What is Contentment?
Jeremiah Burroughs (1599-1646) was a Puritan minister and scholar who, though persecuted and forced to leave England for a period of his life, saw great success as a preacher and leader of the non-conformist movement. Burroughs longed to see God’s people unified in a sincere devotion to central biblical truths.
Jeremiah Burroughs is best known today as the author of The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.
Philippians 4:11
In active obedience, we worship God by doing what pleases God; but by passive obedience, we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.
There is indeed a great deal of excellence in contentment. The Apostle says, “I have learned,” as if he should say, “Blessed be God that I have learned this lesson! I find so much good in this contentment that I would not for a world be without it.”
1. By contentment, we come to give God the worship that is His due. You worship God more by this than when you come to hear a sermon or spend an hour in prayer. These are acts of God’s worship, but they are only external acts of worship. But this is the soul’s worship: to subject itself thus to God. You who often will worship God by hearing and praying, and yet afterwards will be froward and discontented— know that God does not regard such worship; He will [rather] have the soul’s worship, the subjecting of the soul unto God. Note this: In active obedience, we worship God by doing what pleases God; but by passive obedience, we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does.
There is a compound of grace in contentment: there is faith and humility, love and patience, wisdom and hope.
2. In contentment, there is much exercise of grace.
a. Much exercise of grace. There is a compound of grace in contentment: there is faith and humility, love and patience, wisdom and hope. It is an oil that has the ingredients of every kind of grace. This pleases God at the heart to see the graces of His Spirit exercised. In one action that you do, you may exercise one grace especially; but in contentment, you exercise a great many graces at once.
b. There is a great deal of strength of grace in contentment. It argues a great deal of strength in the body for it to be able to endure hard weather and whatever comes, and yet not to be much altered by it; so it argues strength of grace to be content. You who complain of weakness of memory, of weakness of gifts, you cannot do what others do in other things—but have you this gracious heart of contentment? It is an argument of a gracious magnitude of spirit that whatsoever befalls it, yet it is not always whining and complaining as others do, but keeps in a constant tenor whatever befalls it. Such things as cause others to be fretted and take away all the comfort of their lives make no alteration at all in the spirits of these men and women.
There is no work that God has made—the sun, moon, stars, and all the world—in which so much of the glory of God appears as in a man who lives quietly in the midst of adversity.
c. It is also an argument of a great deal of beauty of grace. The glory of God appears here more than in any of His works. There is no work that God has made—the sun, moon, stars, and all the world—in which so much of the glory of God appears as in a man who lives quietly in the midst of adversity. That was what convinced the king: he saw that the three children could walk in the midst of the fiery furnace and not be touched (Dan 3:25). By this, the king was mightily convinced that surely their God was the great God indeed. So when a Christian can walk in the midst of fiery trials without his garments being singed and has comfort and joy in the midst of everything—when like Paul in the stocks he can sing, which wrought upon the jailor (Act 16:25-34)—it will convince men, when they see the power of grace in the midst of afflictions. When they can behave themselves in a gracious and holy manner in such afflictions as would make others roar, this is the glory of a Christian!