What do the apostle's words mean: "to be godly and content"? Content with what? One's own godliness? Other people? Everything in the world? And what, in fact, is godliness? The corresponding Greek word, as well as the Hebrew word it implies, means first of all...
What do the apostle's words mean: "to be godly and content"? Content with what? One's own godliness? Other people? Everything in the world? And what, in fact, is godliness? The corresponding Greek word, as well as the Hebrew word it implies, means first of all what we sometimes call fear of God.
Of course, one can fear God for different reasons. Many fear Him only out of fear of punishment, whether in this life or after death. The corresponding Greek word suggests rather what we today would call sacred awe, the awe caused not by fear of punishment but by the presence of Someone infinitely higher and better than any person, even the most wonderful one, who moreover loves us as no human being can, although we do not deserve such love at all; in God's presence this becomes especially clear.
It is not accidental that the Greek word translated as "godliness" corresponds to a Hebrew word whose meaning is connected with the concept of merciful love, a love that is always ready to do more for a person than he deserves. Without such love of God for the human person none of us would have any hope of salvation, and without our answering love for Him the Kingdom would be closed to us forever.
Such godliness, inseparable from love and sacred awe, can be considered the foundation of spiritual life. But no human being will be able either to acquire or to preserve anything like it if his life is accompanied by constant discontent. The corresponding Greek word means "self-sufficiency."
The issue is not such self-sufficiency in which a person needs no one except "his beloved self": neither God nor people. It is the ability to be content with what one has, without attaching special importance to it, what the apostle expressed in another of his letters with the words, "I know how to live in abundance, and I know how to live in need."
Even before Christ came into the world, such a skill was considered a necessary condition of righteous life; otherwise a person's righteousness would depend on his material situation. For Christian life this was all the more necessary: here, in any circumstance and condition, the Kingdom had to be first, and only then everything else. Thus the apostle describes in two words everything necessary for Christian life and for salvation.
