Notes on First Timothy, Chapter Six
Text: I Timothy 6:1-21
Series: Restoration Sermons
Date:
Speaker: Ed Rangel
Location: Waupaca Church of Christ
Bible Version: NASB 1995
Sermon Type: Expository
Learning Objectives
By the close of this lesson the hearer should be able to:
- State the mutual obligations between servants and masters (I Tim. 6:1-2) and explain why Paul frames the servant's conduct in terms of honor to the gospel rather than personal benefit.
- Identify the four characteristics of false teachers described in I Timothy 6:3-5 and explain why Paul connects doctrinal error to financial motive.
- Articulate the "godliness with contentment" argument (vv. 6-8) and explain what Paul means by the double impossibility of bringing anything in or taking anything out.
- Explain why the love of money — not money itself — is "a root of all sorts of evil" (v. 10), and identify what specifically "wandering away from the faith" looks like.
- State the two directives Paul gives to the rich (vv. 17-19) and explain what "laying hold of that which is life indeed" means.
Thesis
Chapter six of I Timothy closes the letter with a cluster of practical duties arranged around the theme of what is worth pursuing. The servant asks: worth honoring my master? The false teacher asks: worth teaching for money? The person minded to be rich asks: worth the risk? The man of God asks: worth fleeing evil for? The rich Christian asks: worth trusting riches over God? Paul's answer to all of them is the same: godliness with contentment is the great gain; everything else is a trap.
Burden
The outline identifies the chapter as "crowded with practical duties" — and it is. In twenty-one verses Paul addresses employer-employee relations, false teaching, the profit of godliness, what the man of God should pursue, the danger of wealth, a solemn charge to guard the deposit, and a final warning against the pseudo-knowledge that has corrupted some. The sermon holds all of this together under the unifying theme of what genuine gain looks like versus what merely appears to be gain.
Introduction
"But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment" (I Tim. 6:6). This verse is the pivot of the chapter. Everything before it — servant-master relations, false teaching, the minded-to-be-rich — is described in terms of what it costs those who pursue it wrongly. Everything after it — the solemn charge, the warning to the rich, the guard of the deposit — is described in terms of what the right pursuit produces. The equation Paul offers is: godliness + contentment = great gain. All the chapter's movements orbit this center.
I. Servants and Masters (vv. 1-2)
"All who are under the yoke as slaves are to regard their own masters as worthy of all honor so that the name of God and our doctrine will not be spoken against" (v. 1). The servant's motive for honoring his master is not self-interest or social conformity — it is the reputation of the gospel. A Christian servant who is negligent, disrespectful, or dishonest in his service gives the surrounding culture grounds to speak against the name and teaching of God. The conduct of the individual member either commends or discredits the community whose name he carries.
The servant who has a Christian master faces the opposite temptation: to trade on the relationship, to take advantage of the brotherhood (v. 2). Paul's instruction is the reverse: he should serve all the better because the one benefiting from his service is a beloved fellow believer. The shared faith is not a license for slack work but a motive for better work.
The mutual duties of masters are implied: they are to treat servants as brethren and to deal fairly with them. The household of God reconfigures the master-servant hierarchy — without dissolving it in the present order — by placing both parties under the same Lord.
II. False Teachers (vv. 3-5)
Paul identifies the false teacher by four traits: he teaches different doctrines (not conforming to the words of Jesus and sound teaching); he is conceited; he has a morbid interest in controversies and disputes about words; and he supposes that godliness is a means of financial gain.
The standard of teaching Paul names in verse 3 is precise: "the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness." The double standard — Jesus's own words and the doctrine that produces godly living — allows assessment of whether a teacher's content is sound. Teaching that cannot be traced to apostolic tradition and that does not produce godliness in those who receive it fails on both counts.
False theories gender disputes. Logomachias — word-fights. The person who introduces teaching designed to generate controversy is not a serious theologian; he is creating a market for his own expertise by making simple things complicated. The fruit is envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions — the inventory of a congregation's destruction.
False teachers teach for money (v. 5). This is the specific form of corruption Paul targets: the person who has recalibrated the gospel to maximize his income. "Godliness" in his system is the product he sells; financial gain is the reason he sells it. Paul's next verse begins: "But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment" — the correction is precise. The problem is not that godliness is unconnected to gain; it is that the false teacher has identified the wrong kind of gain.
