7 Money Is Not the Problem—Love Is
They were living under crushing debt. It was all so complicated that that day in my office when they told me their story, I didn’t know what to say. They were the living familial case study of what the love of money looks like. Both husband and wife had been married before, so theirs was a blended family. They had together raised materialistic, entitled, and demanding children. It’s no wonder they had, because they both thought they deserved the “good life” and were quite willing to spend to get it. And spend they did! There seemed to be no end to their cycle of desire, expenditure, possession, debt, and dissatisfaction. They loved money for how it made them feel. They loved money for what it could get them. They loved money for how it made them look in the eyes of others. They loved money for its power. They loved money because they thought it meant God loved them. They loved money for what it could buy them out of. They loved money!
When I met them, their house of self-oriented, materialistic dreams had begun to crash down. As I listened to their story, it became very clear that somewhere along the way they had gone money insane. They seemed almost incapable of holding onto their money. They invented ways of spending their next dollar even before it had been earned. Because it wasn’t just goods and pleasure mounting up but debt as well, they decided they had to do something. So they took out a second mortgage on their second home. Borrowing more to get out of debt was not a good solution in the first place, but guess what they did with their newfound thousands? They put it in their ATM account. Yes, you read it right. They mortgaged their house and used the proceeds to fund more reckless spending. In fact, in celebration of their new cash flow, the husband went out and bought his wife a $3,500 ring. They were money drunk, money addicted, and money mad, but they seemed not to know it.
Because of the pressures, the husband and wife were tense, irritable, and in almost constant conflict with each other. The children were in a constant contest to see who would end up with the biggest pile of stuff. They were demanding, complaining, and critical. The husband was more frequently absent from home because he couldn’t deal with the conflict, and the wife, feeling abandoned, began to think about how to get out of her marriage. With all the division, the semblance of an intentional spiritual life went out the window. God had long since been replaced as the object of their practical worship. Church was no longer on the weekly calendar, and giving to God’s work, well, there simply wasn’t enough money. For them, the love of money was rapidly becoming the source of all kinds of evil.
How Is Love of Money a Root of Evil?
When you first read it, it doesn’t seem that it could be true. It seems as if there are all kinds of things more evil than loving money. And on the surface it doesn’t seem that loving money could lead to all other kinds of evil. So it is important to take time to unpack the spiritual dynamics of the love of money. Let’s examine 1 Timothy 6:6–10:
Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
If you read those words carefully, you begin to get a clue that the love of money is connected to things significantly bigger than money. Consider the profound connections Paul makes in this provocative little passage, bringing out once again what we’ve been considering all through this book. The love of money is fundamentally not an overspending problem; it is a contentment problem (“Godliness with contentment is great gain”). The love of money is also an identity problem (“. . . for we brought nothing into the world”). The love of money is a fallen world problem (“. . . fall into temptation”). And the love of money is a worship problem (“But those who desire to be rich . . .”). The root system of the love of money runs deeper and wider through the soil of the human heart than we tend to think.
Paul begins his discussion with contentment because the roots of our problem with money are found there. Discontentment is the soil in which the love of money grows. I don’t think that we value-rate discontentment properly. Discontentment seems like an inconsequential sin. For most of us, it means little more than wishing we had more, and the only negative aspect of our complaining is that we won’t be the life of the party. But the discontented person lacks something more fundamental and life-shaping than happiness; the discontented person lacks humility. He really does think of himself more highly than he ought to think. He really is convinced that he deserves what he doesn’t actually deserve. He lives as though he is entitled to things to which he’s not entitled, and because he feels entitled, he thinks it’s his right to demand them. He can’t handle the guy next to him having what he has been unable to acquire, and his discontentment will ultimately bring him to question the goodness of God. Discontentment is very significant.
The lack of humility that fuels discontentment is about more than being a bit full of ourselves and bragging too much; it’s about a heart that has been captured by self-glory. Its life has turned inward, when we have been created to live an upward (love for God) and an outward (love for neighbor) life. It really is making it all about us. It is a lifestyle shaped by the unholy self-love trinity: my wants, my needs, and my feelings. It is about making my personal definition of happiness the most important ethical commitment of my life. It means that my every day is spent in the pursuit of my pleasure, my comfort, and my ease. It is me in the center of my world. It is “I love me, and I have a wonderful plan for my life.”
