We usually think of Christian obedience as an active pursuit, but is there a passive component to it as well? Jeremiah Burroughs—the 17th century English puritan—thinks so. In his classic work, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, he asserts that we worship God through both active and passive obedience.
Active Obedience
For Burroughs, active obedience is what we typically think of when we think of Christian obedience. He explains, “In active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God.”
The Bible very clearly calls people to such obedience as an outgrowth of faith in Christ. In Matthew 28:20, for example, Jesus directs his followers to cultivate obedience to his commands in new disciples. He states that they are to make disciples by going, baptizing and “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Every believer was thus expected to walk in obedience to Christ, actively doing what pleases him. In fact, the Apostle Paul claims that one of his central aims was “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Jesus’] name among all the nations” (Rom 1:5; cf., 16:26). In short, the Bible calls us to active obedience to God’s commands.
Passive Obedience
Yet Burroughs maintains that there is a passive component to obedience as well. He asserts, “By passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does. Now when I perform a duty, I worship God, I do what pleases God; why should I not as well worship God when I am pleased with what God does?”
Burroughs utilizes this notion passive obedience to explain what the Bible calls “contentment.” He maintains, “It is but one side of a Christian to endeavour to do what pleases God; you must as well endeavour to be pleased with what God does, and so you will come to be a complete Christian when you can do both, and that is the first thing in the excellence of this grace of contentment.” To be pleased with what God does is to be content in him.
Christian Contentment
This kind of passive obedience isn’t easy, particularly when we find ourselves in undesirable circumstances. When life isn’t “going our way,” it is far easier to dwell on our dissatisfactions. Yet in doing so, we indicate that we are not pleased with what God is doing in our lives. For Burroughs, such a posture of discontent is actually a posture of disobedience.
So how do we grow in this grace of contentment? According to Paul, we learn it through the very circumstances which tempt us to despair. He claims, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:11–13).
For the mighty Apostle Paul, contentment was something he learned. He learned it through undesirable circumstances, and he learned in those circumstances that Christ is enough and that he supplies all that we need to walk and rest faithfully in him.
The challenge for us is to embrace, like Paul, even our undesirable circumstances and to pursue passive obedience within them. For it is only through such a pursuit that we can grow in the virtue of contentment and genuinely be able to say, “I am pleased with what God does.”
