The cure for selfish ambition and restless devotion to The Next Big Thing is contentment. But like happiness, excellence, and drive, contentment is not something you can just generate from within. It has to have an object. There must be someone or something that is so satisfying that we can sing, “Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also.”71
The gospel is truly radical: “the power of God for salvation” (Rom 1:16). Through this gospel, the Holy Spirit creates the faith to embrace Christ with all of his benefits. We are delivered from condemnation and are made part of the new creation in Christ. Filled with grateful hearts, we look for ways to glorify God and to love and serve our neighbors. We are eager to grow. Fueled by gratitude, we look for opportunities to glorify God and to love and serve others. Yet it is easy to take the gospel for granted. Then we find ourselves running out of that high-octane fuel, running out of gas in the middle of the busy highway of myriad calls to get in the fast lane. In the zeal created by the gospel itself, we can leave the gospel behind as we gravitate toward various calls to “something more.”
Of course, there is something more to the Christian life than believing the gospel. The gospel keeps our eyes fixed on Christ, while the law tells us how to run the race. But our tendency is always to add our own doctrines to the gospel and our own commands and expectations to God’s revealed Word. No longer content with the gospel and the commands of Scripture, we begin to look for something more. All the problems that I have described up to this point — and many others besides — result from a basic discontent with God’s Word. We begin to look for programs and personalities that will make us winners in a sprint, instead of running the long-distance race with the assurance that Christ has already won the prize for us.
My thesis in this book is that we must turn from the frantic search for “something more” to “something more sustainable.” We need to stop adding something more of ourselves to the gospel. We need to be content with the gospel as God’s power for salvation. We also need to be content with his ordinary means of grace that, over time, yield a harvest of plenty for everyone to enjoy.
Sustainability
A relative newcomer, “sustainability” has entered our everyday language mainly from environmental science and economics. We’ve become increasingly aware that we can’t just consume natural resources. At some point they run out or give out or are so changed by our manipulation that they become threats. The quarry becomes our grave. Even our attempts to save, recover, or build healthy ecosystems from scratch can yield unintended effects that are in the long run more damaging.
Applied to Christian discipleship, sustainable development is neither an oxymoron nor an impediment to progress. We should all be in favor of growth — both in numbers and in quality, in our personal lives and as churches. Where disagreements emerge is over what growth means and how it is sustained.
The danger of a mere conservationism is that it values “land” (the tradition) more than people who are now living on it and depend on it for their growth. At the other end of the spectrum are those who favor radical schemes that take little note of the spiritual ecosystem that has flourished for generations. Instead, according to this outlook, we need to focus on this generation and whatever it takes to create rapid growth. External forms are seen as restrictive. Churches and families can be viewed as hothouses where plants suffocate instead of replicating. So the solution is to get rid of the old vines and trellises. Start from scratch. You may have to lose a lot of people in the process, but that gives you a chance to start fresh without sheep slowing down the shepherds.
Or, to change the analogy, some will suggest that if you want to do something significant, you need to break away from the herd. Of course, in breaking away from one herd we inevitably join another. Instead of belonging to a local church — a flock determined by familiar routines that seem to make little measurable difference — we become part of the stampede of some new movement. Like most stampedes, we will tear up verdant pastures and gardens that have taken a long time to develop. Like “alternative music,” we imagine that we’re being countercultural and asserting our individual initiative when in fact we’re still followers of the marketplace. Today’s “radical” is tomorrow’s “ordinary.”
In most cases, impatience with the ordinary is at the root of our restlessness and rootlessness. We’re looking for something more to charge our lives with interest, meaning, and purpose. Instead of growing like a tree, we want to grow like a forest fire.
Avarice: Ambition’s Twin
In The High Price of Materialism, psychology professor Tim Kasser reveals data from his own empirical research into materialism and well-being. Consistent with other crucial studies that he cites, Kasser’s conclusions are clear. Affluent cultures — and individuals — are not, on average, happier than others. In fact, although US income has doubled since 1957, the number of adults saying “that they are ‘very happy’ has declined from 35 to 29 percent.”72 Kasser observes:
Social critics and psychologists have often suggested that consumer culture breeds a narcissistic personality by focusing individuals on the glorification of consumption (e.g., “Have it your way”; “Want it? Get it!”). Furthermore, narcissists’ desire for external validation fits well with our conception of materialistic values as extrinsic and focused on others’ praise.73
If ambition has been converted from a vice to a virtue, contentment has been transformed from a virtue into a vice. Think of how we use the word in normal conversations. It has come to mean settling for second best (which is always wrong). Lacking sufficient ambition, one is content to be something less than what he or she is capable of being.
Once again, something good has gone wrong here. We should not be content with stunted growth. We press on. And yet, we grow from a place of contentment — rest — and not toward it. I know, “more easily said than done.” As on all the other points, I reiterate that I’m diagnosing an illness from which I suffer. We have to be constantly, patiently, and intentionally drawn out of the tragicomedy that we’re writing for our life movie. We’re turned outside-in and have to be turned inside-out — every day. This requires a lifetime of divine therapy: having our minds and hearts transformed by God’s Word. We return to our baptism daily to find our true identity in Christ rather than in ourselves.
