The Gain of Christlike Contentment
6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (1 Timothy 6:6–10)
Compare how two men lived and died. Howard Hughes was one of the richest men in the United States. He owned a private fleet of jets, hotels and casinos. He became a filmmaker and acted in his own movies. He designed, built, and piloted the fastest aircraft in the world. He dated the most beautiful women in Hollywood. He allegedly had two U.S. Presidents in his pocket. At his death, he was worth 2.5 billion dollars at age 67.
John Wesley was an evangelist and pastor of the 17th century. When he died in 1791, the only money he mentioned in his will were the coins in his pockets and dresser. On the surface, Howard Hughes made a profit, won at life, and John Wesley lost. In the game of life, according to the world, Hughes was a winner, and Wesley, a loser. Perhaps, but there is more to their story, which I’ll come back to.
Everyone is after gain, in one sense. Whether they realise it or not, all people want their lives to be an exercise in making a profit, not a loss. We even use that kind of language. We say things like, “Living a life that counts” or “He lived a worthy life” or “don’t waste your life”. People say, they don’t want to “lose out”, or they want to “come out on top”. Now this is all the language of profit and loss. Counts, waste, lose, win. And somewhere, usually in our youth, we start placing our bets on what will bring maximum gain. Some decide it will be lots of money, and head in that direction. Some decide it will be good looks, and invest in that. Some decide it will be health and longevity. Some decide it will be friends, fame and socialising. Some decide it will be physical pleasure. But no one aims to run at a loss, to end their lives saying, I put more in than I got out, I did all these things, and yet I find that I lost more life than I ever gained.
And yet, the vast majority of the human race, if you interviewed them in their last moments of life, they would say something like Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “Emptiness, weightlessness. I put in, but it didn’t add up. I lost.”
But according to the Designer of life, that only happens when you violate His instructions. When you don’t commit user error with life, you emerge with gain, with profit. But that profit isn’t what many people expect.
It isn’t what the world expects. It isn’t what the false teachers expect, when they teach that the great goal and end of life is to be materially wealthy, as we saw in verses 3 to 5. From that kind of greed, Paul tells Timothy to withdraw, and even to flee.
It is a far greater, and yet far simpler kind of profit that God keeps for His people. When God’s people go to work in the world, and earn wealth, they need to understand what the real treasure is, what the real gain is, what the true profit is. Unless we understand that, we will fall into the same traps as the world, as the unsaved, and as the false teachers.
In one sentence, this passage teaches us that Christlike contentment is greater profit than wealth. This passage answers the question, What should be the treasure of a Christian’s life?
And in these powerful five verses, Paul is going to tell us what that gain is and contrast it with what is actually a loss. This a basic profit and loss statement: true gain, and the reason, and true loss, and the reason. Just two ideas: the true profit and true loss.
I. Christlike Contentment Brings True Profit
6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.
Carrying on from the previous verse, where the prophets of profit teach that religion is a way to get rich, to get material gain, now Paul swings that around with a kind of play on words: Actually, godliness, true Christlikeness combined with contentment is gain, it is profit, but not as they think. Not financial profit, not material gain, but nevertheless real gain. Great gain, as Paul puts it. Ultimate gain. Permanent gain. The greatest possible gain or profit possible.
If you want your life, on balance, to have been worth more at the end than at the start, to have finished with a life surplus, then the Word of God says you need godliness (that’s the character) with contentment (that’s the attitude).
Godliness is the shaping of your soul: changing your loves, desires, hopes, ambitions, purposes from selfish, worldly, fleshly ones, to ones like Christ’s, set on eternity, with His character, His loves, His thoughts, His ways, His attitudes. The shaping of a character is like chiseling a sculpture out of stone or metal, not moulding something out of plasticine. It takes a long time, and God’s tools include the hammer and chisel of the Word of God and His Holy Spirit, along with the furnace and anvil of trials and temptations, the church and the example of God’s people.
But it would hardly be pleasing to God if in the chiseling away to make you a thing of beauty like His Son, you were fussing, fretting and complaining all the way. So the attitude of soul that God wants us to have while all this is going on is the attitude of contentment. The English word contentment is from the root as its homonym: the content of something. The idea was, just as a container has contents, within limits, so a content person is satisfied with the limits God has placed on him. He is satisfied with the size and shape of the container God has given him at this time.
In the Greek, it is similar idea: choosing to find sufficiency, adequacy in what God gives. Jeremiah Burroughs was a pastor in England who lived from 1600-1646, and wrote the book, “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment”. Here is his definition of contentment: “Christian Contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious [state of mind], which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal in every condition.”
