What Does 1 Timothy 6:6 Mean?
But godliness with enough within is great gain.
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
But godliness with contentment is great gain.THE KEY
The verse calls enoughness joined to reverence “great gain,” so abundance is measured by what no new possession can supply.
THE MEANING
Your life holds a different measure of gain: reverence for God joined to enoughness is already great gain. Contentment names a sufficiency that can stand without the next acquisition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your worth or abundance rises with every new thing you acquire.
THE ROOT
αὐτάρκεια
autarkeia
GROWS FROM
ἀρκέω
arkeō
to suffice, be enough
“enough within” in this verse is autarkeia. The word joins αὐτός (autos, self) with ἀρκέω (arkeō, suffice): contentment carries the sense of sufficiency. The same word appears elsewhere as “sufficiency,” showing that this enoughness can open into capacity for good work.
ALSO GROWS
arkeō: to suffice, be enough
ἀρκέω
This verb is the seed of the word translated “contentment,” making enoughness central to the verse’s account of gain.
autarkēs: sufficient, having enough
αὐτάρκης
This related adjective carries the same sufficiency into a description of what is adequate.
εὐσέβεια
eusebeia
GROWS FROM
σέβομαι
sebomai
to revere, hold in reverence
“godliness” in this verse is eusebeia. The word is built from εὖ (eu, well) and σέβομαι (sebomai, revere): it holds a life of reverence inside what English can make sound like an abstract virtue. Here, that reverence is joined to enoughness, and together they are named gain.
ALSO GROWS
sebomai: to revere, worship
σέβομαι
This root exposes the reverence carried within “godliness.”
eusebeō: to act reverently, be devout
εὐσεβέω
This related verb expresses reverence as a way of being, rather than a label.
THE PATTERN
Scripture measures abundance by sufficiency joined to a life oriented toward God, not by the size of one’s store.
Better is little with awe of the LORD than great treasure and tumult in it.Not that I speak from lack, for I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be sufficient in myself.And God is able to make all favor overflow toward you, so that you, always holding all you need in everything, may overflow into every good work.THE THREAD
And God is able to make all favor overflow toward you, so that you, always holding all you need in everything, may overflow into every good work.The Greek noun αὐτάρκεια (autarkeia, sufficiency) translated “contentment” here returns as “sufficiency” there. That shared word opens enoughness beyond private satisfaction: it can become the capacity to abound in good work.
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