothy 6:9-10 do you recognise around you, or in yourself?
- Where does the rich fool’s inner conversation in Luke 12 echo your own thinking about the future?
- What would it mean for you this month to “flee these things; and follow after righteousness”?
This Week
Read 1 Timothy 6:3-19 slowly at the start of the week. Then take the questions from the section “A devotion of the heart” and answer them honestly in writing. Choose one practical step to loosen money’s grip: a gift you have been reluctant to give, a dishonest practice you will stop, or a conversation in which you confess a hidden financial matter to someone you trust. Do it before the week ends, and thank God for the freedom it brings.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You became poor so that I might be rich. Thank You that my worth does not rest on what I own. Search my heart and show me where the love of money has taken root. Forgive me for the times I have run after gain, or measured godliness by wealth, or trusted in uncertain riches instead of You. Teach me to flee these things and to follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience and meekness. Make me rich toward God, ready to give and willing to share. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.