5 Bible Verses About Money That Don’t Mean What You Think They Do

When it comes to what the Bible says about money, people tend to have very extreme views.  Here are two examples of erroneous perspectives on what the Bible has to say about money:

1. The Bible says that we should sell everything and give it all to the poor and live like monks.
2. The Bible says that if we believe in him, God will give us abundant earthly riches.

The reality is that the Bible itself — with its over 2,000 scriptures pertaining in some way to finances — is much more balanced than either of those positions, neither promising wealth nor commanding poverty to those who read it.

Unfortunately, many Bible verses about money get misrepresented.  Here are the true meanings of five Bible verses, including Proverbs about money as well as statements from Jesus about money, to clear up the situation.

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1 Timothy 6:10

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.

This verse often gets misquoted as, “Money is the root of all evil,” but the verse itself is actually more nuanced than that.

It actually says the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.  This does not mean that making money is evil.

This does mean, however, that if you prize money above everything else — above God, above family, above friends, above concern for others, above your own conscience — you will almost certainly do bad things.

Luke 12:15

Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.

In this episode, Jesus — in response to man who wanted Jesus to essentially become the executor of his father’s estate — tells the parable of a wealthy individual who kept accumulating more and more wealth.

In the parable, this man becomes so rich that he doesn’t even have the space to contain all of his wealth.  So what does he do?  He builds more and more space for his possessions and crops until at last he says, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

That night, however, the man dies, and God calls him a “fool” for spending his entire life acquiring possessions that he will never be able to enjoy.

So what’s Jesus really warning about here?  Is it money itself?  No.  He is warning against covetousness.

While we don’t know the Aramaic word that Jesus used for the word translate as “covetousness,” we do know that Luke used the Greek word πλεονεξίας (pleonexias).

This word has been described as “ruthless self-seeking and an arrogant assumption that others and things exist for one’s own benefit.”

Rather than money itself, what Jesus is warning against here is despicable selfishness that causes one to only be consumed with generating wealth, often at the expense of others.

Proverbs 6:10-11

A little sleep, a little slumber,
    a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
    and want like an armed man.

The important thing to remember about the Proverbs is that they aren’t meant to give absolute rules about how the world works; they are merely general principles about how the world works.

For instance, this proverb is saying that, in general, laziness brings about poverty (note, by the way, that it is not saying that all poverty comes from laziness).

Now, we can all probably name some lazy trust fund kid who is living the life of his or her dreams without having to do any work.

But the principle still holds true: if you’re lazy, chances are, you’ll lose any money you have.

Matthew 6:24

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

In this famous passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus flat-out says that you can’t serve both God and money.

Here, the important thing to note is the word used for “serve” would actually be more accurately translated “be a slave of”: you cannot be be a slave of both God and money.

After all, being a slave meant that you had to be completed devoted to only one individual.  It was, in fact, impossible for a slave to serve two masters; this would be contrary to the nature of a slave.

The question for Christians here, then, is, “Are you completely enslaved to God, with your financial endeavors being simply an expression of your ultimate service to your true Master?”

Matthew 19:21

If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

If someone were to randomly read these words of Christ without any other knowledge of the context or the Bible as a whole, that person may think that taking a vow of poverty is a core tenet of Christianity.

But that’s not what Jesus is saying here.

See, in this passage, a rich young man — a leader in his religious Jewish community, in fact — approached Jesus and asked how he could go to heaven.

Jesus told him that in order to do so, he must keep the commandments.  The young man told him that he had kept all the commandments since he was a boy.

So Jesus then told him to sell all of his possessions and follow him.  The young man could do no such thing, and “he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”

The issue, then, was not fundamentally the fact that this young man owned possessions; the issue was that these possessions owned this young man.  And by commanding this man to sell what he had, Jesus was zooming in on this man’s heart and exposing it for what it was.