No longer turned outward to God in faith and to our neighbors in love, our fallen race has become, if not Icarus, then Narcissus. Disdaining those who tried to love him, the young man was fixated on his own beauty. One day, Nemesis lured Narcissus to a pond. Upon seeing his reflection, the tragic soul was trapped and he died in his own admiring gaze. The proper name for this is vanity, and it’s as lethal as the myth intimates.
Something similar to ambition (the lust for praise) happened to avarice (the lust for wealth). Though hardly proto-socialists, the Protestant Reformers condemned the increasingly widespread view that money and property belonged ultimately to the people who made or inherited it. God gave wealth to people to hold and to use in public trust, to be put into circulation for the good of the commonwealth.
However, like its ambitious twin, avarice became a virtue in the early modern era. The “invisible hand” used to be God’s providence, placing each of us in a vocation that serves the whole body. According to Adam Smith, however, it is the iron laws of the market that do this now. Each individual “intends his own gain,” he argued, not thinking of directly contributing to the common good, while an “invisible hand” uses this self-interest for the greater good of all. In short, where self-interest reigns, all boats rise.74 As with ambition, avarice is not yet a virtue but it has lost its vicious reputation. It can be channeled, harnessed, and directed to beneficial ends. Honesty begins its career as an objective virtue. Then it is justified on instrumental grounds (i.e., self-interest). And finally, when people realize that good guys don’t always finish first, honesty becomes impractical. The transition from virtue to vice is complete. As Michael Douglas’s character Gordon Gekko put it in the 1987 film Wall Street, “Greed is good.”
Just as ambition can be adapted to a gospel of self-esteem, avarice can be “sanctified” as a prosperity gospel. These false gospels find their way into even more conservative churches that would be wary of full-strength versions.
Covenant, Not Contract
Beneath these full-strength or watered-down versions of narcissism is a contractual way of thinking. What do I mean by that? Take your marriage, for example. To view it as a contract is to treat your spouse as a service provider. You begin with the assumption that you’re both sovereign individuals, free to choose whatever you want. You’ve both surrendered some of your freedom in exchange for certain benefits. As long as that works, great. If at some point your partner fails to keep his or her part of the bargain, you can get out of the contract. In the Age of Enlightenment, the idea of a social contract became the pattern for modern politics. Sovereign individuals cede some of their autonomy to the state in exchange for goods and services.
A covenantal way of thinking is different. In the biblical covenants, God is the sovereign Creator and Lord. We do not “own” ourselves, but we are God’s image bearers, accountable to him not only for how we relate to him but also for how we relate to others. God speaks, and we hear. Therefore, we never start from a position of autonomy, electing to cede some of our sovereignty to God in exchange for certain benefits and securities. He gives us life, provides for us, commands us, and makes promises that he always fulfills according to his faithfulness. As his image bearers, then, we relate to each other covenantally: as husband and wife, as parents and children, and as members of the household of faith. In marriage, I yield my whole self to the other person and vice versa, regardless of poverty, sickness, or shortcomings, “till death us do part.”
In a covenantal paradigm, I am bound intrinsically to God and to others in ways that transcend any good or service I can calculate. A total stranger rushes to the pond to pull out a young skater from the icy waters without running a cost-benefit analysis. The rescuer is not fulfilling a contractual obligation, but the command of God in his or her conscience that obligates a stranger to consider the endangered child a neighbor.
The contrast between contractual and covenantal maps of relationships can be seen implicitly in Tim Kasser’s findings. He says that those who are driven by intrinsic values feel freer. They go to church because they want to, have close relationships because they desire the company of the other person, and so forth. Extrinsic values are expectations that one does not personally embrace but that one must at least pretend to exhibit in order to win approval or advancement. Theorists call this “contingent self-esteem,” because it is always dependent on what others think, and “discrepancies” are specific ways in which one falls short of the standard of measurement.75 “Thus, people with materialistic values hinge their self-esteem and self-worth on whether they have attained some reward (money) or whether other people praise them (say they look good, admire them, etc.).”76
It is not difficult to interpret these empirical findings from a biblical perspective. We crave approval, but we do not even know what the real measurement is even though we sense that we have fallen short of it. Suppressing our awareness of God, we shift the source of our validation to other people. Even many Christians today rarely ask, “Am I really measuring up to God’s holy law?” Rather, they wonder whether they’re measuring up to the expectations of other Christians — or perhaps society at large. We mask our “discrepancies” (i.e., sins) with the rhetoric of being high achievers.
Materialism and narcissism go hand in hand, according to the studies, largely because of a sense of deep insecurity, anxiety, and need for approval.
