Godliness with Contentment Is Great Gain

Dur­ing a recent med­i­ta­tion on the pas­toral epis­tles a verse jumped out on me in a new light.

But god­li­ness actu­ally is a means of great gain when accom­pa­nied by con­tent­ment. (1 Tim 6:6)

I have con­tem­plated this pas­sage at dif­fer­ent times through­out my short Chris­t­ian life but never writ­ten my thoughts on this pas­sage before. In the con­text of think­ing how this pas­sage relates to the over­seer Paul’s words become clearer in their intent towards young Timothy.

In the pas­sage before Paul makes it clear that some have used the pur­suit of god­li­ness in order to find some sort of mate­r­ial gain. Paul men­tions that these peo­ple are “con­ceited and under­stand noth­ing” (v. 4). Paul wants Tim­o­thy to know that the con­tin­ual pur­suit and acqui­si­tion of god­li­ness is only of gain when accom­pa­nied with con­tent­ment. When the pur­suit of god­li­ness is done for the end result of being more holy and use­ful for work in God’s king­dom and not for sor­did gain then and only then will it be of any use to the pur­suer. Paul desires Tim­o­thy to shun these worldly pur­suits and reminds him that “we have brought noth­ing into the world, so we can­not take any­thing out of it either” (v. 7).

This pas­sage speaks to me (and I assume all believ­ers as well), because I live a life with so lit­tle con­tent­ment. I often pay lip service to the fact that God is my sufficiency and my only sus­tainer yet I run to the com­fort of mate­r­ial goods as a reminder of com­fort and suc­cess. It’s telling to me that if I desire to shep­herd other believ­ers I must uphold a prin­ci­ple and real­ity of con­tent­ment beyond what most believ­ers employ. If my life is to be of good rep­u­ta­tion with those inside and out­side the church I can­not con­tinue to desire and chase pos­ses­sions and show my discontent.

I know that the salary and lifestyle I have now will be nowhere near the one that I might have as an over­seer. Even though I might have far less money, the issue of con­tent­ment is a heart issue that I must face before endeav­or­ing to lead oth­ers. May God give us all more con­tent­ment and pur­suit of his holiness.