Because I am in the center of my world, and because that means that God isn’t, money can’t possibly be in its proper place. You see, if God is in the center of my world and I acknowledge that I was created to live for him, then I look to him to provide in his grace what I need, to be what I’m supposed to be, and to do what I was designed to do. But if I am at the center, if it really is all about me, then money can become my surrogate, my replacement savior. It’s worth stressing again that when our happiness is at the center and the Creator is out of the picture, then we look to creation for our happiness. So money becomes the savior that delivers all the things we think will bring us joy. No longer living for God’s glory but obsessed by our own, we daily ask money to save us from the want and discomfort that we view as the principle evil to avoid.
Would you not agree that living for self rather than living for God is at the core of all kinds of evil? Well, that is exactly what the love of money is all about. When I rather than God am in the center of my world, I live an entitled, self-focused, demanding life marked by the discontentment that selfishness always produces. Self-glory is at the center of the original sin in the garden of Eden, and it is the soil in which all sin has grown ever since.
But there is more. We noted earlier how identity factors into our issues with money, so the love of money is also an identity problem. The love of money is connected to forgetting who we are and what our life is about. Since we have been created for a life beyond this one, hardwired for forever, it makes no sense to view life as being all about the pleasures, possessions, experiences, and power of the moment. It is true: we brought nothing in, and we’ll take nothing out, and when we’re making our exit, what we have amassed won’t do much or mean much.
If you forget who you are, if you deny what life is about, then it will be very hard to keep money in its proper place. You will love it, crave it, do everything you can to get it, envy the guy who has more of it, and judge the goodness of God by his willingness to deliver it. The love of money sits right in the middle of a lifestyle that forgets eternity, lives selfishly, prioritizes the present, and is more focused on physical comfort than on eternal destiny. This right-here, right-now, “you only go around once” way of living is a vat of all kinds of evil. Much more will be said about eternity and your money in a chapter to come.
There is something else Paul wants you to know. The love of money is a fallen world problem. The love of money is such a significant issue because we live in a world that doesn’t function as God intended, and because it doesn’t, it is a place where temptation is all around us. We cannot get up in the morning without being faced with devious, deceitful, and seductive temptations of some kind. Ten thousand voices whisper in our ear, each calling us away from the life God designed for us to live and enjoy. And what is the temptation that Paul talks about in Romans 1? It is the temptation to replace worship and service of the Creator with worship and service of the creation. It is attaching our identity and our inner sense of well-being to something in the creation. It is asking the creation to give us what only the Creator can—life.
I remind you here that ultimately the love of money is about worship. It connects us to the evil of evils, offering the love, adoration, worship, and service that we were meant to give to God alone to something that he created. Because love of money sits at the dark intersection of love of self and worship of the creation, it doesn’t lead us to keep the two Great Commandments, and because we don’t, we will do many things that are evil in the sight of God.
The love of money is not a little thing; it really is a portal to all kinds of evil because it connects us to foundational, life-shaping issues of the heart, such as contentment, identity, how we understand and relate to the world we live in, eternity, and worship. If we get these issues wrong, there is no way that we will live as God intended.
Why Love of Money Makes You Dangerous to You
If the terrible triad of love for self, worship of the creation, and love of money rules your heart, you will be a danger to yourself. It is only when you live for God that you have both the grace-given desire and the power to say no to yourself, to exercise daily self-control, and to live as God has called you to live. When you are in the center of your existence, why would you ever say no to you? Self-centered living curses authority, boundaries, rules, and restraint. There is only one rule for the truly self-oriented human being: “I will have what I will have.” When you are the center, you will be the ultimate consumer. You will have ravenous, insatiable hunger. You will always be on the lookout for the next pleasure. You will constantly be moaning, “If only I had _______.” The fact that you don’t have everything you want will be the biggest grief of your life. When you love you, you’ll love money because it allows you to indulge you. When you love you, you’ll love money because it makes you feel better about you. When you love you, you’ll love money because it alters how others look at you. When you love you, you’ll love money because it can help you to depend only on you. When you love you, you’ll love money because it keeps you from having to say no to you.
Saying no recognizes and submits to the fact that there is someone who rules all things, and it is not you. Saying no to yourself recognizes God’s existence and submits to his commands. But when you are living for you, no matter your formal confession, you are living as if God doesn’t exist and as if you have the right to write your own rules. The love of money sits at the epicenter of a lifestyle of self-glory and constant craving. It is not a lifestyle in which sin is restrained.
Here’s the bottom line: in a way that is foundational and life-shaping, the love of money replaces love for God in your heart. That is disastrous enough, but not only does it replace God; it also has no power to deliver the satisfaction your heart seeks. So you have to go back again and again, craving more money, hoping more, spending more, and living from short-term buzz to short-term buzz, all the while becoming more addicted than you are aware of.
