Contentment in a Culture of Coveting
February 2, 2025
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 7:17–24
17 Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. 18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. 19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. 20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. 24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.
For those churches and pastors committed to the regular pattern on Sunday mornings of preaching through books of the Bible—which is our commitment—there is constantly the question of how best to divide passages.
Dividing passages is a bit of an art and a bit of science. You want to get enough verses to cover themes and complete arguments but not slow down so much that you lose the sweep of the book; you want to see both the forest and the trees. Dividing passages requires considering logistical choices about the church calendar and pastoral choices about needs among our people. So dividing passages also takes prayerful discernment and wisdom to know what will most challenge and most bless a congregation. Sometimes, it’s as simple as just looking at how the passages that are already broken out in whatever translation a church might be using and going with that. So, to be candid it’s also, in part, just an educated guess by people trying their best.
I say that to say this: many churches and pastors preaching through 1 Corinthians have mostly done one of two things in these sections, they took the verses we just read and will be preaching this morning and kept them together with the verses that came before, or they took these verses and kept them with the verses that come after. Both before and after could be right and helpful. Perhaps a less common approach, it seems, is to break these verses out separately, as we’ve chosen to do. Why keep them separate?
We’ve kept them separate because what Paul highlights here is the key to helping us understand why he would say everything he’s saying in all the surrounding passages about marriage and singleness and divorce and children and careers and work and calling and religious backgrounds and gifting and the fractures of unity in the church. And not only will we be able to make better sense of those issues but in our own culture, which is so consumed with coveting and jealousy and envy, if we settle what Paul aims to settle here, we might learn better what it means to be content and to be happy in Christ. Let’s pray as we begin.
“Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
I don’t know all the ways that God wants to give you joy in Christ. There are many ways, not one way, God wants to pour gospel encouragement and stability into your life.
But I do know one way to be miserable. To be miserable as a Christian, spend the next thirty years switching the specifics of a certain question and never stop asking the question. The framework of the question goes something like, “Would I be more happy and holy if I were [fill in the blank]?”
Would I be more happy and holy if I were married? Would I be more happy and holy if I were married to someone different, someone who shared the same faith commitments as I do? Would I be more happy and holy if I were single?
Would I be more happy and holy if I were in a better career? Perhaps if I were not in a secular job, then I could serve God more faithfully, say, if I worked in a church or in some other ministry. Would I be more happy and holy if I were in a job not so surrounded by so many non-Christians? Maybe if I worked in the government and was more politically active, then I’d be more happy and holy? Or perhaps I should abstain from politics, and it’s my complete avoidance from being tainted that God wants?
Could I please God more if I lived in a different country, one without so many problems? What if English wasn’t my second language? What if I’d been born here?
Would I be able to serve God better if I didn’t have the health challenges I have? Do I need to get rid of my cancer or Parkinson’s or ADHD to be effective for Jesus? Maybe I just need to be smarter? Maybe I need to lose weight or have more energy or be able to get by on less sleep?
Maybe I need to be older so that I can be respected by my church and community and be seen as someone with more wisdom? Maybe I need to be younger because people don’t think I’m relevant anymore or have anything meaningful to say now that I’m old?
Would I be more happy and holy if I had the gifts those in my small group have, such as the gift of evangelism or preaching or generosity? Maybe if I had the special gift of faith that could believe God in seemingly impossible situations instead of wilting under the smallest of challenges, then I could be a better Christian and witness to my family?
Thinking of family, if only I had come from a family that had taught me about Jesus when I was growing up, then I’d know my Bible better and not feel so stupid when I don’t know the stories or the verses or the truths about God that everyone else knows.
Would I be more happy and holy if I had not had a father who wasn’t absent and angry and emotionally unstable? What if I hadn’t ricocheted through the foster care system only to be cut off when I hit eighteen, having never been adopted by a loving family? What if my mother hadn’t been a part of a religious cult? Or what if she hadn’t been a nominal church member just going through the motions at mass?
What if our family didn’t get sucked into prosperity teaching so that now every time I have something bad happen to me I wonder if it’s because I don’t have enough faith or have sinned in some secret way, even though I know that’s not exactly how, in the providence of God, suffering and trials work? What if, growing up, we had attended a church that was healthy and biblical and not, to be frank, crazy? Then—maybe then—I’d be more happy and holy in Jesus and not so guarded around pastoral leadership and genuine Christian community.
And what if my education had been different? What if I had been homeschooled and kept from some of the struggles that I was exposed to? What if I had not been homeschooled and had been better prepared for the challenges of the world and my faith? Would I be more happy and holy if I had gone to a different college? Maybe if I had gotten a different degree? Maybe if I had gotten a minor in ministry? Maybe if I had been able to go to college, then I could be more happy and holy in Jesus.
