The Discord of Discontent

From Gospel Translations

I have always been intrigued by the selection Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 10 of the most serious sins of the people of God under Moses’ leadership. Israel’s example is a dire warning for the church at Corinth. They are therefore to avoid, as the worst of evils, four things. The first three would cause us little surprise: idolatry, immorality, and seeing how far they could go in testing God. But the fourth is “murmuring” or “grumbling,” a word which the lexicon tells us means “to mutter privately in sullen discontent.”

It was a frequent condition in Israel, one which God regarded with great seriousness and responded to with solemn judgment. Clearly Paul viewed it in the same category as idolatry and immorality. Probably, most modern pastors could testify to the havoc this deadly spiritual virus can create in the church of Jesus Christ if it is left unchecked. We need to tremble at the first sign of such a spirit in the church, and, like Paul, earnestly to seek to “learn to be content.”

Paul’s point then, and my conviction as a pastor, is that biblical contentment of spirit is one of the greatest needs of modern evangelical pastors and churches.

There are peculiar openings in a pastor’s life where a discontented spirit can breed. He may see others enjoying a more affluent lifestyle than he, having more free time, experiencing more social recognition than he enjoys, and he may well become deeply resentful. Or, perhaps more subtly, he may hear of the blessing and growth which is happening in another church, but not in his, and mutter to himself or his wife, “It’s all right for him, he doesn’t have my problems,” or, “Look at the resources they have.” Soon, the sour disposition sets in.

There are also peculiar temptations for some segments of a congregation to become malcontents. People who are ambitious for power and influence who discover that they cannot get their own way in the church are often left seething with resentment. Some who have never been willing to submit to leadership quickly become murmurers. And the result in the church of Christ is division in the body, distraction from the great matters of the kingdom, and increasing spiritual barrenness.

By contrast, true contentment is exhibited for us in Paul’s autobiographical statement in Philippians 4:12, “I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (NIV).

There is a secret of being content, and it is an open secret in Scripture. As always, Jesus is our best teacher and example. In John 4, the disciples have gone into the city to buy food while Jesus evangelizes the woman at the well. The disciples return and urge Him to eat, concluding that He must be weary and hungry. Jesus’ answer in verse 34 is a classic statement of the secret of contentment: “My food is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work.” “Him that sent Me” is, in John’s gospel, almost a technical name for the Father, and highlights Jesus’ submission to Him. So, Jesus gains satisfaction and contentment through embracing His Father’s perfect will, and through doing His work to the finish.

The incarnate Son of God found His true satisfaction in all that His Father was, willed and did. And let me assure you, no child of God will ever experience biblical contentment from any other source. That is why this theme is of such cardinal importance for Christian living, for personal godliness, and for the health of the church of Jesus Christ corporately. The lack of such contentment is not a sign of a low level of tolerance in our natural make-up, nor is it a sign of the absence of an easygoing personality. It is rather a sign that we really do not know God as He is, or that we do not trust Him as we ought, or that we have some mutinous area in our lives in relation to His sovereign will and wisdom.

If we really believe that “as for God His way is perfect,” and that “all things work together for good to those who love God,” then we will find true contentment as a fruit of that confidence. How could the child of a perfect Heavenly Father be other than content in His hands? “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32 NIV). Biblical contentment derives neither from circumstances nor from personality, but from God and our relationship to Him.

The duty of pastors in this connection is two-fold. First, for themselves, they need to recognize that there is no ideal place in which to serve God except the place in which He has set them down at that time. Whatever His plan and purpose in doing so, He knew precisely what He was doing when He called us to this place and to this people. The greatest privilege that can come to any mortal man is to be called to serve God in the location He has personally chosen for us. It is in the perfect sovereign benevolence of God towards His servants that the pastor will find, not only contentment in His work, but supreme joy.

Regarding the church, on the other hand, pastors, elders and deacons must make it their chief business to lead their people into the full knowledge of the glorious sovereign God who has revealed Himself in Jesus Christ within the pages of Holy Scripture. God’s people need, by teaching, prayer and example, to see how unspeakably wonderful it is to be embraced by such a God, made the object of His unchanging love, raised to the glorious status of His adopted children, and assured that, for them, the best is yet to be. If that is where their hearts and minds increasingly dwell, they will experience true contentment and understand what the psalmist meant when he wrote, “Whom have I in heaven but You? And earth has nothing I desire besides You” (Ps. 73:25 NIV).