I Have Learned the Secret

“I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.  I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.  I can do everything through him who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:11-13  

One of the most memorized  lines in Philippians comes as Paul plucks words from the beliefs of his day and gives them entirely new meanings.  First he says, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”  He uses the favorite word of every Stoic—the Greek word autarxia.  To the Stoic it meant “self-sufficiency or not needing a thing because I have mastered myself.”  Paul had something else in mind.

When he says, “I have learned the secret,” he is using the very words found in the mystery religions—the literal translation being, “I have been initiated.”  “What those people are looking for in those groups,” Paul says, “I have found.  I now know the real secret to life.”  The secret?  “I can do all things through him who gives me strength.”

Paul didn’t learn the secret of true contentment by disciplining his mind to say, “I don’t care.”  He didn’t have it whispered to him before he climbed into a pit to participate in a bloody ritual that proved his manhood.  He learned it by listening every day to Jesus Christ and by putting into practice day after day the message of the cross.  He learned it by holding on to his faith in the fiery trials.  He says he learned it.  Is there any reason to doubt that he learned it the old-fashioned way—slowly and sometimes painfully?

Paul did not rise from baptism having all this perfectly in place, but he did come out of that water ready to learn; and year after year, he did learn.  At one point, bad circumstances led him to despair of even life itself (2 Corinthians 1:8)—he was hardly the picture of contentment.  But he did not quit, and he learned from it, and he persevered through such experiences, gaining a deeper understanding from each one that God would always be faithful in every situation

People in our day are still frantically searching and paying big money to find the secret to contentment.  In Jesus Christ we learn it. We can do all things through him who strengthens us.