The Secret Sauce of Contentment - Part 2
by Dan Roach
The Source
So, what is the secret sauce of contentment?
This is where it gets interesting.
When Paul says he is “content” in v11, he is using the Greek word autarkes which literally means “self-sufficient”. Self-sufficiency, the ability to be independent of others and to find all that you need within yourself, was the ‘most valuable’ character trait of a person in Greek philosophy and something to aspire to.[1] It is still a massive virtue in our own Western culture today.
What Paul does in this passage is to deliberately use this word to undermine the very idea of self-sufficiency as being a virtue, and instead point his readers to the only source of true contentment that there is - Christ himself.[2] Paul’s famous statement in v13 makes this clear: ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’ Paul’s ‘power to cope’ flows from his union with Christ.[3] On his own he is lacking, but by drawing on Christ, he has all that he needs. It is like plugging a lamp into a socket. Paul was united to Christ in his death and resurrection and so experienced the power of God at work in the way in which he experienced and felt about his circumstances in life. He was Paul’s power source.[4] The connection is critical. Moisés Silva writes, ‘his sense of contentment does not arise out of personal resources but comes from the one who strengthens him.'[5] Peter O’Brien puts it beautifully, ‘His self-sufficiency was entirely due to the sufficiency of Another’.[6] In the light, he ‘does not consider physical deprivation an unmitigated disaster nor physical comfort the sign of success.’[7]
Wow.
The Process
How does this work out in practice? How can we become content in our day-to-day lives
Amazingly, what we see in Philippians 4:11-13 is that Paul ‘learned’ to be content. He was not born content and it did not suddenly appear in his life overnight. It was, rather, something he grew in over time. Stephen Altrogge is brilliant on this point:
Paul’s contentment wasn’t the result of a mountaintop spiritual experience, and he didn’t learn it from the pages of a best-selling book. He didn’t have the demon of discontentment cast out of him. Paul wasn’t content because things were going well for him. The dice were not rolling Paul’s way when he wrote Philippians. Paul had a contentment that transcended circumstances. If you met Paul in prison, he would have had a joyful smile on his face. If you met Paul relaxing in his home, the smile would have still been there. Paul had learned to be content.
This implies that Paul wasn’t always a model citizen of contentment. In times past he may have stalked the confines of his prison, shooting sinister glances at the guards, kicking at the walls, and muttering complaints under his breath. He couldn’t always claim to be content in every circumstance.
Over the years, however, something changed in Paul. He was transformed from discontent to content, from complaining against God to joyfully submitting to God, from raging to praising, even when that will involved prison, hunger, or stoning.
But change never takes place in a vacuum, and Paul was certainly no exception. His transformation was the result of being squeezed, shaped, and pressed by the various circumstances that God brought to him…He was stoned to a bloody pulp by an angry mob. He was beaten with rods three times and had his back mulched by a whip five separate times. Paul was shipwrecked at least four times. Did he still have scars and divots in his head from the stones? Did the repeated beatings cause him to walk with a limp? How many days did Paul lie on his stomach while his back was healing? How many nights did Paul spend in the ocean, clinging to a piece of driftwood and pleading with God to wash him up on the beach?…
And yet it was in the midst of this lowliness that God taught Paul the secret of contentment. Paul learned to be content in suffering only through suffering. He learned how to be content with hunger only after feeling sick and dizzy with malnutrition. God allowed Paul to prosper so that he would learn how to enjoy abundance without clinging to it. Paul’s supernatural contentment was the result of being placed in circumstances that were beyond his strength, which forced him to cry out to God for contentment. I can imagine Paul pleading with God for strength as a friend dabbed his ruined back with a damp cloth. I can see him holding his bloodied head between his hands and blessing the Lord. Paul’s supernatural contentment was learned in the hills and valleys of life.[8]
Paul learned to be content. He got to that place. He could keep going because he was drawing so heavily and so regularly from the limitless well of Christ.
The wonderful news is we can too, if we do the same.
Over time, we can expect to find ourselves becoming more content.
If we keep turning to God through thick and thin.
When life really hurts, and we feel completely deficient.
Not falling for the lie, when things are going well, that we are self-sufficient.
Keep drawing strength from him through his promises in Scripture, his people, the church, who he has put around you to support and strengthen you, and through prayer to Jesus Christ himself, the Living God.[9]
He is the secret source of contentment.
[1] Frank Thielman, Philippians, The NIV Application Commentary, p.236.
[2] Silva, Philippians, p.205; Markus Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries, p.261.
[3] Bockmuehl, Epistle to the Philippians, p.262.
[4] O’Brien, Epistle to the Philippians, p.527.
[5] Moisés Silva, Philippians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, pp.204-5.
[6] Peter T. O’Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians, New International Greek Testament Commentary, p.527.
[7] Thielman, Philippians, p.236.
[8] Altrogge, Greener Grass Conspiracy, pp.77-79.
[9] Ibid, pp.90-98.