III. The Profit of Godliness (vv. 6-10)
Contentment is great gain (v. 6). Autarkeia — self-sufficiency, inner adequacy, the condition of not needing what one does not have. Paul and the Stoic philosophers used the word similarly, but Paul's contentment is not philosophical detachment — it is trust in the God who provides. "I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content" (Phil. 4:11): it is learned, not innate, and it grows through the experience of God's provision in both abundance and want.
We brought nothing into the world; we can take nothing out (v. 7). This is the logical ground of contentment: the double impossibility of arrival and departure without material possession. The entrance to life and the exit from it are both empty-handed. Whatever one acquires in between is acquired on loan. The person who lives as if he owns what he has — rather than as a steward of what has been given — has misread the terms of the arrangement.
Those minded to be rich fall into a snare (vv. 9-10). The process Paul describes is progressive: the desire to be rich leads to temptation, which leads to a snare, which leads to many foolish and harmful desires, which drowns men in ruin and destruction. The love of money is a root — not the only root, but one from which all sorts of evil grow. The wandering from the faith is not sudden; it is the gradual displacement of God by the thing whose pursuit has consumed the person's attention. "Some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs" (v. 10): the griefs are not the punishment — they are the natural consequence of the pursuit.
IV. What to Avoid and Follow (vv. 11-16)
"But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness" (v. 11). The "man of God" is a title that appears in the Old Testament for prophets and men of special calling (Moses, Elijah, Samuel). Paul applies it to Timothy — not to flatter him but to identify the class of person his charge requires him to be: the person whose fundamental identity and loyalty belongs to God rather than to the things he has been told to flee.
Flee — pursue: the pairing is deliberate. Flight without pursuit is merely avoidance; pursuit without flight is self-deception. The man of God must actively move away from covetousness and actively move toward the six virtues named: righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, gentleness.
Fight the good fight of faith (v. 12). The fight is described as "good" (kalēn) — not merely necessary but genuinely good; it is worth fighting, and the fighting of it is itself a form of honor to what is fought for. The eternal life Timothy was called to — confessed in the good confession "in the presence of many witnesses" (v. 12) — is what the fight is for.
A solemn charge (vv. 13-14): Paul charges Timothy before God, who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate — two witnesses of the highest possible order — to keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearing of Christ. The appearing is the motivation: he will be visible at the end; everything done in his service will be seen.
"King of kings and Lord of lords" (v. 15) — one of the great Christological titles of the New Testament, shared with Revelation 17:14 and 19:16. The one before whose appearing Timothy is to keep the commandment is the highest authority in existence; no earthly pressure or opposition should be weighed against that authority.
V. Warnings to the Rich (vv. 17-19)
"Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy" (v. 17). The rich are not told to give everything away — they are told not to trust in their wealth and not to be arrogant about it. The instruction is attitudinal and directional: the attitude toward wealth should be stewardship rather than ownership; the hope should be fixed on God, not on the wealth that came from God.
Be rich in good works (v. 18). The irony is deliberate: the person who is materially rich should redirect their richness toward generosity and good works — being rich in the currency that corresponds to eternal life. "Laying hold of that which is life indeed" (v. 19) — the phrase names the contrast between the apparent life that wealth provides and the genuine life that generosity and godliness lay hold of.
VI. What Timothy Should Guard (vv. 20-21)
"O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you" (parathēkēn phylaxon — guard the deposit). The word parathēkē — deposit — is a banking term: something entrusted to another for safekeeping. The apostolic teaching is a deposit. Timothy has received it; his responsibility is to keep it intact and return it to those who need it without corruption or reduction.
Turn away from worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge (v. 20). Gnōsis — knowledge — falsely so called: the proto-Gnostic opponents who claimed a higher knowledge were corrupting the deposit with their sophistication. The response is not engagement with every argument but guarding what was deposited and turning away from what seeks to displace it. Some who profess this false knowledge have missed the mark concerning the faith (v. 21): they aimed at something they called faith and hit something else entirely.
Application
The "godliness with contentment" equation speaks directly to every form of discontent: the servant who resents his work, the teacher who has recalibrated his message for financial return, the congregation member who wants to be rich and is slowly being drowned by the desire. The antidote is not poverty but contentment — the settled trust that what God provides is sufficient, and that pursuing godliness in that trust is the only investment that returns on both sides of death.