Thus it was not surprising to find that students with strong materialistic tendencies scored high on a standard measure of narcissism, agreeing with statements such as, “I am more capable than other people,” “I like to start new fads and fashions,” “I wish somebody would write my biography one day,” and “I can make anybody believe anything I want them to.”77
Materialism and narcissism are closely identified with the tendency to treat people like things, instruments of their own personal dreams.78
Barry Schwartz has called these “instrumental friendships,” writing that in capitalist, consumeristic societies all that is required is that each “friend” can provide something useful to the other. Instrumental friendships come very close to being market-like, contractual relations, with personal contact and the knowledge of mutual interdependence substituting for formal contractual documents.79
Christians in modern societies enter into scores of contracts, from credit cards to mortgages to employment. There’s nothing sinful about contracts. The problem is that we allow a contractual (and consumeristic) thinking to expand into all areas of life. Our society trains us to think of marriage as a contract. If one has a lot of capital to protect, a prenuptial agreement might be added. And if one party fails to fulfill his or her end, the contract is null and void. Increasingly, children are raised in a contractual environment. Kasser quotes the president of the Intelligence Factory: “Parents always have to be managing their assets, including their children.”80
When contractual thinking dominates our horizon of meaning, we can even make Jesus, the church, or our own spirituality an asset we think we can manage. On occasion, in the church of my youth, the pastor would give the invitation to come forward at the end of the service with the words, “Now you’re signing a contract with God.” You pray the prayer and then are told, “If you really meant that, you have a personal relationship with Jesus.” Some of the evangelistic tracts even closed with a place to sign your name after the prayer. Jesus becomes my ultimate service provider if I choose him over the other offers. But when it doesn’t seem to “work for me,” we get out of the contract.
We even talk about “making Jesus my personal Lord and Savior,” as if we could make him anything! This assumes that we start off as autonomous individuals who “own” ourselves in the first place. Then, if we choose, we can cede some of our sovereignty (or all of it perhaps) to Jesus, in exchange for whatever we think he can give us in return. The good news is that Jesus is the only Lord and Savior. It is not what we make him, but what he has made us — coheirs of his estate — that the gospel proclaims.
If our relationship with Jesus is like a contract, then we bring the same logic with us to church. We choose a local church the way we choose a neighborhood, a phone company, or a new car. We might become a member, or we might not. There may not even be membership (since that would be too formal and interfere with a person’s relationship with Christ). Instead church leaders will bend over backwards to make sure people (at least the right people) are happy, because they know that you can go to the church down the highway, one that has a wider menu of options. With such anonymity, there is of course no church discipline — that is, genuine spiritual oversight and care. It’s all part of the contract. If you are not fully satisfied with the service, there are plenty of other providers out there to make you happy at least for the time being.
Scripture reveals not only an original covenant of law with humanity in Adam, but a covenant of grace after the fall (Gen 3:15). Cain’s line glimmers with the ambitious founders of culture, while Seth’s is distinguished by the remark, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD” (Gen 4:26). They acknowledged Yahweh not only as the covenant Lord who owned them by right of creation (signified by a tithe of the produce from their labors), but by the right of redemption (signified by animal sacrifice).
In the fullness of time, our promised Redeemer arrived. As the last Adam, Jesus is the covenant Servant who fulfilled all obedience that we owed. Yet as God, he is also the covenant Lord. So he is the Lord who commands and the human servant of the covenant who obeys. We know that the work he accomplished on our behalf has perfectly secured our reconciliation to and acceptance by God because he is the Lord who commands and the Servant who obeyed. “You did not choose me,” Jesus tells us, “but I chose you” (John 15:16). Now, united to him through faith, we are counted just and are being conformed to his image. And we are also united to others “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9), who have also been grafted into this vine. Our identity is no longer something we strive toward, based on an ambiguous standard and dependent on the approval of others. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Rom 8:33).
If that is true, I no longer have any reason to treat others as tools of my self-esteem and self-validation. I can finally accept the verdict that I have failed the test, because there is a perfect righteousness that has been imputed to me through faith in Christ. I am who I am ultimately not because of my choices, but because God chose me and these other justified and renewed sinners in addition to me. We simply rest in this security.
Now I can embrace these other people as gifts, knowing that together we are being refashioned according to the image of Christ. My brothers and sisters are not instruments of my ambition, but gifts — coheirs of the inheritance that we all share together in Christ. Yes, they’re also needy, as I am. But God has given them gifts I need, and he has given me gifts they need. The smallest person in the eyes of the world may be the one God intends to pass along some fruit of paradise. Only God’s saving grace can create this kind of covenantal community.
I can even embrace my non-Christian neighbors as those who, for all I know, are chosen from all eternity and redeemed, and will be united to Christ through my witness and that of other Christians. But working out its implications and living consistently with the word God has spoken is a lot of work. It involves perpetual warfare with our indwelling sin that feeds on the remnants of a story that we no longer confess to be true.
In the kingdoms of this age, contracts are still essential. Yet even when we enter into them, we know that there is something more basic to our humanity than such thin bonds can satisfy. I’m not simply an employer or employee, a provider or a consumer, a landlord or a renter; more basically I am a fellow image bearer of God even with those who are hostile to their Maker.
Imagine the difference that a covenantal way of thinking could make in our view of church membership, in our marriage and family life, and in our relationships with others at work and in the neighborhood. When everything turns on my free will, relationships — even with God — are contracts that we make and break. When everything turns on God’s free grace, relationships — even with each other — become gifts and responsibilities that we accept as God’s choice and will for our good and his glory.
