What 1 Timothy Actually Says About the Love of Money

“Money is the root of all evil.” It gets attributed to the Bible so often that most people who quote it have never checked the actual verse. When you do check it — 1 Timothy 6:10, the verse everyone has in mind — the Greek text turns out to say something noticeably more precise, and more interesting, than the popular one-liner.

What the Greek Actually Says

The verse reads:

ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία

One possible rendering: “For a root of all the evils is the love of money.” The grammatical subject here — marked by the definite article ἡ — is ἡ φιλαργυρία, “the love of money,” not χρήματα (“money” or “possessions”) on its own. Philargyria names an attachment to wealth: “love of money” or “avarice.” The noun describes a disposition rather than money as an object.

That distinction does real work. Paul is not indicting currency, property, or economic activity. He is naming a disposition. The popular misquote collapses “money” and “the love of money” into a single word, and in doing so erases the exact point the verse is making.

What the Missing Article Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

The noun rhiza (“root”) has no definite article. That observation does not mechanically decide between English “a root” and “the root.” Greek has no indefinite article equivalent to “a,” and a predicate noun without the definite article can be indefinite, definite, or qualitative according to its construction and context.

Many modern versions, including the NIV and ESV, use “a root of all kinds of evil.” This makes good sense of the surrounding warning about the ruinous effects of greed. The KJV’s “the root of all evil” is more sweeping in English, but its article cannot simply be dismissed as an elementary Greek mistake. The scope of “all” and the proverbial force of the sentence are also interpretive questions.

Knight’s NIGTC commentary and Marshall’s ICC commentary provide fuller discussions of the passage. For the present argument, the secure point is the subject: love of money. We do not need an overconfident rule about articles to establish what the text actually warns against.

Quinten Metsys (Quentin Massys), The Moneylender and his Wife, 1514, oil on panel, Louvre Museum · Public Domain. A man weighs gold coins on a scale while his wife, a prayer book open beside her, lets her gaze drift toward the money — an image often discussed in relation to wealth and devotion. Image record.

The Wider Argument of 1 Timothy 6

The verse is not a freestanding proverb; it sits inside a sustained argument. Just before it, 1 Timothy 6:6-8 commends “godliness with contentment” as great gain and counsels that food and clothing are enough to be satisfied with. Verse 9 warns that those who are determined to get rich fall into temptation, a trap, and various senseless and harmful desires — and it is in that flow that verse 10 names philargyria as a root of the evils just described. Then, a few verses later, 6:17-19 turns to instruct “those who are rich in this present age” not to be arrogant or to set their hope on wealth, but to be generous and ready to share. Paul is not condemning wealth as such — the passage assumes some believers will be rich and tells them how to hold it well. The target throughout is the orientation of the heart, not the balance of the ledger.

The popular quotation changes the subject of a real verse. Restoring “love of money” is therefore more than polishing a familiar proverb: it restores the particular danger the passage names. Debates about “a root” and “the root” should not distract from that basic correction.

Conclusion

Read closely, 1 Timothy 6:10 is not an indictment of wealth or of money as a category. It is a warning about where the heart settles when it fixes on acquisition as an end in itself. Restoring the verse’s own wording — “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” — turns a vague suspicion of prosperity back into what it actually was: pointed counsel about the direction of desire.

Didymus Lab offers sermon-preparation resources grounded in original-language study and historical context.

References

• George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles: A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Eerdmans, 1992)

• I. Howard Marshall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (International Critical Commentary; T&T Clark, 1999)

• 1 Timothy 6:6–19, NIV and KJV comparison.

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