Conclusion
"O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you" (I Tim. 6:20). The letter closes with this charge, and it is the closing charge to every preacher and every Christian: the deposit is not ours to reshape, reduce, or improve. It is ours to guard and deliver. What was entrusted to us in the gospel — the sound words of Jesus, the doctrine that produces godliness, the good confession before witnesses — is to be kept until the appearing of the King of kings.
Invitation
"Fight the good fight of faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called" (I Tim. 6:12). The fight and the life are both available and both required. The life cannot be laid hold of without the fight; the fight is worth fighting because the life is worth having.
Believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the King of kings and Lord of lords. Repent. Confess his name. Be baptized for the remission of your sins (Acts 2:38). And begin to lay hold of the life that is life indeed.
Word Study
| English Term | Greek Term | Basic Meaning | Usage in This Sermon | Sermon Significance | Key Texts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contentment | autarkeia | self-sufficiency, inner adequacy | self-sufficiency, inner adequacy | from autos (self) + arkeō (to be sufficient); the person characterized by autarkeia is not dependent on external circumstances for internal stability; Paul uses the same root in Phil. 4:11 ("I have learned to be content") — it is a learned disposition, not an inherited trait. | I Tim. 6:6 |
| Root of all sorts of evil | riza pantōn tōn kakōn | a root | not the only root, and not a claim that every specific evil flows directly from money-love; rather, the love of money is | not the only root, and not a claim that every specific evil flows directly from money-love; rather, the love of money is one of the generative roots from which a wide variety of evils grow; Paul uses riza with the article, which may indicate a root (among others) rather than the root exclusively. | I Tim. 6:10 |
| Deposit | parathēkē | a thing entrusted for safekeeping | a thing entrusted for safekeeping | a banking term; the same word appears in II Tim. 1:12 ("what I have entrusted to Him") and II Tim. 1:14 ("guard the treasure which has been entrusted to you"); the apostolic teaching is treated as a legal deposit — received intact, to be returned intact, with no unauthorized alterations. | I Tim. 6:20 |
| King of kings, Lord of lords | basileus tōn basileuontōn kai kyrios tōn kyrieuontōn | the title is superlative: king above every king, lord above every lord; it appea | the title is superlative: king above every king, lord above every lord; it appea | the title is superlative: king above every king, lord above every lord; it appears again in Rev. 17:14 and 19:16, where it identifies the victor over all earthly and spiritual powers. | I Tim. 6:15 |
Scripture Interlock Table
| Theme | Boles' Outline | Supporting Scripture |
|---|---|---|
| Servant to honor master — so name of God not spoken against | I | I Tim. 6:1 |
| Christian master treated as brethren — serve all the better | I | I Tim. 6:2 |
| False teachers: different doctrine, conceited, word-fights, teaching for gain | II | I Tim. 6:3-5 |
| Godliness with contentment = great gain | III | I Tim. 6:6 |
| Brought nothing in; can take nothing out | III | I Tim. 6:7 |
| Those minded to be rich fall into a snare — love of money a root | III | I Tim. 6:9-10 |
| "Flee these things" — "pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love" | IV | I Tim. 6:11 |
| Fight the good fight of faith | IV | I Tim. 6:12 |
| Solemn charge before God and Christ Jesus | IV | I Tim. 6:13-14 |
| "King of kings and Lord of lords" | IV | I Tim. 6:15; Rev. 19:16 |
| Rich: not to be conceited, not to fix hope on riches — hope on God | V | I Tim. 6:17 |
| Be rich in good works — laying hold of life indeed | V | I Tim. 6:18-19 |
| Guard the deposit — turn from falsely-called knowledge | VI | I Tim. 6:20-21 |
---
Converted from H. Leo Boles, Outline 112. Primary text: I Timothy 6:1-21 (Boles outlines by chapter). OCR corrections: multiple Roman numeral artifacts ("L" for "I," "J" for "1," "Jll" for "III," "JV" for "IV," "AVOrD" for "AVOID," "o{" for "of"). Doctrinal audit: "love of money is a root of all sorts of evil" developed carefully — not money itself but the love of it; "a root" not "the root" explained; warning to those minded to be rich stated without softening ("drowns men in ruin and destruction"); "King of kings, Lord of lords" retained as Christological title; invitation retains full obedient response (Acts 2:38).