And why is my budget so tight? Would I be more happy and holy if I were in a career that provided better for myself and my family? Then I could be more generous with my church and with others instead of always being anxious about the next paycheck and anxious about what appliance is going to break next and anxious about what part of my car will keep me from passing the state inspection. Would I be more happy and holy if I didn’t have these school loans which feel like a servitude that I’ll never get out from under? What if when I was eighteen I hadn’t switched majors so much? What if I had started saving money sooner and didn’t have to keep working into my mid-seventies, then I could have the retirement everyone else has and have fun and serve Jesus as well as they do. What if so much of my time wasn’t consumed with taking care of others?
Would I be more happy and holy if I were [fill in the blank]? I don’t know all the ways that God wants to give you joy in Christ. There are many ways, not one way, that God wants to pour gospel encouragement and stability into your life. But I do know one way to be miserable. To be miserable as a Christian, even when you live in a nursing home, never stop asking this question.
For all the potential controversy in the last few sermons around sexuality and marriage and divorce and widowhood and all of that and more, this morning—in this seeming digression from the main argument—hear the apostle Paul lovingly and calmingly and pastorally shout over you on God’s behalf, “Stop. Just abide.” In our culture so consumed with coveting and jealousy and envy and comparison, stop. Hear him tell you on behalf of God what it means to be content and to be happy in Christ.
Look again at his words. I’ll go through them slowly, adding a little commentary here and there. Starting in v. 17.
17 Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.
Paul begins with the encouragement to lead the life the Lord has assigned. Most immediately, in the context above, that’s in marriage or not in a marriage or in a marriage that has challenges that you’d prefer it didn’t have. All of that. We might paraphrase Paul’s words with the cliché, “Bloom where you are planted.” Of course, sometimes you feel like you’ve been planted on the side of a rockface, exposed to the wind, or in a desert far from water, or in Antarctica and surrounded by water, but all the water is frozen. Sometimes it’s hard to bloom where God plants us. It’s hard to remain, to abide. Paul hasn’t used the word abide or remain yet, but he will. And he knows how hard it is. He was single in a Jewish context where almost everyone was married. But that’s for next week. I’ll keep going. Paul pivots to a religious background. Look at vv. 18–20.
18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. 19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. 20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.
Here you see Paul use the phrase “remain.” Circumcision, for those unaware, is a surgical procedure done on the male private part that removes a small amount of skin. God commanded it in the Old Testament to set apart his people. So, from the time of Abraham to the time of the New Testament (some 2,000 years), it was not the only feature that marked a family as those committed to following the Lord, but it was certainly a defining feature. So it mattered a lot. Yet in the Greek culture, it was a despised feature, associated with a despised religion. Today circumcision continues to be practiced regularly in some countries, such as the United States, but is practiced in other countries less regularly. It just depends. This week I looked up worldwide statistics about circumcision. You’re welcome. Apparently, there are cultural and medical aspects to this choice that are seen differently by different people. But in our day we can certainly say that it is often less of a religious choice than it was in Paul’s day.
This makes it difficult to say what might be comparable in our culture. Perhaps the Amish community’s distinctive dress and facial hair, their plain clothing, and their avoidance of technology have some parallels. So we’d hear Paul say something like, “Your plainness does not commend you to God.”
Or perhaps another analogy of circumcision and uncircumcision in the way we ascribe religious significance to our allegiance to a various political party, singularly identifying a party and a person as uniquely and exclusively godly. A Jew in Paul’s day would have been shocked to hear that after Jesus had lived, died, risen, and ascended, that circumcision counts for nothing. In a similar way, perhaps we might say being a Democrat or Republican counts for nothing; what counts is keeping the commandments of God. Of course, Paul’s audience would have had objections. But, but, Paul—doesn’t the Old Testament matter? And what about this and what about that? Of course, Paul would have said the Old Testament does matter. But his point is that no one feature by itself, especially an external one, can do what only faith can do.
Even if there isn’t a perfect parallel today, Paul’s point in these verses is certainly clear. Whatever your religious background, whether super pious and faithful and scrupulous about following rules, or whether you are from an irreligious or even a pagan background where you were told to have all the fun that all the world can provide, Paul says, Stop. He says, “For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.” There’s the word remain or abide again.
Having first said that family status is not what counts most and now having said that religious past is notwhat counts most, Paul moves to social status. Look at vv. 21–24,
21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. 23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. 24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.
It would take us off field to have a deep discussion of slavery in Paul’s world. Perhaps one-third of the population was in some form of slavery. In some cases, it was as evil and awful as the slavery that took place in the American past. But everything I read, which was not a small amount, is that much of their slavery was also quite different. You could be a slave or a bondservant in every profession and sometimes have much freedom and authority. A person might even choose to be a bondservant to address an amount of debt. So it was a mix. And certainly you can hear Paul clearly say that if you can get out of being a bondservant, then do so. Paul is not against ambition and bettering circumstances. He’s not telling Christians they must remain, but that we can.
I don’t want to go into all those distinctions about slavery, as important as they might be. Let’s focus on Paul’s main point. His main point is that when you come to the communion table through repentance and faith, when you come to be reminded of the love of Christ for you displayed in Christ’s death and resurrection, when you are minded that God satisfied all his wrath against sin by punishing Jesus and by grace giving you all of the righteousness of Jesus, when you are reminded of that, then remember you don’t need to change one thing about your social status to be loved by God.
