Keeping Life’s Priorities Straight

KEY VERSE: “Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” —I Timothy 6:11

SELECTED SCRIPTURE: I Timothy 6:6-19

PAUL considered the seeking of earthly riches folly to those who have been called into Christ. He observed that due to “the love of money … which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Paul at one time had known earthly riches, and could well speak from experience about some of its attending sorrows. But here he was more particularly referring to the pain pierced through themselves by those who were allowing a love of money to compromise their responsibilities to God. Paul said he himself counted earthly riches but dung for the excellency of winning Christ.

Such great importance has surrounded the subject of riches and wealth as to cause it to be sought after by fallen man in all generations. Doubtless a major reason for this is that it was something properly belonging to human beings in their perfection. In Eden our first parents possessed material riches, power and influence in abundance beyond measure. One of the psalms described it thus: “Thou hast made him [man] a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.”—Ps. 8:5,6

These riches were lost through sin and man’s alienation from his Creator. However, in the poverty of his fallen condition, mankind still has an innate desire to possess and enjoy as many of the good things of earth as he can possibly acquire. This desire, however, has been largely perverted by Satan so that it finds expression in the law of selfishness, which to a great extent tends to rule in the hearts of men.

Not any amount of acquisition of material riches has ever been able to lift a man out of this condition of poverty. But Paul says there is a way: “Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.” These are the true riches of this age. These are riches that cannot be searched out by human efforts, hard work, mental craftiness, and the like, but come as gifts to the “man of God.” (vs. 6) We receive these gifts when we are inducted into the body of Christ. Paul says that in Christ are “hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”—Col. 2:3

These treasures of wisdom and knowledge show us that through Christ we may become heirs of a priceless and eternal inheritance: “heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” (Rom. 8:17) We are told that the riches of this heavenly glory can be ours if we prove to be faithful stewards of what the Lord has entrusted to us during this present life. Jesus said, “If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”—Luke 16:11

The prospect of these true riches imparted to us through a knowledge of the truth, by any standard of relative values makes all other non-associated attainments seem but loss and dross. Paul calls this knowledge, “the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God.”—Rom. 11:23

To be entrusted with these true riches we must have the same generous spirit of giving so characteristic of our great Heavenly Father, the giver of every good and perfect gift. (Jas. 1:17) We must appreciate Jesus, who, though very rich, became poor for our sakes, that we through his poverty might become rich. (II Cor. 8:9) Perhaps one of the most priceless possessions of our inheritance will be a participation with Jesus in dispensing to the world the blessings of God made possible by Jesus’ sacrifice, “to open the blind eyes, to bring … them that sit in darkness out of the prison house [of death]” (Isa. 42:7), to see “the things that God hath prepared for them which love him.”—I Cor. 2:9

The eternal riches beyond the veil are unsearchable by human wisdom, but are seen through the eye of faith, as we look not at the things that are temporal, but at the things eternal in the heavens.

So, let us walk worthy of our calling, seeking to become rich in faith, rich in love, rich in godliness, rich in righteousness, patience and meekness; setting our affections on things above, for where our treasure is, there will our hearts be also. Let us not trust “in uncertain riches” of this life, “but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy.”—I Tim. 6:17

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