Hebrews 13:5 Meaning and Explanation

In older English 'conversation' means the whole manner of life, the way we live and act through and through. So the writer asks that the way we live be free of covetousness, the restless reaching for more, and marked instead by contentment 'with such things as ye have.' Then he grounds that contentment in a promise: 'for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.' The piling up of negatives in the Greek is emphatic, never, no never, will I forsake you. The reason we can hold money loosely is that we already hold something that cannot be taken: God Himself.

Money promises security and cannot deliver it; God promises His presence and always keeps it. The same Lord who walked with Israel walks with us, and in Jesus has come even nearer, the One who told His friends, 'I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world' (Matthew 28:20). When His nearness is our treasure, the fear that drives greed begins to quiet. We can be content, because we are not, and never will be, alone.

The promise quoted here is old, first spoken as Israel stood on the edge of a land they had not yet taken, when courage was scarce and the giants looked large. Be strong and of a good courage, Moses said, for the Lord thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. The writer lifts that ancient assurance and lays it over our anxious accounting of money, as if to say the same God who went before Israel goes before us into every uncertain tomorrow. Covetousness is finally a failure of trust, a scramble to secure ourselves as though we were alone. But the piled-up negatives leave no crack for that fear. Never, no never, will He leave us. Contentment is simply faith counting its true riches.