You don’t need to come to the communion table ashamed about your career. And, conversely, you better not come to the communion table with a swagger, as though your social standing, your career, your money, your upward mobility are the things that make your right with God. Because they don’t. God is not so concerned about what job you have, but how you do your job. All of you who are not full-time pastors can store up more treasure in heaven than any pastor because being happy and holy in Jesus can take place in any profession, at least any non-sinful profession.
I’m speaking of gospel equality at the communion table, rather than the more common expression “that the ground is level at the foot of the cross” because in chapter 11 Paul is livid that this is precisely what they are not doing. They are having communion services that privilege the privileged. It’s all a mess.
Which is why Paul loves them and wants to pastor them and help them. He wants them to be holy and happy in Jesus. And the main way he does that is by teasing out the two different aspects of calling. I’ll finish over the next five minutes by pointing out the two ways Paul uses calling and how that helps us be holy and happy in Jesus.
If you look at v. 17 again, you see him say, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.” There’s the word “called.” Here the meaning is something like we would say in our day using the word “calling” or “vocation.” It’s the idea that a person is assigned or called by God to certain circumstances, whether married or single or whatever. This is one type of calling.
Paul uses the word again several times, the other times with a different meaning, what I’ll call a more foundational meaning. Look at v. 18–20, listening for the word called.
18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. 19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. 20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.
Okay, now look at the start of vv. 21–22, listening for the wording of called.
21 Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. (But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.) 22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ.
In these verses, the word call doesn’t mean a vocation or a situation in life. Call, in these verses, refers to the gospel call upon a person’s life. It refers to being saved by God.
This is similar to how Paul uses call repeatedly in the letter. Perhaps you’d like to turn to the first chapter, the opening of the letter. I’ll read from vv. 4–9. You’ll see in the final line the word called used as in the calling of becoming a Christian.
4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, 5 that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— 6 even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 8 who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Do you see it? “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul wants you to have two understandings of calling and to not hold them equally. If you’re a doctor or a pastor or a janitor or a stay-at-home mom or an engineer or a teacher or an artist or unemployed or disabled or married or single or divorced, none of those, by themselves, are callings that will make you, by themselves, more holy and happy in Jesus. But if you are called into a relationship with Jesus through repentance and faith, you are welcomed into his family as beloved children, then there is no calling or circumstance that must change for you to be pleasing to God. You don’t need more money or education or to leave your secular job or anything.
This is radical good news. Paul is giving us the invitation to let the most important reality of the universe, namely, being called into a relationship with God, govern all the other aspects of our lives. This is why he ends the passage the way he does, reading again vv. 23–24. Notice the God-wardness of it all. Paul is not talking about mere resignation to the status quo. He’s calling the Christians to be Christianly in how they view the most important realities.
23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men. 24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.
Remain with God, he says. Abide with him. Same word. I think of Jesus saying, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4). Here Paul is getting at this same idea Jesus got at there.
In light of this passage and sermon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrasing in Exodus 20, the passage with the Ten Commandments. While many of the commandments tend to appear as though they are external actions, that is, actions that you can see and hear, like lying or murder or honoring parents or adultery, the last commandment goes right at the heart to what only God can see. Exodus 20:17 says,
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
I don’t think many of you struggled last week to covet your neighbor’s donkey. That might be a thing for someone. But I bet in other ways, perhaps even among your Christian neighbors, you struggled not to covet. Or maybe you didn’t struggle, and that was the problem. You just gave yourself over to comparison and envy. Maybe you even spiritualized it by saying I’d be happier and holy in Jesus if I had this or that.
I don’t know all the ways that God wants to give you joy in Christ. There are many ways, not one way, that God wants to pour gospel encouragement and stability into your life. But I do know one way to be miserable. To be miserable as a Christian, go into the grave continuing to ask this question. Instead, hear the apostle Paul lovingly and calmingly and pastorally shout over you on God’s behalf, “Stop. Just abide.” Receive the gospel like a big bear hug that helps you abide before God.
Let’s pray. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Sermon Discussion Questions
This passage never uses the word contentment. But where do you see that theme? Paul also never uses the word covet. But where might you see that theme?
In your current season of life, what is most tempting you to covet? Why?
What is the difference between godly ambition and sinful coveting? This passage in 1 Corinthians 7 is mostly concerned with contentment. But where do you see godly ambition in these verses? Are your ambitions always godly? (See Eccl. 4:4 for an interesting verse on what often causes workers to become skilled.)
Why is it sometimes harder to remain/abide with God than to go/do/try/leave/change/etc.?
How does Paul connect gospel themes in this passage to the struggle with contentment? What do you need to believe about God so that contentment is possible? What gospel truths are you failing to believe about God when you find yourself tempted to covet? What truths are there that make everything Paul says possible? (Compare 1 Cor. 6:19–20 with 7:23–24.)
Spend time confessing your coveting to God, repenting of this sin, and turning to him in faith, asking him to give you contentment as you trust him more.