Probably all of us have at some point had the experience of ordering something at a restaurant or takeaway or drivethrough, and then we find out what we got was not what we ordered. And we’re justifiably unhappy: we ordered, we’re paying for a specific thing. Our experience of discontentment in life is a lot like that. It’s as if something arrives in our life, and we say, “I didn’t order this!”. The difference is that in this case, if we call the Manager to complain, the Manager happens to be our Creator and Father. If we say, “I didn’t order this health trial. I didn’t ask for this financial struggle. I didn’t request family strife with the topping of disappointed hopes and a side of painful problems”, He will reply, “I know. But that’s what you’re having. And it is just what you need right now.”
Contentment looks down at that plate, and then looks up into our Father’s loving face, and says, “Okay. Thank you. You know best.”
Contentment doesn’t mean we don’t try to solve our problems. Contentment doesn’t mean we stop asking and praying for things. But contentment does mean we refuse to murmur, to complain to the manager, to fuss about what is on our plate. We eat what is set before us, say thank you. Tomorrow we may again ask for a change, but what He does give us, we say thank you, and cheerfully agree it is enough.
“It is right to be content with what you have, but never to be content with what you are”.
Contentment extends to our outward condition, not to our inward state.
The process of becoming Christlike is painful, and we can either poison the mood with ongoing fussing, or sweeten it with chosen contentment. A merry heart does good, like medicine, But a broken spirit dries the bones. (Proverbs 17:22)
15 All the days of the afflicted are evil, But he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast. (Proverbs 15:15)
We can either sing the words of U2 “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. Twisted Sister, “We’re not gonna take it anymore” or the words of Samuel Rodigast “What God ordains is always good, his will is just and holy, As he directs my life for me, I follow meek and lowly.”
Now Paul gives us two reasons why Christlike character combined with contentment is the greatest possible gain. The first in verse 7 with the emphasis on godliness, the second in verse 8 with the emphasis on contentment.
The first reason is that the profit of Christlike contentment is permanent.
For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
Notice the word “for”. He is giving us an explanation of why godliness with contentment is gain. And the explanation is that a human arrives in this world with nothing and leaves with nothing. A human being in his truest form, is no more and no less than what he is on the inside. All the stuff you accumulate doesn’t add to you one bit.
15 And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.” (Luke 12:15)
The world might tell you that you are better, or improved or more, because of your car, or clothes, or house, or bank balance. But God gives you a little parable at your birth and death: you don’t arrive in a little tuxedo or evening gown: you have nothing. And when you die, as much as we dress up that body, you leave with precisely nothing. No Venter trailers behind hearses. The Egyptians were very wrong.
15 As he came from his mother’s womb, naked shall he return, To go as he came; And he shall take nothing from his labor Which he may carry away in his hand. (Ecclesiastes 5:15)
21 And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)
If we leave as we came, then the only thing that has been gained which goes with you is internal and invisible. Between that naked baby and that old, weakened body, the only thing that you take with you is how your character changed. Remember that Peter told us that it is faith, godly, Christlike, trust and love that is “much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, (1 Peter 1:7)
And that change is what lasts forever. That change is what will be rewarded forever. That’s why Jesus told us not to “lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:19–20) What are those eternal treasures? Becoming like Christ, doing His will on the earth, sharing truth with others.
Simply put, how long do you want your investment to be? Financial analysts talk about 25 or 30 years as a long-term investment. How does thirty or forty year’s wealth sound in light of a thousand years? Or a million? Or a billion? When you reach year 40 000 of your eternal life, what sort of wealth do you want to have to spend there? Stocks and properties and assets will do you little good there. Randy Alcorn says, “You can’t take it with you, but you can convert it and send it ahead of you.” You can turn your wealth into eternal investments that last forever, if you’re focusing on Christlikeness with contentment.
Christlikeness with contentment is the true gain, because it is permanent. But now in verse 8, Paul gives us another reason why Christlikeness with contentment is the real profit, and this time the emphasis is on the contentment.
The second reason is that the profit of Christlike contentment is practical. That is, it is adaptable, flexible, efficient, pliable.
8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content.
We will be satisfied, we will regard it as enough, as sufficient to have food in our stomachs and clothes on our back. The word for clothing can also refer to shelter. Provision for our bodies to subsist, and protection from the elements is the absolute basic necessities for human life. Paul says, Christians are pilgrims moving to our eternal home, and if our Father provides us with food to eat and clothes on our back, that’s enough. Everything beyond that is sheer blessing, and abundance.
To put it another way, Christians are not meant to be high-maintenance people. Put food in our stomach and clothes on our back, and we are ready to serve God and love people. Yes, most of us have much, much more than that, for which we must be thankful. But if we were reduced to that, we should not be in a corner in the foetal position crying ourselves to sleep. Food and clothing is enough fuel in our tank to keep going for another day.