In a certain sense, you didn’t even choose your spouse. Sure, you may have chosen between one candidate and another, but the people we are and the people we marry change — for better and for worse — after the honeymoon. “That’s not what I signed up for,” we feel when the going gets rough. “She’s not fulfilling her side of the bargain.” “He’s not providing what I thought he would — and what he did at first.” These expressions betray a contractual way of thinking that fuels materialistic and narcissistic behaviors.
From our sharing in the fellowship of the Trinity, we can face the more contingent relationships that we encounter even in the church and our families — and certainly in our worldly callings. But we are going to have to suffer. Ironically, our ultimate desire — corrupted by sin — can only be finally attained through constant threats to many of our “felt needs,” which are often shaped by pride, ambition, and avarice. By denying this ultimate desire in the interest of immediate gratification, we lose everything in the bargain.
So it is not simply by understanding doctrine that we uproot narcissism and materialism. It is by actually taking our place in a local expression of that concrete economy of grace instituted by God in Christ and sustained by his Word and Spirit. At least in its design, this economy is governed by a covenantal rather than contractual logic. In the covenant of grace, God says to us, “I’m with you to the end, come what may.” Only from this position of security can we say the same to our spouse, children, and fellow believers. And from this deepest contentment we can fulfill our covenants in the world “as unto the Lord,” even when others break their contracts.
Content with Our Father
So what does it mean to be content with God’s provision? It means that when you and I are safely hidden with Christ in God through faith in his gospel, we are opened up to the others around us — first fellow saints, and then our other neighbors. Instead of being threats, they are fellow guests of God at his table. No longer competitors for commodities in a world of scarce resources, they are cosharers with us in the circulation of gifts that flows outward from its source without running out. After all, that source is the triune God: from the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.
First, we find contentment in our King. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof” (Ps 24:1). We are not self-made, and ultimately we do not own anything. God owns all and he gives as it pleases him. We become content with our King as we grow in our understanding of who he is and what he has done. Our King is also our Father, who has adopted us as coheirs because we are united to his only Son. He is not a stingy monarch, and his generous gift-giving never depletes his storehouse (Matt 6:31 – 33; 11:28; Luke 11:9 – 13). So we do not need to jockey for his favor or for his gifts. Especially when we recall Golgotha, we never have to question whether he is disposed toward our good. We begin to rest in him and confide in him during life’s storms when we know that he has chosen us, redeemed us, justified us, and adopted us, and that he is sanctifying us by his Spirit until we are one day glorified in Christ at his return.
God doesn’t just command us, but he gives us a reason to be content. How do we know that God works everything together for his glory and our good?
And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom 8:30 – 37)
We are his not because of a victory we have achieved, but because of “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39).
The writer to the Hebrews uses this sort of argument for our daily contentment: “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?’ ” (Heb 13:5 – 6).
Like Dracula, other lords have to gain their strength at the expense of others. Or even in just wars, rulers send others into a battle that they have declared. Only this King has walked alone and unarmed into the night to be willingly handed over to Satan, death, and hell in order to disarm the powers of darkness. Alone, he faced the wrath of justice, spilling his own blood not for loyal subjects but for enemies, winning their redemption and release by his glorious resurrection.
Content with Christ and His Kingdom
God is a strange economist, at least by our standards. First, he established in creation an economy of mutual gift exchange. The man does not dominate the woman, or vice versa. Each is created for the other, not as a tool in the will to power, but as a gift in the circulation of loving and serving relationships. Second, he created something even beyond this natural web of interdependence in the body of Christ, the church. It is not simply a natural covenant of human interdependence, but a covenant of grace, where we forgive as God has first forgiven us.
Christ’s kingdom is extraordinary. We see this especially in Matthew 5 – 7, with the Beatitudes and the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. Christ’s kingdom is extraordinary in its benefits. No longer inheriting a plot of land in the Middle East, with the threat of exile for disobedience hanging over our heads, we inherit the earth by grace alone. It is also extraordinary in the way of life that it creates.
Under the old covenant, strict justice was the standard. The kingdom of God was geopolitical. The land was holy and therefore God’s enemies were to be driven out by holy war. Yet now Jesus calls us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors, who seek to drive us out of the common land that we share in this passing age. We are called not only to refrain from murder but also from hatred and retaliation — and, positively, to go over and beyond the call of duty in protecting the lives of others. Not only the physical act, but even lust, constitutes adultery. We are to live sacrificially, not demanding our due in court.
Where Christ is now the ultimate locus of identity, our true intimates are no longer the nuclear family, but the family of God. Jesus was preparing his followers for division: father against son, mother against daughter, brothers and sisters turning each other in to the authorities over conversion to Christ. The church is a city set on a hill, displaying in a small way what God has in store for humanity in the age to come. Even though the means that God uses are ordinary, the city that he is building isn’t like anything this world has ever seen.
