Proverbs 14:30 ESV
A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+14%3A30&version=ESV]
The idea of calm is antithetical to modernity. Social media, politics, and the thousand other things we put time into suck us up and portion us out into frenetic, burying bundles of ‘what’s next?’, and I haven’t even touched on kids. Ever tried to be calm when a kid is screaming his head off because he’s tired (and you’re tired) and there’s literally no way to get him to be quiet? It’s real fun, and I wasn’t even in charge of the calming-down. The world has been an easy place to get worked up in from the day of the Fall, even since Adam first set foot on the ground and found it hard to till (Gen. 3:17-19), ever since Eve looked at her husband and thought herself a better authority (Gen. 3:16). Suffering hits us from one side, our own sin from another, and we’re in the middle listening to both. Amidst all of this, how can we ever be ‘tranquil’ of heart, as this proverb advises?
As this proverb hints, fundamentally the problem of contentment is a sin problem. Envy is a poison to the bones, this verse tells us. It eats at our very structure, in other words, poisoning our core and thus destroying everything which relies upon that core. Without your bones, your muscles are pretty much useless; with an envious soul, therefore, you have a rot at the very core of your character, making virtue weak and vice strong. If I envy somebody for their wealth, a superficiality in the end, I engrain into myself a hatred for another made in the image of God, a hatred not towards evil, as is commanded in Scripture (ps. 119: 53), but for the gift (or curse) God has given the rich man (for like all physical blessings, when misused wealth is a curse). Worse, I can envy somebody for their character- for their vice or their virtue. If I envy them for their vice, perhaps for their skill in philandry (Lev. 20:10), will I not compound my envy by emulating that sin, to my own hurt? If I envy them for their virtue, do I not deny the very thing I pretend to desire, proving that in truth I desire the appearance and not the reality of righteousness (Matt. 23:27)?
Sin destroys contentment, and envy is perhaps the most apparent case of this. Contentment is glad acceptance of what we have as sufficient; envy is hateful refusal to accept what we have as sufficient. They are polar opposites. The question then arises: yes, they may be opposites, but how am I to find contentment? Envy is a much more natural state of mankind, else we’d see more political ideologies built on contentment and less on envy (like socialism).
Fundamentally, a Christian has contentment not in the assurance of Himself but in the assurance that his God reigns in heaven, that the earth is His footstool (Ps. 110:1), and that we, His flock, are preserved by His hand. The three components of contentment then are God’s sovereignty, His providence, and His preservation of us. These three all, you will notice, the work of God, not our own work. The role we play is this alone: by God’s strength, we have faith in these three truths.
And they are truths. God’s sovereignty is an essential and central truth of Scripture, testified from its first chapter to its last. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” says Genesis 1:1. Can any of us deny that these are the actions of a sole omnipotence? How could God have a rival, when He created all that is not Him, when He is called “The Creator of the ends of the earth” (Is. 40:28)? He created; moreover, He has upheld His authority over His creation. Of Christ Paul says, “For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him” (Col. 1:16). In other words, all authority and power which is derives ultimately from God; any pretension to these exists only by His longsuffering, any reality only by His investiture. Thus John may with fear and trembling relate the words of Christ in Revelation 22:13: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
All this sovereignty, though, may seem very distant. Many a deist could agree with all I have said; he would add to it, of course, that God set the natural rules in place and then turned off the communications, left the universe to run itself. This calumny could not be farther from the truth, attacking as it does the very heart of the Gospel. God “preserves all His creatures, is active in all that transpires in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end” (Berkhof, 110). God is active in the world, both generally, as per Psalm 103:19 and 104:14, and specifically, in His miraculous salvation of His people. He shapes the course of history in its entirety, to the ruination of His foes, to the salvation of His chosen people (Is. 60:12; Rom. 8:28). His sovereignty is not merely a fact remote but a fact ever-present in our daily lives, an omnipresent part of reality. God reigns, and He reigns in every part of our lives, in the small and in the great, even in permitting our sin, in judging us, and in, for His people, bringing us to repentance and (renewed) faith.
God is sovereign, and God is active. All this is terror and not comfort if we do not know God’s intent in being active. Omnipotence in the hands of malevolence is literally a recipe for eternal torture or instant annihilation. God’s providence, however, is bent according to His decree to His purpose: the good of His people, for His own just glory. As Isaiah 61:1-3 proclaims, Christ came to proclaim great gifts to His people “that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” He came, in other words, to make them men after His own heart, exemplars of His holiness, disciples in the service of the Lord (Is. 56:1-8). For this purpose, He guards the steps of the righteous man, disciplining him (Heb. 12:7-11) and preserving him from calamity (Is. 57:1-2).
If we incorporate a true and constant understanding of these three layered truths, if we apply them to our lives and our thoughts, our worries and our cares, we may remember in peace the words of Christ: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matt. 6:26). Thus, we may turn from envy, for we have all that the Father deems we need and it would be folly indeed to dispute His wisdom. Thus, we may purge the rot from our bones, by His power and providence and not ours, poisoned and useless as it is without His regenerating grace (Ps. 14:1). Thus, we who have heard His name and believed may rejoice in Him, secure from all the malice of the world, all its nattering problems, secure that even as we live in a world as rushed as it is, we are at peace in Him.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Berhok, Louis. Manual of Christian Doctrine. Wm. B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, Michigan, 1965.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.