11 Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: (Philippians 4:11)
The more you count the blessings you have, the less you crave the luxuries you haven’t.
Contentment makes you a practical, flexible Christian who can be useful in many, changing circumstances. You are not luxury sedan that needs perfect Autobahns to run on. You are a utility vehicle that can serve God in the good times and the bad. Christlikeness with contentment is no fair-weather Christianity. A Christian is not meant to be a delicate, high-maintenance Pekingese needing gold combs and satin pillows. A Christian is meant to be a reliable gun-dog; ready to serve the master whether its scraps today or Christmas turkey stuffing tomorrow.
The reason a Christian can say this and an unbeliever cannot is that the Christian has the ultimate possession: God Himself.
5 Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
If you know and love God, you have the highest treasure, the most satisfying One, the ultimate joy, and no one can take it from you. So however your material condition fluctuates, you retain the ultimate wealth of God. The Christian can even see the blessing of having just enough.
8 Remove falsehood and lies far from me; Give me neither poverty nor riches— Feed me with the food allotted to me; 9 Lest I be full and deny You, And say, “Who is the Lord?” Or lest I be poor and steal, And profane the name of my God. (Proverbs 30:8–9)
16 Better is a little with the fear of the Lord, Than great treasure with trouble. (Proverbs 15:16)
That’s the secret of getting contentment. It is asking and answering the question: is God Himself enough for my soul? What I mean by that is this: God’s gift of Himself to you: in His promises, His provision, His protection, His presence, His guidance, His blessings, does that satisfy your soul?
The medieval mystic John of the Cross said it this way: “Herein a man may know whether he really loves God: Is he satisfied with anything less than God?” Or as Thomas a Kempis put it, “Use temporal things but desire eternal things. You cannot be satisfied with any temporal goods because you were not created to enjoy them. Even if you possessed all created things you could not be happy and blessed; for in God, Who created all these things, your whole blessedness and happiness consists.”
Christlikeness with contentment is the true profit. The gain is permanent – stretching into eternity, and the gain is practical – for the here and now.
But people are not easily convinced. If the promises of profit were stalls or booths at a market, selling their goods where would be the longest queues? Picture the booths: fame, power, pleasure, success, promotion, knowledge. At the stall “godliness” there might be a line of four or five people.
But at the stall “riches”, you would see a line snaking around the block. People are sure that riches unlock gain. So Paul is now going to give you the truth about that.
II. Carnal Covetousness Brings Unwanted Loss
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Those who desire to be rich, those who pursue it, or to put in the words of verse 10, those who love money fall.
He is not criticising being wealthy: in verses 17 through 19 he expects that some Christians are wealthy. Nor is there a problem with a businessman seeking to make a profit. There is a difference between seeking to make a profit and seeking to be wealthy. If you are an entrepreneur, the goal is to give your goods or services at a profit. But what you do with that profit and how you view it, makes all the difference. A Christlike person uses the profit to reinvest in his business, to create more jobs, support more families, enable more ministry, and bless his family.
But then there is a kind of loving the profit for its own sake: what Tolkien called gold-sickness. The Bible condemns the heart-attitude that lusts for abundance of money, thinking to replace God with wealth.
Because that’s at the heart of lusting for wealth. Yes, there can be greed for luxuries, there can be the lust of the eyes for status, there can be the sheer pride of desiring total independence, but at the very heart of covetousness is a simple equation: more money equals less trust. It’s the parable of Luke 12:
16 Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully. 17 And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’ 18 So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.” ’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’ (Luke 12:16–20)
This is why Paul puts it in Colossians 3:5 Therefore put to death…covetousness, which is idolatry.
Why is covetousness idolatry? Because it replaces God as the source. Now once you replace God as your first love, as your chief treasure, then you are headed for this fall.
Fall, that’s the main action of verse 9. Here is the first loss.
First, you lose freedom. You fall. Now who aims to fall? A fall is always unplanned, unexpected, and unwanted. So is a trap. A trap is something that is hidden but nevertheless catches you. Paul says, people lusting for wealth do not purpose to do this, but it happens nonetheless: they stumble into a life that now captures them and holds them. Enough people want the wealth, and when they get it, they find they are an unexpected bind.
What does the fall look like? You fall into a life where you are now tempted in ways you weren’t before. As you replace God with riches, you become its slave, and you are now tempted to cheat, to exploit, to lie, to steal, to harm, in ways you never dreamed you’d do, because God is no longer your god. Covetousness is also a trap. What is that trap? Once you lose that flexible contentment of necessary food and clothing, you are in bondage to make sure you can always maintain your lifestyle. And what people do to maintain that is what Paul calls many foolish and harmful lusts. They’re doing ridiculous things to get the money, to keep the money, to protect the money. They thought they’d have less problems if money was what they could get, and now they find themselves pierced through with more problems than they ever had when they were poor.