It is still an era of earthly citizenship and Caesars to whom we owe temporal obedience and respect. There are still courts. We still participate in common life. We still have families, whether we are married or single. In fact, for many of us they are covenant families where Christ unites rather than divides. But in the body of Christ a different economy is at work. Here, contracts are not operative — or at least they do not have the final word. It is the economy of the covenant of grace. Paul tells Timothy:
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Tim 6:6 – 12)
The wealthy are not called to become poor, any more than the poor are encouraged to become rich. Rather, the wealthy are warned not
to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.
O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you. Avoid the irreverent babble and contradictions of what is falsely called “knowledge,” for by professing it some have swerved from the faith. (1 Tim 6:17 – 21)
No longer a star in my own movie, I can take my place in this gift exchange. The gifts that I have are not only for my private use, but for me to pass along to others. And the weaknesses I have are important because they make me more dependent on others. Although he repeatedly pleaded with God to take it away, Paul could even come to see his “thorn . . . in the flesh” (whatever it was) as a gift of God, “to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations” (2 Cor 12:7).
All of this means that the call to contentment is a summons to realize and accept our place in Christ and his body — and, more broadly, our place in the gift exchange in society through common grace. This cuts off at the root the discontentment — ambition — to change our station in life not only in the direction of prosperity, but also in a self-imposed poverty. “I know how to be brought low,” Paul says, “and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:12 – 13).
Restless pursuit of wealth or poverty is selfish ambition: the desire to rise above your peers and therefore out of that place in the circulatory system where God has placed you. Contentment is actually easier for those who leave the comforts of hearth and home to serve the disadvantaged in Africa than it is for those who live near the mall. If God has given you temporal wealth and position, use it for his glory and your neighbor’s good.
Paul continues in Philippians, noting that he does not want to be a burden to anyone. “Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.” After noting their generous assistance, he says, “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.” In other words, the healthy not only need the weaker members, but vice versa. Paul’s weakness and physical need have played an important role in keeping the circulation going. “I have received full payment, and more. . . . And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Phil 4:14 – 20).
Content with His Ordinary Means of Working in Creation and Providence
“Expect a miracle!” That’s good counsel if there is a promise in Scripture to back it up. The problem today is that many Christians are not looking for God’s miraculous activity where he has promised it, namely, through his ordinary means of grace. Through these means, he has pledged to raise us from spiritual death, to forgive sins, to assure us of God’s favor, and to conform us to Christ’s image.
We believe in a big God who created the cosmos, became incarnate in the world, and secured redemption of this world by his life, death, and resurrection. We stand in awe of his mighty deeds in the past and the present and long for a glorious destiny that, to date, “no eye has seen, nor ear has heard” (1 Cor 2:9). But what if our addiction to superlatives has at least as much to do with cultural factors — factors that make it difficult to live with the ordinary?
If you’re wondering whether your life counts if it consists of so many ordinary things every day, you are in good company. After all, God works through ordinary means every day in so many ways that we don’t even notice his involvement and our complete dependence on him in each and every moment.
Typically, we identify “acts of God” with the big stuff: earthquakes, hurricanes, and parting seas. Or perhaps a better way of putting it: we identify the big stuff with what can be measured and recognized as an obvious miraculous intervention by God. Millions of people around the world will turn out for a prosperity evangelist’s promise of signs and wonders. But how many of us think that God’s greatest signs and wonders are being done every week through the ordinary means of preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper? If we associate God’s activity exclusively with things that we can see and quantify — that is, his direct hand in the world — then we can fall unwittingly into the naturalist’s habit of missing God’s activity through normal people and things that he has made.
God uses means. Natural laws and human ingenuity are his tools, even when we do not see his hand. He didn’t just establish these laws and then step away. As contemporary science reminds us, apparent chaos is ubiquitous. Things should fall apart, but they don’t. Not for one moment could the cosmos sustain itself apart from the Father’s loving word, which he speaks in his Son and by his Spirit.
Already in creation, God used means. Of course, the initial creation of the cosmos was a direct and immediate effect of God’s command. We are told in Genesis 1 that God created matter ex nihilo — that is, out of nothing, in an instant. Yet regardless of how one interprets the “days,” it is clear enough that the forming of our world did not happen all at once. It is easy to think otherwise when we focus exclusively on the initial command, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). However, we must see what goes before and after it. Before verse 3, the Spirit appears, “hovering over the face of the waters” (1:2). He is not simply a tourist, taking in the sights. Rather, he is preparing to perform that work that is unique to his person. In everything that the Trinity does, the Father is the source, the Son is the mediator, and the Spirit is the one who is at work within creation to bring the project to completion.
After verse 3, we see precisely why the Spirit’s role is so important. The Father’s speech now begins to separate and order the creation into its properly assigned realms, like a general dividing an army into regiments. The Father summons the separation of waters from waters (over which the Spirit was hovering) in verses 6 – 8, and then calls for the waters to be separated from dry land (1:9 – 10). God is now making the earth a place to be inhabited. Then we meet a string of commands that differ from the initial utterance, “ ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” We read, “And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so.” All at once was it so? Not this time: “The earth brought forth vegetation. . . . And God saw that it was good” (1:11 – 13, italics added).
