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.

Truth Be Told

I'm coming to the close of my personal daily devotions in 1 John, 2 John and 3 John and wanted to post some of the common themes that emerged as prominent in my mind as I have been studying and meditating on these letters in the last few months.  There are three that are foremost in my thinking, and all three gained that place of prominence in my mind because of several verses in particular, although the themes were common throughout.

Theme number one: Jesus is Lord and Christ, the Son of God.

"We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.  If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us."  1 John 4:13-15

"Who is it that overcomes the world?  Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."  1 John 5:5

The Gospel of Christ according to John also provides much textual support of the connection between the man Jesus and the link to Christ, Lord and God ("My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand.  I and the Father are one." John 10:29-30, for example).

Theme number two: We know love and truth because we know the Son.

"...because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever:  Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, will be with us in truth and love." 2 John 2-3

"It gave me great joy to have some brothers come and tell about your faithfulness to the truth and how you continue to walk in the truth.  I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." 3 John 3-4

"But you have an annointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.  I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.  Who is the liar?  It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ...Dear friends, if our  hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God, and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands, and do what pleases him.  And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us."  1 John 2:20-22a; 3:21-23

Theme number three: Resist false teaching that opposes the love and truth known through the Son.

"Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world." 1 John 4:1-3

"Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.  If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him.  Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work." 2 John 9-11

"Dear friends, do not imitate what is evil but what is good.  Anyone who does what is good is from God.  Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God."  3 John 11

It would do all who call on the name of Christ to think carefully on these and spend some time reinforcing these truths each day as we live each day knowing truth and love because of the work of the Holy Spirit who shined the light of truth in our hearts so that we might know Jesus as both Lord and Christ and empowers us to study the Word of Truth to show ourselves approved and recognize deception and false teaching.  God doesn't need us to defend Him as He was and is and ever will be God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit regardless any earthly circumstance, but there are those who will seek to lead others away from the Truth and so we can be about lifting up Love and Truth as it is only legitimate - through Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior.

Dangerous Territory

I have been in a discussion on another blog site for a few days and a theme has developed that I felt important enough to address on its own.  Here is how the thinking is presented without reference to a specific topic so we can concentrate on the framing of the position and not the details of the issue.

"I read explicitly the words of the Bible on topic X, but the Bible does not make any explicit statements about a corollary topic X'.  Since the Bible is silent on topic X' I look at the world around me.  Contemporary culture says that topic X' should be viewed equitably with topic X.  Based on the observations I have made in the culture surrounding me in my every day life I conclude that topic X' is acceptable Biblically and further determine that I should accept and celebrate topic X' and treat it as equitable with topic X."

Is this a logical, proper and reasonable way for sincere Christians to think in areas where the Bible does not explicitly state anything regarding a specific topic?  I would say this is very dangerous territory and that this line of thinking is logical is not proper and is not reasonable for sincere Christians.

The line of thinking is logical because it begins with a proposition, states the assumptions and forms a conclusion.  That is all that is required to make a logical argument.  The conclusion is either true or false based on the myriad rules of logic that govern such matters.  So, the line of thinking is at least logical in that sense.  More on this point later.

The line of thinking is not, however, proper or reasonable and I will only present one reason below as it should be the only reason necessary.

God is Holy.

Is it really as simple as that?  Yes, I believe it is.  Think of the assumption made in the logic developed in the position.  If there is no explicit wording in the Bible for a position (X' in our faceless example) then we look to contemporary culture and the observations we make there to determine what is Biblically acceptable.  Did you catch that - look to contemporary culture to determine what is Biblically acceptable.  What is the danger there?  It seems obvious - the popular majority of contemporary culture will in the main behave contrary to God's will.  Granting that the law of God is written on the heart of man such that all recognize moral categories and non-Christians can do good things, this is not the requirement of the Christian.  God did not call us to be good.  Be holy, be perfect, be conformed to the likeness of Christ, live worthy of the calling to which you have been called - these are the requirements for disciples of Christ.  Even more striking is the dangerous ground on which one stands by using this reasoning, at it is similar to Pascal's wager: what if you are wrong?  Since you don't know because the Bible does not explicitly cover topic X' if one looks to contemporary culture and celebrates topic X' and deems it equitable Biblically with topic X and is wrong, what is been done is a profaning of that which is sacred.  Holding such a viewpoint is the trivialize the Holiness of God in that we are willing to make extensions of God based on the world around us which we are certain is fallen and by and large is still fighting against God.

If the mistake is made and the person is a disciple of Christ, whose sins have been atoned for by acceptance of Christ at the atoning sacrifice for sins then His blood will cover that sin as well.  But how are we to live our lives as believers?  The knowledge of what was done on our behalf and the resultant love we have for our Lord and Savior should drive us to desire to glorify God in every way and not tread on such dangerous ground, clearly placing ourselves in the terrible position of endorsing and celebrating that which is against God's will.  This should be reason enough to decry such an approach.