Content with who we are in Christ

All believers are told to be ambitious to live in a quiet way. Paul means to have a steady, sober, useful life—not calling attention to yourself but displaying the grace of Jesus Christ. Paul’s statement here not only challenges us, but it also points us to yet another blessing we enjoy. Christians are people who can be content with who we are in Christ. We do not have to make ourselves out to be something that we really are not. We do not have to make a fuss to draw attention to ourselves. We do not have to seek vain applause to prove to ourselves and others that we actually have value.

Now, to be sure, there is a place in the Christian life for ambition. We are to have ambition to preach the gospel (Romans 15:20). Titus 2:14 says we are to be zealous for good works. We are to be eager in service and in spiritual attainments (1 Corinthians 14:12). And yet Paul says we can lead the kind of ambitious, zealous Christian life within a quiet life that avoids making a fuss and show and creating difficulties for others.

Now, how different this is from the spirit of the world, which abhors few things as much as actually having to lead a quiet life. Isn’t our whole society designed nowadays through entertainment and video games and this and that and activities and recreations and football games one after another? The last thing that we would ever do would be to actually be quiet at any time—and actually lead a quiet life. You see, the Christian life is one that has space for meditation and for reflection—for standing before the Lord and opening our hearts and gazing up at the skies and celebrating his glory—and especially for the quietness of prayer. If there is no quietness in our life, then we are leading a deformed kind of life—a worldly life in that way.

And a Christian can be content with an occupation that the world thinks is not very glamorous. That is the kind of job nobody else would want to have, but it allows that Christian to provide for his family and to do good in the world and to support the church and its worship and work. And he says, You know, I can be content with that, because it is what God has given me, and if the world scorns it, that is not my problem. He does not need to lie awake at night dreaming of being a fighter pilot or a star athlete, as if that would give value to his life—how tempted many men are to think in that way. Or a woman can give up career prospects to nurture the precious souls of her children in the home—not bothered by the scorn heaped on such domestic servitude by a self-serving society.

You see, the mere fact that we are Christians—that we know and belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, and that we are part of his church—that alone ought to fill us with awe. For, as Paul will put it in Romans 8:1–39, for the glory which shall be revealed in us, we are those designed to bear the glory of God forever and ever, and right now have the privilege of living as lights in the midst of a dark and depraved generation. We are therefore able to live quietly so long as we may live fruitfully, according to the providence that God has for each of us.¹

Richard D. Phillips