Not only was it a process; it was a natural process. But we have to get out of the habit of thinking that “natural” cancels divine activity. Natural processes are neither the ultimate cause nor useless. Now the earth is “bringing forth,” bearing fruit. God is not creating each fruit, or even each tree, ex nihilo. Rather, now each tree and each piece of fruit bears within itself the seed needed to propagate itself. Yet God is commanding this process, surveying it, and pronouncing it good. It is still his word that is the source, but now it is a sustaining rather than originating word. And the Spirit is the one who works within creation to bring about its fruit-bearing response to the Father’s summons.
This formula is repeated: “And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures. . . .’ And God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let the birds multiply on the earth’ ” (Gen 1:20 – 22, italics added). “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds — livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds’ ” (1:24, italics added). There’s nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a normal and natural process. But does that make it any less the result of God’s sovereign word?
What’s true in creation is also true in providence. The birth of a baby doesn’t have to be elevated to the status of a miracle to be an astonishing example of the wonder of God’s ordinary way of working in our lives and in the world. We can’t rule out miracles, but we also can’t expect them. Miracles surprise us. But have we lost our joy in God’s providential care, working through normal processes and layers of mediation that he himself has created and maintains by his Word and Spirit?
In every work of the Trinity, the Father speaks in the Son and by his Spirit, who is at work within creation to bring about the intended effect of that word. But God uses means, often many layers of means. This is actually for our good. Since no one can see God’s face and live, we need God to wear various masks as he condescends to love and care for us. We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” We don’t expect it to fall from heaven. Rather, we know that God will give it to us through farmers and bakers and warehouse employees and truck drivers and shop clerks, and so on.
Once we recover a greater sense of God’s ordinary vocation as the site of his faithfulness, we will begin to appreciate our own calling to love and serve others in his name in everyday ways that make a real difference in people’s lives.
God’s ordinary way of working includes the vocations of non-Christians. The first time I read the following statement from the reformer John Calvin, I was taken aback:
If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in such slight esteem, we condemn and reproach the Spirit himself.81
It made me think twice because, although it’s hardly jarring to say that God gives good gifts to unbelievers (Ps 104:27 – 30; Matt 5:45; Acts 14:17; 17:26 – 27), I am used to associating the Spirit with his work within the hearts of his elect. Calvin here is affirming God’s common grace, even among the ungodly. He is targeting radical Protestants who claimed that only Christians could rule and create a godly culture. He adds:
Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. . . . What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. . . . Those men whom Scripture calls “natural men” were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled of its true good.82
Even unbelievers can rule justly and prudently, as Paul writes about the more pagan circumstances of his day (Rom 13:1 – 7). In addition to these natural remnants, there is the concept of common grace in Calvin, “not such grace as to cleanse it [nature], but to restrain it inwardly.” This grace is tied to providence, to restraint; “but he does not purge it within.” Only the gospel can do this.83
In other words, the sphere of God’s activity has widened to include the Spirit as well as the Father and the Son, ordinary providence as well as extraordinary miracle, and natural means as well as direct actions. It also has widened to encompass God’s work in common grace, among all people, as well as his saving grace toward the elect. And not only does this work of the Spirit in common grace make it possible for us to be a blessing to unbelievers; it also makes their vocations and labors a blessing to us as well. Blessings do not have to be holy and saving in order to come from God, who is the giver of all good gifts to everyone.
Content with His Ordinary Way of Working in Redemption
No greater instance of the Spirit’s working through creaturely media may be found than in the incarnation of the Son. Not only is all of creation upheld “in him” (Col 1:16 – 17); his own life displays examples of God’s ordinary providence. Like the ex nihilo fiat, “Let there be light,” the miracle of the incarnation is the eternal Word’s assumption of our humanity from the Virgin Mary. Like the old, the new creation can only emerge by the direct and immediate fiat-word of God. Echoing Genesis 1, the angel explains to Mary in Luke’s gospel that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you,” ensuring that the fruit of her womb is no less than the Son of God (Luke 1:34 – 35, 38).
The Spirit, who hovered over the waters, dividing and uniting and bringing the Father’s word to completion, “will come upon” the waters in Mary’s womb. He will bind the eternal Son to the human nature that he receives from Mary. The virgin replies, “Let it be to me according to your word,” because the same Spirit who was at work in her womb is already at work in her heart to bring about her “Amen!” to the word. Wherever we encounter not only the Father’s speech in the Son, but the Spirit’s “bringing forth” of inspired speech from human witnesses, the new creation dawns. Both the incarnation and Mary’s consent are won by the Spirit’s speaking through his Word.
Of course, the eternal Son’s incarnation was extraordinary. Like “ ‘Let there be light,’ ” it was a direct miracle. So too were his signs and wonders culminating in his own resurrection. Nevertheless, his gestation and birth were a normal nine-month process as he assumed our humanity and not instantaneous creation, as in Genesis 1:11 – 12: “ ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation.’. . . The earth brought forth vegetation.” Nor was Jesus a child prodigy: “And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him. . . . And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:40, 52). “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb 5:8). He was not born outside of time or our human nature; rather, he was born “when the fullness of time had come” (Gal 4:4).
