Godliness with Contentment

It has been said that the first and last commandments of the Decalogue complement each other. The first declares that we are to have no other God than the God who delivered us from bondage. The tenth says that we shall not covet. How are these prohibitions complementary? The first intimates that we are to trust that the God who rescued us will not forsake us. He alone is the one to whom we must turn for all that we need. Faith in him and him alone is fundamental to our relationship with him. To covet, on the other hand, is to be discontent with what God has provided. When we desire the things of our neighbor to the point of complaining about our lack, we profess that our God is not as kind or as generous as theirs. Such adoration for a another god is nothing less than idolatry.

Jesus uses the parable of the rich fool to say as much (Luke 12:13-21). With it he warns against wealth’s power to captivate and deceive us into thinking that we are in control of everything around us, even our future. Whether we possess the riches, or just wish that we did, we are instructed that our first priority should be pursuing wealth toward God. Our hope, our confidence, our contentment should derive from our knowledge of him and his salvation, and not from an imaginary existence that we believe will satisfy. To rest in wealth, real or imagined, is to place our hopes in the hands of an idol.

Confidence in the true God, in his promises, wisdom, power, and love, breeds contentment. Coveting that which is our neighbor's, whether it be his home, wife, job, or status, breeds discontentment. The former is the fruit of the gospel working in our life. The latter, the fruit of giving rein to unsanctified yearning. 

With the Spirit’s help we can experience contentment. He can develop in us a godly response to earthly riches (material or otherwise) so that we can pursue and enjoy them free of the striving that marks a covetous soul. The key is understanding that we are stewards of all that God allows us to possess. To be rich toward God is to use the riches he bestows to his glory. This was the wealthy man’s folly. God had given him much but he decided it was for him to use as he pleased — he would “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” There will be scant mirth for such a one when called to give an account. Truly, “better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it” (Proverbs 15:16).

Keeping Perspective

“For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). Really? To know Christ, to follow him, does it really require that everything else in life be counted as worthless? It might seem that way if we isolate this declaration, not letting it speak within its context. It’s not the apostle’s intent to declare all human accomplishments to be no more than animal excrement (the more graphic meaning of the word translated ‘rubbish’). It’s only when such accomplishments are put forward as justification before God that he considered them as such. We are justified by “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (v. 9). As such, Paul would not cling to any credentials that created a false sense of worthiness, despite the fact that he could claim some serious credentials (v. 4-6).

No, Paul’s intent was not to denigrate human achievement or deny the validity of hard work. His was a preemptive strike against a false gospel that he knew to be circulating among the churches; a gospel that said one must do something in order to be in right standing with God when the true gospel proclaims that it is all of grace and right standing is possessed by faith alone. That being said, his declaration does offer a helpful perspective as regards human achievement.

Human beings are capable of remarkable things. Made in the image of God and empowered to manage the affairs of his creation, men and women have harnessed the innate resources of the earth and put them to use. The results have been mixed, to be sure, as all of our efforts are tinged with the corruption of sin, but there is no denying that we are capable of extraordinary achievement. Think of it -- we put a man on the moon!

We need to put that accomplishment in perspective, however. When Neil Armstrong uttered his famous prophecy after putting the first human foot on the surface of the moon, it signaled the culmination of nearly a decade of human experimentation, innovation, funding and flying, a harnessing of resources with few precedents in the history of mankind. But if we measure the distance he traveled by the scale that distances in space are commonly measured, light years (the distance light travels in a year moving at 186,000 miles/second, the speed of light), he traveled about one second! All that effort for one second’s worth of space distance!!

There’s fruit to be gleaned from this. While we want to have dreams and work hard to achieve them, the gospel opens the vast reaches of eternity and puts our striving in proper perspective. Knowing Christ tells us that we must never forsake eternal reward for temporal gain for there isn’t any earthly achievement that rivals gaining Christ, not even stepping on to the moon.