The Rules of Contentment (2)

But godliness actually is a means of great gain, when accompanied by contentment. 1 Timothy 6:6

Contentment – Let’s be perfectly clear: God is not interested in helping those who help themselves. If you have embraced the age-old heresy that God helps those who demonstrate their own self-sufficiency, you need to read the Bible again. God helps those who are desperate in their inability to provide for themselves. God loves the dependent person; the one who relies entirely on Him. Exodus is the story of teaching men to be like Jesus, the fully dependent man.

But when we read this verse in Greek, we are confronted with an apparent contradiction. The very word for contentment (autarkeia) combines “self” and “suffice”. Contentment means “self-sufficiency”. Is Paul suggesting that godliness is gained when we provide for ourselves? Is he saying that our spiritual condition is improved when we take over the reins of our own lives? Not at all! What Paul has in mind is something much deeper. Paul’s view of self-sufficiency is found in inner satisfaction with the circumstances God engineers for me. There is a place for self-sufficiency in the Kingdom. It is the attitude that what God gives is good enough for me. In other words, I am satisfied in my soul when I am filled with His provision.

The focus of godly self-sufficiency is completely backwards from the world’s view of self-sufficiency. From the world’s perspective, self-sufficiency is contentment with what I am able to do for myself. This is a fundamental pattern of the world; a pattern that Paul warns us not to adopt. God’s view is that my self-sufficiency is expressed when His provision operates through me for the benefit of others. If the object of self-sufficiency is me, I remove myself from the grace of God. But, if the object of my state of satisfaction is my neighbor, I am in line with the God of all grace. In God’s world, self-sufficiency is turned upside down. What is good for me is determined by how it becomes a channel of good for others. God wants my self-sufficiency to be the foundation of community, not individual independence.

Do we really understand how radical this view is? Are we seduced by a world that says we must take care of ourselves? The world’s way is the way of fear. If I don’t provide for myself, no one will. That is a life turned in on itself. God shatters that view. My life is to be a provision for others. In that, God promises I will find real self-sufficiency, a soul contentment unknown in the world.