The Secret of Happiness.
I. When St. Paul speaks of being content,he uses in the original a word which occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. But this word, so rare with St. Paul, was in common use with all the schools of ancient Greece. Perhaps it would have been rendered more closely by "self-sufficing." St. Paul, as was his custom, took the old Greek word and baptized it; he gave it a new value; he read instinctively a new meaning into it. A Christian can only be self-sufficing, because in a Christian self is virtually suppressed. The old self is superseded by, is absorbed into, another self.
II. What are the ingredients of Christian contentment, and what are the ruling considerations which should make a Christian happy and thankful to be what he is? (1) The first motive, common in a large measure to St. Paul and to the wiser heathen, is that nothing earthly either lasts or satisfies. Why not acquiesce in whatever befalls us when all is relatively unimportant, relatively insignificant? (2) The second motive for cherishing a contented spirit is confidence in the wise and loving providence of God. We each are placed where we are. God is too 'wise not to know all about us and not to know what it is best for us to be and to have; and God is too good not to desire our highest good, and too powerful if He desires not to effect it. Our true course is to remember that He sees further than we do, and that we shall understand Him in time when His plans have unfolded themselves. (3) The third motive is that a Christian in a state of grace already possesses God: "If any man love Me, My Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him." Surely, if these Divine words are real to us, we must know that nothing that is finite can be needed to supplement this our firm hold upon the infinite, that no created thing can add to what we have in possessing the Creator.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxv., p. 273.
References: Philippians 4:11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vi., No. 320; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 47; Homilist,2nd series, vol. ii., p. 247; Parker, Hidden Springs,p. 1; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1st series, p. 159; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. vi., p. 204.Philippians 4:11; Philippians 4:12. E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. ii., p. 189. Philippians 4:11-13. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 124.