It’s a fall and a trap.
The monkey trap is a ridiculously simple, and yet effective trap. It’s made of a container, either bolted down or attached to a chain. The container has a hole cut into it wide and thin enough for a monkey to put his hand in when flattened out. Inside the trap is usually a banana, or a sweet. Once the monkey smells the treat, he slips his hands in and grabs the treat, but once his fist is clenched, it is too big to withdraw out of the hole. And believe it or not, many a hunter catches a monkey this way. Because the monkey, once having grabbed the treat, will simply not let go. He will fight and fight to get his hand out of the trap, and to perhaps pull the trap from its chain, but all along, he will not think to unclench his fist. That’s all he’s needs to do to get free, but he doesn’t do it.
It’s funny to hear the world speak about financial freedom, by which they mean, so much money that my problems go away. Real financial freedom is to be offered the kingdoms of this world and the glory thereof and say no, as the Lord Jesus said to Satan. That’s financial freedom. It’s walking through a mall and rejoicing in all the things I don’t need or want. The love and the lust for money brings a fall and a trap. That’s a loss of freedom.
It also brings another loss. That’s a loss of faith itself.
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
And the image Paul uses is of drowning in water. The man in the grip of pursuing wealth as an end, and not as a means, worshipping money finds himself sinking under conflicting ethics, torn between desires that are ridiculous and harmful. And as he goes along, his compromises becomes more and more severe, his betrayals of his faith become more pronounced, until one day, Paul says, the man has strayed from the faith altogether, and sunk under the waves of destruction and ruin.
People do not understand: sin is not a pet you can keep in a cage. When you feed it on area, it grows in every area. Feed sin in the area of covetousness, and you suddenly find you are also losing the battle in the area of anger, and lust, and slander, and evil thoughts. Sin is like keeping a pet crocodile at home.
And in verse 10, Paul gives you the explanation: for the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. is becomes a corrupt love, and from the poisoned well of corrupt loves come a host of diseases: greed, selfishness, sensuality, lewdness, conceitedness, arrogance, deceit. Out of that basic root, that well, that source, that spring of your life, come all sorts of perversions. Finally, the greed grows to where it matches what Jesus said of the third soil in His parable:
22 Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. (Matthew 13:22)
It was not for no reason that Jesus warned:
23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:23–24)
Why? Because when you have begun to pray to your bank account, Give us this day, our daily bread, when you have begun to thank your bank account, and rejoice in your bank account, you have come to love the gift more than the Giver. You would not say it in these words, but you have accepted money as your personal Saviour, and hope in it. But more than one wealthy man has been in a hospital bed with drips and monitors all around, with doctors with resigned expressions shaking their heads, and the man has realised too late, none of that helps me now. I need the Creator Himself.
This is not gain, but loss.
Here’s how the story of Howard Hughes and Wesley ended. In the last 25 years of his life, Howard Hughes was consumed by the fear that people were out to get him, or that he would catch germs from someone. He lives in hotels, renting out whole floors. To see him, you had to take several tissues, cover the door knob with them, knock, and open the door ever-so-slightly. His driver was only allowed to go on smooth roads, and could never exceed 55 kilometres per hour, and if on some uneven ground or crossing railroad tracks, he had to slow down to 2 miles per hour to avoid an accident. One biographer describes his appearance before he died: “He was emaciated, practically skeletal, with only 120 pounds stretched over his six-foot, four-inch frame. He was not dead, but it seemed his body was already in decay. Only the long grey hair that trailed halfway down his back, the thin straggly beard that reached midway onto his sunken chest, and his hideously long nails still showed sign of life. He lay without clothing in bed, deathly afraid of germs. He spent his days watching movies. He watched his favourite movie, Ice Station Zebra, at least 150 times. Finally emaciated and hooked on morphine and codeine, he died at age 67.” (Bill Hybels, Character: Reclaiming Six Endangered Qualities, p. 47- 48). When he died, no one claimed his body. A distant cousin had to be given custody of his body. With 2.5 billion dollars, he went to meet his maker.
Wesley, it is true, died with only the coins in his pocket. But in his life, adjusted for inflation, Wesley had given away R160 million. He had preached 40 000 sermons, begun charities, societies, and trained around 540 ministers. On his death bed, at age 87, he grasped the hands of his friends and said repeatedly, “Farewell, farewell.” At the end, he said, “The best of all is, God is with us”.
You decide, who ended life in the red, and who was in the black. Who would you rather be in your last days – Hughes, or Wesley? And more importantly, one minute after death, who would you prefer to be – Hughes or Wesley? What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his soul? One life to live, you choose where to invest: carnal covetousness, or Christlike contentment.