Godliness with Contentment

In keeping with the expositional nature of our weekly sermon format, we are quite predictably in chapter 6 of 1 Timothy verses 6-8.  Although a powerful message from beginning to end, most of my thinking before, during and after the sermon centered around the single sentence of verse 6 - "But godliness with contentment is great gain."

The starting point of course is that the Bible is Truth - beginning to end the same, same Holy Spirit inspiring, equally efficacious.  Therefore we need look no further than the text itself to derive great benefit.  We are told quite simply that great gain is available - it can be had.  How?  By way of godliness with contentment.  Godliness has been Paul's theme throughout 1 Timothy and some of the ways to train to that end have been discussed in previous posts and are equally plain.  We have here that godliness with (or alongside, or joined together with, or acting simultaneously with) contentment.

Godliness has been defined as: "A right attitude and response toward the true Creator God."
Contement has been defined as: "Satisfaction with what we have and with what we don't have."

So, we train to be godly and learn to be content - that is to say we train to have a right attitude and response toward the true Creator God and learn to be satisfied with what we have and with what we don't have - and that is great gain.  Easy to understand and end of story, right.  Well, yes and no.  That is definately enough to be of great benefit.  At the very least we can strive toward godliness and in being content.  But no in that we can see deeper the same Truth without contradicting or losing the plainness of it.

As believers (well, reformed believers at least) we are substance dualists, which are two big words that mean we subsist in two forms - soul and body, spiritual and physical, eternal and temporal.  Some additional thought into those two forms will have us agreeing with C.S. Lewis that we are a soul and we have a body.  That is to say it would be a mistake for us to misunderstand our nature and believe ourselves to be finite fleshly human beings that happen to have a soul.  If that were the case, then we might be dissuaded by fine-sounding arguments relative to abortion (infanticide) and when the physical life actually begins as if that is the real point of concern for disciples of Christ.  From Genesis 1 we know that God created man in His image, that He breathed life into man and that man has an eternal destination.  We would only entertain notions of life beginning with the physical if we were to neglect or forget that transcendent Truth about mankind.  But I digress, as many more misunderstandings besides infanticide stem from the same misunderstanding.  The point here is that as created beings created in the image of our Creator and existing forever, we are a soul and we have our temporary fleshly form for a while.

So what does that have to do with godliness and contentment?  Well, if we are a soul and have a body, then our focus will be on the eternal, the spritual, the soulish nature first and foremost.  Aren't we told over and over in Scripture that this is the case?  In Romans 12:1-2 alone that our minds need to be renewed to know God's will and that our bodies should be offered as living sacrifices as spiritual acts of worship.  Our manish nature must legitimately be addressed (if we don't eat and drink we will surely die a physical death) but must be made subservient to the soulish nature.  We "beat or bodies" and "deny ourselves" such that we live with focus upon, and pursue with delight that which edifies our soulishness, even if it be to the detriment of our manishness (many times intentionally so).

I have been making a case in the positive for this deeper understanding of the same Truth, so let me present a completed negative formulation, then end with the positive formulation to which end we are to strive:

To be discontent with our temporal circumstances is to prioritize our manishness and suppress our soulishness; to prioritize the temporal over and above the eternal; to choose as more important the physical instead of the spiritual; to misunderstand our very nature and to travel down the wide, well traveled path away from Truth and Life and is to lose much.

To pursue godliness with a desire that God be glorified in all things and with a desire that we be transformed into the likeness of Christ, while resting on the knowledge that God is Sovereign and the promises that the One True God has made toward working all things out for our good (whether immediately evident to us or not) according to His will (which may or may not align with our prayers and petitions) and providing for all our needs, and therefore being satisfied with whatever material things that may be credited to our earthly account whether great or small and seeing those material things as blessings given to us to manage well and to bless others in abundance is to rightly understand our nature and to walk the narrow Way, in Truth and Life and is to gain much.

Timothy Update

Things have been busy.  That is probably quite common to all and a common refrain in our lives as there are many responsibilities tugging at our time.  It has been several weeks since the last post on 1 Timothy.  Quite a lot of ground has been covered in that time, from verse 20 in chapter 5 through chapter 6 and verse 2.  Again, due to time constraints this post will cover these passages briefly, and possible the discussions spurred on from them is where more considerable time can be taken.

Entertaining an accusation against an elder provoked a discussion that was quite possibly entertaining in iteself.  Ultimately the context of the passage and principle presented is for the protection of the elder against slanderous accusations.  Also in the comments following the previous post, additional clarification to the word "entertain" brought more light to the imperative not to take to heart accusations brought against elders without witnesses.  Obviously the Bible, in this passage which is specifically dealing with eldership, is not advocating a "gag order" on all reports of abuse.  In the 1 Timothy church the current elders and membership have a responsibility to look carefully at the man being presented for eldership and his meeting of the clearly written qualifications (both things he must exhibit in his character and things that must be absent in his character) so that such cases would be a great exception.  Also in the 1 Timothy church there will be a plurality of elders, such that if a report of abuse did arise the member to whom the accusation was brought can present the accuser to the other elder(s) so that the abuse is not neglected but also not entertained.  Verse 20 then moves to what action is taken in the case of legitimately discovered sin in the life of the elder.  Public rebuke.  That seems harsh in today's moral economy.  Think about how many times in your lifetime an elder has been publicly rebuked for sin.  What did you come up with?  10 times?  5 times?  2 times?  Never?  Personally I cannot recall ever having experienced such a public rebuke.  Now, I must also explain that until my current 5 year membership I have also never been in a church that was established according to the 1 Timothy church.  So it stands to reason that since the leadership was not arranged according to 1 Timothy that church discipline would not be handled according to 1 Timothy.  So what?  What is missed if sin in not publicly addressed, even among the eldership?  Just read verse 20 again - so that the others may take warning.  No warnings to the membership regarding discipline and consequences for sin in the church, this is a huge loss.  If part of the responsibility of the church is to watch their life and doctrine closely, then what good does it do the body to make things so lax with respect to discipline that there is no encouragement from the church to watch their life and doctrine closely?  If relationship with Christ is the most important thing in an individual believers' life how could the church not address through discipline issues that hinder or block altogether growth, worship, adoration of God with those who are living in active disobedience?  The church should love them enough to seek reconciliation through discipline, in this case public rebuke even for elders.

Chapter 6 references masters and servants, and in today's common scenario in the United States employers and employees.  Very briefly here, everyone for whom God shines the light of Truth into his/her heart lives a certain life in a certain place.  Those temporal circumstances may or may not change immediately or over time, but what is significant is that the miracle of a change of heart has taken place.  So, one person may have 200 people in his employ when she becomes a believer.  The question before her is how will the love of Christ and the change of heart effect her life as an employer (her treatment, her expectations, her demands, her compensation, her attitude toward her employees).  Another person may be employed by a great boss, a terrible boss or something in between.  The question before him is how will the love of Christ and the change of heart effect his life as an employee (his treatment, his expectations, his thoughts, his attitude, his appreciation toward his employer).  Much can be said regarding slavery, the yoke placed on others, and the outworking in a culture with the understanding of the equality of all mankind as image bearers.  However, suffice it to say for this post that each person who is brought to a saving knowledge of Christ will be responsible for how he/she worships God in whatever situation they are in or transition into for the remainder of their lives.  We are all responsible individually to God for how we behave as disciples of Christ and striving to live in contentment with godliness, which is great gain.  Whatever any of our current situation, we can all find something to change so that we can do better at being content and godly right where we are, for His glory.