The End of Discontentment

Jon Bloom / July 7, 2016

You were made for another world. It’s why the mirage of contentment in earthly things
always dissipates as soon as you get near where it seemed to appear.
This repeated experience makes people cynical. Contentment is a fairytale, they think, not
found in the real world. They’re partly right and very wrong. Contentment really exists and its
source is the source of all the great fairytales. You just won’t find it in this world’s pleasures.
Those pleasures aren’t meant to satisfy; they’re meant to point to satisfaction.
If you embrace this truth you will realize the end of your discontentment. For your
discontentment has an end, and if you pursue that end rightly, one day your discontentment
will end.
The Fairytale Story of Contentment
Once upon a time, when the world was young — not only new-young, but innocent-young —
the king and queen of the living lived contented in the garden of God. They had everything
they needed, and so they did not need much, at least not by our standards. For they had
infinitely more: they walked every day with their Creator. And he infused their every moment
and every movement with meaning. They loved and trusted him as perfect children love and
trust a perfect father. They did not live by fruit alone but on every word that proceeded from
the mouth of God.
Then came a fateful day when the king and queen of the living chose to eat the lone fruit
forbidden by the word of God. They believed that there was more life in the fruit than in the
Word of life. But there was death in the fruit, death that meant more than mortality. The
contentment they sought in the fruit died as they ate. In a moment they lost their innocence
and grew old — old with a knowledge far more evil than good — and the young world aged
with them.
Then ended the wonderful days of meaningful contentment when all they needed was God
and what he provided and promised them. Then began the vain discontented days of striving
after the wind. The fairytale turned nightmare.
But though the fallen children ceased their faithful perfection, the Creator-Father remained
perfect and in perfect, steadfast love immediately set into motion the eucatastrophe of
redemption that would undo the catastrophe the king and queen had brought upon
themselves and all their descendants. For any of them willing to trust him fully again, God
would himself bear the just punishment he had pronounced upon them and restore to them
sinless perfection, immortality, and all the contentment in him they could possibly contain.
And as a great mercy to them in their fallen, rebellious state, he made their affliction of
chronic, unquenchable discontentment a clue: it would be a constant reminder that
contentment exists and a pointer to where it is found.
Your Discontentment Has an End
And this is the end — the goal — of your discontentment: it’s a mercifully frustrating, chronic,
daily reminder that the fruit on the trees of the world can never replace God. They cannot;
they were never meant to. C.S. Lewis said it beautifully:
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable
explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it,
that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant
to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” (Mere Christianity, 136–137)
Let’s read the last sentence again:
“Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest
the real thing.”
This profound insight not only helps us understand the role of earthly pleasures, but also
helps us understand the only way we can really enjoy earthly pleasures: as pointers to God.
That’s what Paul was getting at when he wrote to Timothy, “As for the rich in this present
age, charge them not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on
God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17).
Purely enjoyable things come from God. But like Adam and Eve who set their hope in the
forbidden fruit to make them content with God-likeness, if we set our hope in money to make
us content with being able to buy enjoyable things, it all backfires. Money might run out. But
even if it doesn’t, what gives us full enjoyment in the brief shelf life of good earthly things is
knowing that God, our eternal, never-failing Fountain, is providing them.
Good earthly things cannot satisfy your chronic desire for contentment. They are designed to
arouse your desire so that you remember you are made for another world.
The End of Your Discontentment
Assuming you trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and all his promises to
you, even eternal life, a day is coming when the restless discontentment you experience now
will be eradicated and there will be no seeking contentment in anything instead of God. You
will fully enjoy all things because of God and only for his sake.
The Bible does tell us that we can experience contentment on earth, though not the full
contentment of heaven. John Piper describes it as “dissatisfied contentment” because it sees
Christ as the greatest gain (Philippians 3:8) and trusts and rests fully in God’s promises, yet
in the midst of a broken, constantly needy world. Still, this is the best contentment in this
world, a taste of heaven that frees us to live simply (1 Timothy 6:8; Hebrews 13:5) and even
endure suffering (Philippians 4:11–13; 2 Corinthians 12:10) on earth because for us to live is
Christ and to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).
We are made for another world. And the end of our current discontent is to point us to the
eternal end of our discontent.

