10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Verse 10 advances the thought of verse 9. The love of money brings people to sorrow.
10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,
The word “for” explains why people have the urge to get rich.
The “root of all kinds of evil” is not money itself but the “love” of it (Mt 6:21). Thus, wealth is not an intrinsic evil, but greed makes it so. It implies that God and what He offers is not sufficient.
for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness,
An example of the sorrow that the love of money brings is that it causes people to stray from the faith. Greed causes believers to change their commitment to God and His Word (Mt 6:24).
“The faith” refers to foundational biblical truth; these people became apostates. They left the substance of Christian doctrine and theology.
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Those who are obsessed with wealth are people with a conscience that gnaws at them, leaving them without the purpose for which God placed them on earth. “Pierced” is a striking thought of self-mutilation, of piercing themselves by a self-inflicted value. The piercing here has to do with the results of leaving the faith. They mutualized their souls with unbiblical values and impaled themselves with self-inflicted pain.
PRINCIPLE:
Believers who leave biblical truth empale themselves with unnecessary pain.
APPLICATION:
Love of riches chokes the spiritual life (Lu 8:14). God does not warn us against using money for proper ends but against the love of money. God blessed many in the Old Testament with great wealth.
Acquiring wealth is not intrinsically evil (1 Sam 2:7), but an obsession with it will create problems with Christian living because it moves believers from biblical values to values independent of God.