But there is even more. Because love of money pushes love for God out of your heart, it pushes you to the center of your life. No longer shaped by God’s glory, God’s will, God’s plan, God’s grace, and God’s rules, your life is shaped by your cravings, your “needs,” your plan, and your self-oriented rules. You simply cannot be in the center of your world and be your own highest authority and not be a moral danger to yourself, because when you are at the center, you will not say no to you. That’s what the love of money does to you; it draws you into a dangerous world of self-glory.
What does this “I am a danger to myself” lifestyle look like? Consider the four descriptions that follow.
When love for God doesn’t rule your heart, you’re left alone at the center of your universe, and you think you deserve things that you do not deserve. You pursue your feelings of entitlement. You do not question your self-orientation. You feel little guilt that you spend most of your time and money taking care of you. You spend more time complaining than you do giving thanks. You find it much harder to give than to take for yourself. You see your money as belonging to you for your use. No matter how much money you have, you tend to think you deserve more. You don’t see any level of personal affluence as a blessing but as your right, and you spend so much time using your money to take care of you that you have little time to look for ways to use it to bless and serve others.
Rather than your life being shaped and directed by God’s existence, his glory, his grace, and his moral call, it is moved by your wants, your needs, and your feelings. You’ve seen it in your children or the children of others—we really can be an endless catalog of desires. From the moment of our birth, our capacity to desire is in need of redemption and restraint. You cannot live in the way you were created to live and have a lifestyle that chases personal desires. We all need something glorious and transcendent to capture and motivate our hearts. We all need to be rescued from ourselves by being spiritually awakened to something bigger than us. No life is more dangerous than the “me-ward” life that every sinner quests for.
The life that you were created to live is always shaped by saying no, not to God or others but to yourself. You want things that you do not need. You crave things that you should not have. You desire more than is necessary. You are attracted to what is destructive. You see as beautiful things that are ugly in God’s sight. If you use your time, energy, and money to follow the trail of your desires, you expose yourself to all kinds of evil and end up destroying your life.
I was racing toward the checkout line, looking left and right to see which line my fellow shoppers would choose. I was already irritated that someone was going to beat me to the counter and delay me for a few minutes. Behind three people with multiple things to purchase, I was giving way to my irritated heart, when, by grace, right there in the checkout line, God rescued me from me. I thought, “I have no right to be first. My schedule is not more important than theirs. God rules even these little moments for his glory and my good. Nothing significant is going to happen in the next three minutes.” Grace once again gave me back my sanity. The “me first,” money-fueled mentality of self-glory is not only insane; it is the source of all kinds of evil. It reduces other human beings to obstacles in your way, questions the sovereignty and goodness of God, and tramples his call to love your neighbor as yourself.
Perhaps “I will” is the ultimate danger of this way of living. It causes me to set myself up as king rather than to live as a willing and joyful slave of the King of kings. No longer do I pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” No, I want my kingdom to come. I secretly desire my will to be done right here, right now where I am living. I want control that I should not have. I want predictable days and an uninterrupted schedule. I want people to agree with me and submit to my plans. I want people to indulge my cravings and give way to my demands. I am living for myself, and I want you to live for me too. And my money becomes the currency that finances my self-directed little kingdom of one.
Because love of money pushes out love for God as the chief motivator of my heart, I won’t struggle just with the proper use of money and the things it can buy; I will struggle with all kinds of other evils. You simply cannot have yourself at the center and not end up with a life that is evil in the eyes of God.
It is with sadness that I have written the last several pages, not because I don’t love the wisdom of God’s truth but because of how it exposes the sin, weakness, and failure of my own heart. I wish I could say that I am free of the struggles I have described, but I am not. This discussion of the dangers of the love of money has exposed my fickle, wandering heart. I am not free of craving what I do not need. I haven’t been fully delivered from confusing need with selfish desire. I am still tempted to think of my resources as belonging to me for my use. I am not completely free of envying the ease or affluence of others. I still waste money on pleasures that quickly fade. All of this means that I have discovered more love of money in my heart than I would have confessed before I began work on this book. And it is humbling to face the fact that right theology, biblical literacy, ministry calling, experience, and skill have not rescued me.
