What Does 1 Timothy 6:5 Mean?
The constant friction of people whose minds are ruined and stripped of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness; step away from such.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness: from such withdraw thyself.THE KEY
When reverence becomes a means of procuring advantage, the verse names that very equation as a sign of being without truth.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever devotion is treated as a strategy for getting ahead: the mind begins arranging truth around advantage. Reverence becomes a transaction when it is valued for what it can procure. The verse ends with distance from that exchange.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that visible gain proves genuine reverence, or that devotion matters because it produces advantage. This verse calls that equation itself a sign of being without truth.
THE ROOT
πορισμός
porismos
GROWS FROM
πορίζω (porizō), related to πόρος (poros)
To provide, furnish, or procure; πόρος carries the sense of a passage, resource, or means.
The word for gain belongs to a family concerned with procuring and providing a means. That sharpens the verse’s charge: reverence has been treated as a tool for obtaining advantage.
ALSO GROWS
poros: A passage, resource, or means
πόρος
Gain is framed as something procured through a means, making the claimed equation with reverence sound transactional.
porizō: To provide, furnish, or procure
πορίζω
This verb brings out the active pursuit hidden in the idea of treating reverence as gain.
porismos: Procurement, or a means of gain
πορισμός
The noun appears again in the next verse, where the passage redefines what counts as gain.
εὐσέβεια
eusebeia
GROWS FROM
σέβομαι (sebomai), with εὖ (eu, well)
To revere or show reverence; the compound describes reverent devotion.
“godliness” in this verse is eusebeia. The word names a posture of reverence, not a way to earn returns. Placed beside gain, it exposes the change that occurs when devotion is valued as a means to procure something.
ALSO GROWS
sebomai: To revere or show reverence
σέβομαι
This is the root sense carried by the word for godliness.
eusebēs: Devout or reverent
εὐσεβής
This related word describes a person characterized by reverence, keeping the focus on orientation rather than profit.
ἀλήθεια
alētheia
GROWS FROM
λήθη (lēthē), linked to λανθάνω (lanthanō)
To be hidden or escape notice; λήθη is forgetfulness or oblivion.
The word for truth belongs to a family that evokes what is hidden or brought out of notice. The verse sets that against minds without truth, whose equation of reverence with gain obscures the transaction at its center.
ALSO GROWS
lanthanō: To be hidden or escape notice
λανθάνω
It reveals the hiddenness in the word family behind truth.
lēthē: Forgetfulness or oblivion
λήθη
Its shared word family helps show truth as the opposite of what has slipped from view.
alēthēs: True or genuine
ἀληθής
This related adjective gives the word family’s positive sense of what is true.
THE PATTERN
When devotion becomes a means of acquisition, Scripture exposes the transaction and relocates gain in contentment rather than possession.
Do not lean your full weight on what presses, and do not become vapor through snatching. If wealth blooms, do not set your heart upon it.No one can serve two masters, for he will either hate the one and love the other, or he will hold fast to one and look down on the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.But godliness with enough within is great gain.THE THREAD
But godliness with enough within is great gain.The Greek noun translated “gain” is πορισμός (porismos) in both verses. The next verse turns the phrase: reverence is not a means to get gain; godliness with contentment is itself called gain.
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