Augustine of Hippo — Commentary on Scripture

1 Timothy 6:9

See what a fight we have with our dead sins, as that active soldier of Christ and faithful teacher of the church shows. For how is sin dead when it works many things in us while we struggle against it? What are these many things except foolish and harmful desires which plunge into death and destruction those who consent to them? And to bear them patiently and not to consent to them is a struggle, a conflict, a battle.

AGAINST JULIAN 2.9.32

1 Timothy 6:10

For when the soul loves its own power, it slips from the common whole to its own particular part. Had it followed God as its ruler in the universal creature, it could have been most excellently governed by his laws. But in that apostatizing pride, which is called “the beginning of sin,” it sought for something more than the whole; and while it struggled to govern it by its own laws, it was thrust into caring for a part, since there is nothing more than the whole. So by desiring something more, it becomes less, and for this reason covetousness is called “the root of all evils.”

ON THE TRINITY 12.9.14

1 Timothy 6:10

So love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, I can see that you love yourself, because you love God. Charity is the root of all good works. Just as greed, after all, is the root of all evil, so charity is the root of all good things.

SERMONS 179A.5

1 Timothy 6:11

“As for you, man of God, flee from these things.” You see, he didn’t just say, “Leave and forsake,” but “Flee from,” as from an enemy. You were trying to flee with gold; flee from gold instead. Let your heart flee from it, and your use of it need have no worries. Do without greed; don’t do without concern for others. There’s something you can do with gold, if you’re its master, not its slave. If you’re the master of gold, you can do good with it; if you’re its slave, it can do evil with you.

SERMONS 177.3

1 Timothy 6:16

God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, is in his own proper nature invisible. But he has appeared when he wished and to whom he wished; not as he is but in whatever way he wished, being served after all by all creation. If your mind, though it is invisible in your body, can appear by uttering your voice, and the voice in which your mind appears when you speak is not the substance of your mind, it means that mind is one thing and voice another, and yet mind becomes apparent in a thing which in itself is not. So too God, if he appeared in fire, is all the same not fire; if he appeared in smoke, still he isn’t smoke; if he appeared in a sound, he isn’t a sound. These things are not God, but they indicate God. If we bear this in mind, we may safely believe that it could have been the Son who appeared to Moses and was called both Lord and angel of the Lord.

SERMONS 7.4

1 Timothy 6:16

I am doing the right thing in taking my time over this question [about the origin of the soul], because I have no doubt at all that the soul is immortal, not as God is, “Who only has immortality,” but in a certain way according to its own nature, and that it is a created being, not the substance of the Creator: this I hold most firmly, as well as all other truths about the nature of the soul.

LETTERS 143.1.7

1 Timothy 6:16

So if God alone has immortality, is the soul mortal? That’s why I said the soul is immortal after its own fashion. You see, it can also die. Your graces must try to understand, and then the problem will be solved. I make bold to say, the soul can die, can be killed. Certainly it’s immortal. So there you are; I make bold to say it is both immortal in one sense and capable of being killed in another sense. And that’s why I said there is a kind of immortality, that is to say, an absolute and total unchangeableness, which God alone has, as it says of him, “Who alone has immortality.”

Sermons 65.4

1 Timothy 6:16

This, then, is charity, however small a thing it appears to us, as it inheres in our will; “it is not seen in any locality, nor sought by bodily eyes, nor limited by our sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by its utterance, nor perceived in its approach.” How much more true this is of God, of whom charity is the pledge within us! If our interior man is an image of him—insignificant, indeed—not begotten of him but created by him, and, although it is still renewed day by day, it now dwells in such light that no faculty of corporeal sight comes near to it, and if those things which we perceive with the eyes of the heart by means of that light are distinguished from each other and separated by no intervals of space, how much more is this true of God, who inhabits light inaccessible to the bodily senses, to whom there can be no approach except for the clean of heart!

LETTERS 147.18.44

1 Timothy 6:16

Already you have told me, O Lord, by means of a loud voice in my interior ear, that you are eternal, alone possessing immortality, since you change in relation neither to any form nor to motion. Your will is not altered in regard to periods of time, because no will is immortal if it is now one way and now another. In your sight this is clear to me. May it become more and more clear, I pray, and may I continue to live soberly under your protecting wings, within the influence of this revelation.

Confessions 12.11.11

1 Timothy 6:16

If you ask whether he can also be seen at any time as he is, I answer that this was promised to his sons, of whom it is said, “We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” If you ask by what means we shall see him, I answer: as the angels see, for we shall then be equal to them, as the angels see those things which are called visible; but no one has ever seen God nor can see him, because “he inhabits light inaccessible,” and his nature is invisible as it is immortal.

LETTERS 147.15.37

1 Timothy 6:17

It wasn’t riches he was in dread of, but the disease of riches. The disease of riches is great pride. A grand spirit it is indeed, that in the midst of riches is not prone to this disease, a spirit greater than its riches, surpassing them not by desiring but by despising them.

SERMONS 36.2

1 Timothy 6:17

Praise to the rich if they remain humble. Praise the rich for being poor. The one who writes to Timothy wants them to be like that, when he says, “Order the rich of this world not to be haughty in mind.” I know what I am saying: give them these orders. The riches they have are whispering persuasively to them to be proud; the riches they have make it very hard for them to be humble.

SERMONS 14.2

1 Timothy 6:18

Those who have given liberally of their riches have had great gains to compensate them for light losses. Their joy at what they assured for themselves more securely by readiness to give outweighed their sadness at the surrender of possessions they more easily lost because they clung to them fearfully. Reluctance to remove their goods from this world exposed them to the risk of loss. There were those who accepted the Lord’s advice: “Do not store your treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Pile up treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Such people proved in the time of tribulation how wise they were in not despising the finest of advisers and the most faithful and unconquerable guardian of treasure.

City of God 1.10.2

1 Timothy 6:19

Through love of this true life you ought to consider yourself desolate in this world, no matter what happiness you enjoy. That is the true life in comparison with which this other, which is so much loved, is not to be called life, however pleasant and prolonged it may be. Similarly, that is the true comfort which God promised by the prophet saying, “I will give them true comfort, peace upon peace.” Without this comfort there is more grief than consolation to be found in earthly comforts, whatever they may be.

LETTERS 130.2.3