Imagine Jesus learning Mary’s favorite psalms and asking Joseph questions in the shop about God and life while they were making chairs. Daily, ordinary, seemingly little stuff that turns out to be big after all. Even his crucifixion was just another Roman execution, as far as what the onlookers witnessed. And yet, through it, God was reconciling the world to himself.
Not only in his incarnation but in his life and ministry, Jesus was always dependent on the Spirit as he fulfilled his Father’s word (Matt 12:28). In fact, attributing his miracles to the devil is something that Jesus calls “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit” (12:31 – 32; Luke 12:10). Even after spending three years at Jesus’ side, the disciples’ understanding of, much less testimony to, Christ’s person and work depended on the descent of another witness from heaven: the Holy Spirit (Acts 2).
Then the same Spirit brings about within us the “Amen!” of faith to all that Christ has accomplished. The Spirit who hovered over the waters in creation and the waters of Mary’s womb unites us to Christ through water and his Word. The Spirit who indwelt the temple and rested on Jesus now indwells us permanently, individually and collectively, as his end-time sanctuary in a sea of death. Because of this, we not only are made alive by the fiat command, “Let there be light,” but we bear the fruit of the Spirit by his working in our hearts through his ordinary means.
Then think of the way the Father unites us to his Son by his Spirit today. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). A normal process: a fellow sinner is sent by God to proclaim the forgiveness of sins to me in Christ’s name, and I believe and am thereby saved (10:14 – 15). Baptism seems less dynamic than, say, raising someone from the dead or giving sight to the blind. Yet we are “baptized for the forgiveness of sins” and we “receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). What can the regular administration of the Lord’s Supper accomplish, with the most ordinary daily bread and wine as the elements? Nothing by themselves, but through it God promises to deliver Christ with all of his benefits (1 Cor 10:15 – 17).
We keep looking for God in all the obvious places. Obvious, at least, to the natural eye. But God chooses to be present in saving blessing where he has promised, in the everyday means that are available to everyone and not just to the spiritual “storm trackers.” We don’t climb up into heaven or descend into the depths to find God. Christ is present where he has promised; that’s the argument Paul makes in Romans 10.
If our God is so keen to work in and through the ordinary, maybe we should rethink the way we confine him to the theatrical spectacles, whether the pageantry of the Mass or the carefully staged healing crusade. It takes no honor away from God that he uses ordinary — even physical — means to bring about extraordinary results. On the contrary, it underscores the comprehensive breadth of his sovereignty over, in, and within creation as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
To be content with Christ’s kingdom is to be satisfied also with his ordinary means of grace. This is a big one. We have trouble believing that weak things like a fellow sinner speaking in Christ’s name, both judgment and forgiveness, could actually expand Christ’s kingdom throughout the earth. Sure, there are sermons. We need good teachers. But surely a growing church needs something more impressive that will catch people’s attention than the regular proclamation of and instruction in God’s Word. After all, it’s not by preaching the gospel but by living it that we draw people to Christ. Surely, doing more in our community will make a larger impact than weekly prayers, especially for the mundane concerns that are common to everyone. At the very least, we need to have sermons that focus on topics that our neighbors might find more helpful or interesting. And yet, our King tells us that “faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom 10:17). Through the lips of a fellow sinner, Christ judges, justifies, and renews us here and now. The verdict of the final judgment is actually rendered in the present through this speech.
It might not be a bad idea that we learn the faith through a catechism week after week, or that we follow a liturgy that makes the Word of Christ dwell in us richly. But it all becomes so routine. We need to break it up with powerful events with impressive staging. Or perhaps a new program. But Scripture repeatedly urges us to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ by regular instruction in “the pattern of the sound words” (2 Tim 1:13).
Baptism has its place. We may not be sure what it means, but we know that Jesus commanded it. A big part of the problem here is that we think of baptism as our work — testifying to our faith and promise to follow the Lord — rather than God’s testimony and promise-making to us that delivers Christ with all of his benefits. Could there not be a more dramatic way of entering Christ’s kingdom and making radical disciples? Hear Colossians 2:12: “having been buried with him in baptism . . . you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.” God’s promise comes first, and then faith embraces it.
Then there is the Lord’s Supper. We may not have it often (so it doesn’t get old), but again, Jesus commanded it. Yet how could a morsel of bread and a sip of wine be more successful than spiritual disciplines or small groups in binding us to Christ and each other? Here too we think of the event more as an opportunity for us to do something — to recall Jesus’ death and to stir us to rededicate our lives to him — than God’s means of grace. If it’s chiefly about our activity, surely we could do something together that would be more successful in making Christ present and relevant in our lives and in our world. Hear 1 Corinthians 10:16: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?”
