Christian Contentment: what it is and how we can learn to have more of it

In Christ, the good life is the content life. The person that is fully satisfied in Christ has all their desires met and finds rest for their hearts. Having all in Christ, they are content and need nothing else to be happy. For these reasons, the apostle Paul tells his disciple Timothy that

godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Tim 6:6).

Burroughs examines the Bible’s teaching on contentment in The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. In this post, I draw on Burrough’s thoughts and explain what Christian contentment is and how we can learn to have more of it.

What is Christian Contentment?

A content Christian has peace and joy in their heart because they trust God and submit to His wise will in every circumstance.[1] First of all, contentment is a heart thing—a “heart business”.[2] It is a heart business because what it produces is found in the heart. Contentment causes peace and joy to abound in our hearts. King David shows us that. In Psalm 62, he writes,

For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; ‘I shall not be greatly shaken’” (Ps 62:1–2).

The content Christian is a happy Christian. And they have hearts full of peace and confidence no matter what comes their way.

Contentment is also a heart business because it starts with a posture of trust in our hearts. The content heart entrusts its cares to God, and trusts God in all things. Like any other good heart thing, contentment is a gift of God. Therefore, we should ask God to help us trust Him, and then we should pour out our hearts in each new circumstance. David instructs his own heart to trust God: “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him” (Ps 62:5). Then he instructs everyone else to trust God:

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us” (Ps 62:8).

How Can We Learn to Have Greater Contentment?

Contentment is also something that can be learned. It is something we can get better at. Philippians 4 is the most important passage in the Bible about contentment. In it, Paul writes, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, 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 4:11b–13). Here are five lessons that can help us learn contentment.[3]

1. Lesson one. To grow in contentment, we must learn self-denial. The content person loves Christ and repents of loving themselves. Jesus is our guide in this. He says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt 16:24–25). We will be more content in Christ, when Christ is what we most desire.
2. Lesson two. To grow in contentment, we must learn that only one thing is truly necessary. Mary is our guide in this. Mary’s sister, Martha, was “anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41). But Mary knew that only “one thing [was] necessary” (Luke 10:42). She sat at Jesus’s “feet and listened to his teaching” so that she could have eternal life.
3. Lesson three. To grow in contentment, we must learn that every good is found in God. James and David are our guides in this. James says that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (Jas 1:17). And David explains that God gives good things because He is goodness itself: “Taste and see that the Lord is good. . . those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Ps 34:8–10). Only God can fully satisfy us.
4. Lesson four. To grow in contentment, we must learn our own hearts. Solomon is our guide in this. He instructs his son to “keep the heart with all vigilance for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov 4:23). To keep our hearts, we must first know them. If we learn what things make us discontent, we can pray about those things. If a particular suffering makes us discontent, we entrust it to God. If a particular sin makes us discontent, we repent of it.
5. Lesson five. To grow in contentment, we must learn about God’s providence. Paul is our guide in this. He writes, “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?” (Rom 8:31–32). In giving us His only Son, God assures us that every other circumstance in our life is given to us for our ultimate good. We can be content because Christ himself is ours—and everything else is ours in Christ (1 Cor 3:22).

If you want to keep learning about contentment, you might want to purchase a copy of The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment from Reformers Bookstore and read it.

[1] Burroughs writes, “Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, freely submitting to, and taking complacency in God’s wise, and fatherly dispose in every condition.” Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (London, UK: W. Bentley, L. Sadler, and R. Beaumont, 1651), 3.

[2] Burroughs, The Rare Jewel, 3.

[3] These five lessons are selected from the nine lessons given by Jeremiah Burroughs. See Burroughs, The Rare Jewel, 46–67.