Mystery Is the Lifeblood of Worship

K. Scott Oliphint / July 7, 2016

When I was a fairly new Christian, someone told me that the primary problem with
Calvinism is that it puts God in a logical box. But the more I was exposed to the central
teachings of the Reformation, the more I became convinced that in Calvinism the glory and
majesty of God is anything but boxed up.
Rather, within the Reformed understanding, God’s majesty shines brightest, bursting all
boundaries and exceeding all expectations. When a biblical understanding of God takes root
in our hearts and minds, it inevitably and everywhere points to the infinitely majestic
mystery of his character.
Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck writes, “Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics” (29). This
is a perfectly apt metaphor. Any thinking about God, any theology, that does not have the
lifeblood of mystery flowing through its veins will be, by definition, dead. Far from
attempting to contain God in a logical box, true and lively thoughts of God will always,
happily, and majestically, bump up against his mysterious incomprehensibility. It is that very
incomprehensibility, the glorious and magnificent mystery of God’s character, that should
motivate the praise and worship of every Christian.
There are three central truths attached to the majestic mystery of God’s character.
1. Mystery Is Infused with Knowledge
A biblical view of mystery is the polar opposite of mysticism. Mysticism focuses on
experience; it demeans and depreciates knowledge. Mysticism at times has knocked on the
door of Christianity, but it can never find its home there — because knowledge is central to
biblical Christianity.
The essence of eternal life, Jesus says, is that we would know the only true God and Jesus
Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3). God has spoken words, throughout history. In these
last days, he has spoken through his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). One of the reasons God speaks is
so that his people might know what he says about himself and thus know him.
As Christians affirm and confess the glorious truths about God and his character, the light
that shines forth is the incomprehensible mystery of God’s majesty. For this God is:

 infinite in being and perfection (Job 11:7–9; Job 26:14)

 a most pure spirit (John 4:24)
 invisible (1 Timothy 1:17)
 unchanging (James 1:17; Malachi 3:6)
 immense (1 Kings 8:27; Jeremiah 23:23–24)
 eternal (Psalm 90:2; 1 Timothy 1:17)
 incomprehensible (Psalm 145:3)
 almighty (Genesis 17:1; Revelation 4:8)
 most wise (Romans 16:27)
 most holy (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8)
 most free (Psalm 115:3)
 most absolute (Exodus 3:14)
 working all things according to the counsel of his own unchanging and righteous will
(Ephesians 1:11)

So the biblical pattern is this: in affirming the majesty of the mystery of God’s character, we
confess that we cannot comprehend what we must acknowledge.
2. Mystery Is the Intent of Our Knowledge
The structure of the book of Romans can help us with this second point. In the first eleven
chapters, we see our true selves: naked, ashamed, and condemned before God.
Paul first establishes that all people are under sin (Romans 1:18–3:20). Our sin is focused in
our rebellion against the clear revelation of God in creation (Romans 1:18–2:16). The
righteousness of God (1:17) found in the Lord Jesus Christ (3:21–26), however, is alone able
to bring about our own righteousness (chapters 4 and 5) and break the shackles of sin
(chapter 6). Though we will continue to struggle with the sin that remains in us (chapter 7),
there is no condemnation for those in Christ (8:1). Then Paul takes us into the invisible
recesses of eternity so that we might see how God’s perfect plan had its origin in his eternal
resolve to save a people for himself (chapters 8–11).
At the beginning of chapter 12, we come to that all-important word therefore. In other words,
given all we have discussed in chapters 1–11, how should we then live? But first, a transition
passage, an intriguing segue from Christian doctrine to Christian living, an irresistible
outburst of doxological praise:
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his
judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who
has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from
him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans
11:33–36)
The deep and glorious truths Paul has labored to explain lead him to the praise and worship
of our incomprehensible God. The intent of our doctrine is always to elicit praise to God. A
biblical understanding of God’s truth always reaches out into the blinding light of God’s
majesty and glory.
3. Mystery Initiates Christian Living
This final point, likewise, follows the structure of Romans. After Paul’s doxology at the end of
chapter 11, and his therefore at the beginning of chapter twelve — signaling the sum of all
that has come before — the apostle tells us to present ourselves as living sacrifices (12:1).
This sacrifice is focused in our refusal to conform to the world around us, and our resolve to
be transformed. Our transformation comes through the renewal of our minds (12:2), which
takes us back again to right thinking. So the unending circle of our Christian experience goes
from precepts to praise to practice, and back to precepts again — all to the glory of God.
Yet if we neglect the praise of God’s glorious and majestic incomprehensibility — if we move
too hastily from doctrine to practice, without pausing to marvel and worship — the circle will
be broken, and the lifeblood of mystery will begin to drain from our orthodoxy.
A vibrant Christianity must include praise of God’s majestic mystery — a mystery infused
with knowledge; a knowledge that sets its intentions on the praise of God’s glory; a praise
that initiates our practice of holiness.
The majestic and incomprehensible mystery of God is therefore the center that holds our
Christian lives together. It flows from biblical truth, and it leads to biblical transformation.
So, says Calvin in his commentary on Romans,
Whenever then we enter on a discourse respecting the eternal counsels of God, let a bridle be
always set on our thoughts and tongue, so that after having spoken soberly and within the
limits of God’s word, our reasoning may at last end in admiration