In Scripture, miracles — God’s extraordinary works — cluster around fresh stages of redemptive history. They authenticate new stages of revelation. The miracles that he performed through our Lord as well as through the prophets and apostles are sufficient to establish the credibility of the new covenant that Jesus put into effect by his death. Above all, his resurrection is the climactic event that secures and signifies the dawn of the new creation. Of course, God can do as he wishes, and it is not wrong to pray for miracles. Yet we have no promise in Scripture that those prayers will be answered in the way that we had hoped. We do have God’s promise that he will perform the greatest signs and wonders through the preaching of his Word and the administration of his sacraments.
Again, we are drawn to the theology of the cross over against theologies of glory. The former is content to receive God as he discloses himself, in humility, poverty, and weakness. God reveals himself by hiding himself. He comes to us incognito, as a King dressed like a pauper, in order to serve us.
The rapid growth of life-saving and life-enhancing medicine is not a sign of God’s absence, but of his daily care. The antidote to a naturalism that attributes healing ultimately to doctors and medicine is not to “expect a miracle,” but to thank God for the myriad ways in which he has provided for us through the work of his own hands. We should marvel at God’s care, wisdom, and loving involvement in every detail of our lives.
Today, we have no further resurrections to certify the gospel, but we have the testimony of eyewitnesses — the apostles who gave their lives in martyrdom for their proclamation of Christ. We are delighted with miracles with which God might surprise us, but God’s final stage in his plan of redemption is the marvelous return of Jesus on the clouds of heaven. Until then, we are given eyes of faith to recognize God’s loving care through everyday people and occasions.
Just as we wouldn’t have expected to find the Creator of the universe in a feeding trough of a barn in some obscure village, much less hanging, bloody, on a Roman cross, we do not expect to find him delivering his extraordinary gifts in such human places and in such humble ways as human speech, a bath, and a meal. This can’t be right, we reason. We need signs and wonders to know that God is with us. Yet it is only because God has promised to meet us in the humble and ordinary places, to deliver his inheritance, that we are content to receive him in these ways. If the apostles themselves could only find God in the most unlikely of places, how can we imagine that we can find him naked in glory rather than meet him clothed with his gospel, coming in peace?
CNN will not be showing up at a church that is simply trusting God to do extraordinary things through his ordinary means of grace delivered by ordinary servants. But God will. Week after week. These means of grace and the ordinary fellowship of the saints that nurtures and guides us throughout our life may seem frail, but they are jars that carry a rich treasure: Christ with all of his saving benefits. Whatever gifts may spill over into other activities and venues, it is by sharing in the ordinary service of Christ to his people each week that we become heirs of eternal life and draw others into his everlasting kingdom. Christ is the host and the chef. It is his event. His ministers are simply waiters delivering to his guests some savory morsels of the Lamb’s everlasting wedding feast.
The covenantal outlook I’ve described transfers us from a debt economy to a gift economy. It’s not an abstract antithesis between activity and passivity, or between choosing and being chosen. It’s not even that we have fewer choices to make in this outlook. The real difference is whether our choosing is ultimate, whether our choices determine our identity, or whether our identity (which God chose for us) determines our choices. Throughout John 15, Jesus also issues imperatives to bear fruit that witnesses to the life-giving vine and to our own sharing in Christ. Yet our decisions, choices, and actions are grounded in his. Now we are free to choose the one who has chosen us, free to bind ourselves to a local expression of his chosen people simply because it is the family he is creating by his Spirit through his Word and sacraments.
True contentment, therefore, comes first from resting in Christ. The world’s options are just too limiting. There is nothing on its menu for “being chosen by God,” “redeemed and reconciled to the Father in his Son,” “the forgiveness of sins and justification of the wicked,” “being crucified and raised with Christ as part of his new creation,” “belonging to God’s new family,” and “the resurrection of the body unto life everlasting.”
Whenever the apostle Paul speaks of contentment, he always grounds it in this gospel. At least in principle, and gradually in practice, ambition loses its motivation. It is out of an ultimate place of rest that we find the strength to work for others. Avarice loses its rationale, since the real world behind the narrow gate is already ours in Christ. Martin Luther put it well: “I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”84
God has already “blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph 1:3 – 4). “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us” (1:7 – 8). He is the one who is gathering all things together into his Son, whether things on earth or in heaven (1:9 – 10), with the Holy Spirit as “the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory” (1:11 – 14).
Contentment is the virtue that contrasts with restlessness, ambition, avarice. It means realizing, once again, that we are not our own — as pastors or parishioners, parents or children, employers or employees. It is the Lord’s to give and to take away. He is building his church. It is his ministry that is saving and building up his body. Even our common callings in the world are not really our own, but they are God’s work of supplying others — including ourselves — with what the whole society needs. There is a lot of work to be done, but it is his work that he is doing through us in daily and mostly ordinary ways.
1. What is the relevance of the idea of “sustainable development” for our growth in Christ?
2. What is “avarice” and how has it become increasingly virtuous in our culture? Can you think of concrete ways in which you feel this temptation in your own life?
3. Explore the difference between a “covenantal” and “contractual” outlook on life. Are there specific ways in which you feel drawn toward the latter? How do we challenge that way of thinking from a biblical perspective?
4. What are the biblical grounds for our contentment in life?