This piece of writing has exposed in me a spiritual schizophrenia that I suspect is in many of you. Perhaps your commitment to the ministry of your church and the discipline of regular giving have caused you to wrongly conclude that the love of money is not an issue for you. Perhaps your ability to keep yourself above the deep waters of debt has convinced you that the love of money is not a personal struggle. Perhaps comparing yourself to others who, from what you see, seem financially insane has made you think that when it comes to the love of money, you’re okay. But I would ask you right here, right now, to put down this book and to stop, look, and listen. Examine your heart and your life. Is there evidence that perhaps, when it comes to love of money, you’re not doing as well as you think you are? Could it be that there are subtle pockets of evil in your life that would not be there if God and money were in their proper place in your heart?
My spiritual schizophrenia and yours is an argument for our foundational need for grace. Since I am the thing of greatest danger to me, since my deepest problems reside not outside of me but literally in my heart, I cannot help myself. I cannot solve my problem. A better budget won’t help me if something rules my heart other than God. Good financial counsel won’t help me in the places where I am committed to building my own kingdom. I need to be rescued, restored, and empowered. I need to be liberated from my slavery to me. I need my desires to be refocused and redirected. I need to live with contentment in my heart. I need eyes to see the lavish blessings that greet me every day. I need to love God more fully and people more actively. I need grace!
God wrote the events and controlled the people and locations of history so that at the right moment Jesus would come, because there was no other hope for us. He lived the life we simply never could or would live. He willingly died the death he did not deserve, but we did. He satisfied all the requirements of God’s law. He walked away from the grave, conquering death. It was all done so that in our rebellion, inability, and sin, we would have the help we need.
You see, you don’t have to carry the heavy burden of money guilt and money shame around with you. You don’t have to work to convince yourself or others that you are money wise or money righteous. You don’t have to work to justify your self-oriented spending or your lack of compassion for others. You don’t have to defend the choices you have made. You don’t have to do any of this, because on the cross Jesus liberated you not only from the mess of your sin but also from the delusion of your righteousness. Because of what Jesus has done for you, because his righteousness covers you, in your darkest moment of failure, you don’t have to run from him. No, Jesus bore the full weight of your rejection in that moment on the cross when the Father turned his back on him. He willingly endured that rejection so that in your hour of need, you would never, ever see God turn his back on you.
You don’t have to ask strategies, tactics, plans, and rules to be your savior, because you have a Savior who is with you, in you, and for you. He is your life, and his grace is your hope. Run to him, as I have been doing, for the forgiveness and rescue that only he can give.
The beauty of grace is that it not only rescues me; it puts me in my place. Grace humbles me as it opens my eyes to the fact that it is not all about me. Grace makes me feel small without feeling alone and unloved. Grace tells me I’m poor while offering me greater riches than I have ever known. Grace keeps letting me know the danger I am to myself and the depth of my moment-by-moment need. Grace doesn’t just humble me once, but again and again as my proud heart inserts me in the center again. Only grace can progressively liberate you from your bondage to the love of money or any other thing that would challenge the rule that God alone should have. Only grace can turn an entitled person into a thankful one. Only grace can transform a demanding and envious heart into one that is truly content. It is grace alone that can cause you to be patient, free from a heart that wants what it wants right now. Only grace can enable you to be compassionate, able to see and care about the needs of others instead of being so dominated by your own. And it is grace alone that can turn a pseudo-king into one who invests his time and money into the service of the King.
Thankfulness, contentment, patience, compassion, service—five ingredients of the heart of one who no longer worships at the feet of the money king but has been welcomed and empowered by grace into the service of the one true King. Do these things reside in my heart? In yours? The answer for all of us is, in bits and pieces they do. But the battle goes on. We will once again lose our way. There will be moments animated by loving money and forgetting God. There will be times when the glory of what we want is more important to us than the glory that is God’s due. We will once again spend what we don’t have to acquire what doesn’t satisfy. We will waste dollars and cry out that we’re needy.
But grace won’t leave us to ourselves. It won’t give up and give us over to our own devices. Grace will expose us once again. It will convict us once again. It will forgive us once again. It will empower us once again. It will wrap arms of divine love around us once again, and we will remember who we are and what we have been given. And by grace we will take one more step toward becoming the thankful and contented people that grace promises one day we will be.
Review and Reflect
1. How is love of money a root of much that is evil? Review 1 Timothy 6:6–10.
2. Paul Tripp writes, “When you are the center, you will be the ultimate consumer” (p. 109). Explain what he means.
3. Describe the “I am a danger to myself” lifestyle.
4. Why are we unable to solve our financial problems by ourselves? What sort of help do we really need, and where is it found?
5. Name the ingredients of the heart of someone empowered by grace. Where do you see evidences of this grace—traces of these ingredients—permeating your own life and heart?
Heart Reset