All Things Joy!
Here’s a picture I snuck of Jame’s Padley’s daughter worshipping at an the August 2008 ARC conference in Belo Horizonte, Brasil.
If you’d like to hear a song related to joy that we’ll be singing this coming Sunday, click below! (I wrote this a few years back and it seems fitting to the discussion at hand)
Joy is
-The mature fruit of faith in the life of every believer.˜
-The inevitable outcome of seeing the world in light of Jesus Christ glorified.
Joy has one source.
There is only one way we can experience joy: knowing Christ. Even all the little joys in life experienced by Christians and non-Christians alike are direct mercies from God. As humans, we experience joy in degrees. Our joy is increased as our intimacy with Him deepens. I have more joy in my wife Vesper now than I did when we first got married. There is only one explanation for this-after ten years of marriage I know Vesper better now. As our knowledge increases, it should follow that our intimacy increases. If this is not the case, that reveals something about the nature of our relationship-that is fundamentally flawed in some way and needs attending to. In all functional relationships, knowledge increases enjoyment. And here I am referring to “experiential” knowledge, not just perceptual knowledge or “book-learning.” With Jesus, one will always enjoy Him more the closer one draws to Him, because He is perfect and no fault can be found in Him. Any distance we may feel is a direct result of our own inadequacies, not His. We alone are to blame if we are stagnating in our relationship with God. This is the tendency of the human dynamic, which is why we cannot trust our emotions as affirming the reality of God’s promises or indicating the nearness of His presence. He is constant and unchanging while we are the fickle ones whose affections aimlessly wander the earth!
Joy is costly.
In its relationship to suffering: It could be stated that joy is not a destination, but a path. It is a path that is strewn with sharp rocks and sinking sand, overgrown and underestimated, easily found and quickly lost track of. Joy is the result of faith in the face of an immeasurable universe of sin. Psalm 126.5-6 declares “Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing the sheaves with him.”
Psalm 51.8 says appallingly “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.”
The Bible teaches us there is an undeniable connection between suffering and joy, and between discipline and glory, trials and happiness. I tremble at the thought that in this fallen world, one cannot experience the fullness of joy without a measure of suffering. Is this Biblical? I believe it is, and this is how I believe we are to understand Pauline doctrine. In Romans Paul emphasizes this point: “If we are children, then we are heirs-heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.” Once you begin to read what the Bible says about joy, you begin to see why it is unattainable apart from Jesus Christ and His a sacrifice.
Jesus paid the price for our joy in Him. Joy is because Christ came. Every fleeting moment of happiness and delight in this life is a direct benefit from the salvific work of the Cross. It is an effect, if you will, of His plan of salvation. Because it can be said that God is Joy just as God is Love, our reconciliation to God is a reconciliation to joy itself. But it must be clearly understood that our experience of joy, along with all of God’s attributes, was purchased with the blood of Christ. This realization should elevate our view of joy. The joy of the Lord is not merely an outcome of good living. It is not an absence of grief. It is not a fleeting feeling that can simply be won and then lost. The joy of the Lord is not of this world. It is a sacred and precious thing.
Vision of Christ.
Paul’s vision of Christ was the only thing that enabled him to see his circumstances as they really were: ordered by God and for the advance of the kingdom. God didn’t somehow slip up or become casual with his destiny. God didn’t just “work out” Paul’s imprisonment for the better. God placed Paul in prison on purpose to do the best work of his ministry. Paul’s vision of Jesus was great enough to encompass the seeming shutdown of his ministry by the Romans, and he was selfless enough to realize that his detainment was in some ways more productive than his freedom!
The real price is already paid.
“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” -Hebrews 12.1-2
Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. We understand that love drove Jesus to the cross. But we would be underestimating His love for us if we did not consider the nature of that love. The love of the blessed Trinity is not a dispassionate and obligatory love like that feeling many of us have towards our sports teams when they’re on a losing streak. The cross was endured by Jesus, but not in the way we endure going to the dentist. The Greek for “endure” in Hebrews is “hupomeno”, which means to remain or tarry behind, to abide, to not recede or flee, and to bear ill treatment bravely and calmly. Jesus conquered the Cross. Jesus destroyed the Cross. Jesus set His face like flint towards Jerusalem and no one could detour Him from it. He reached His hands out to it. He was reaching out for it in the manger, He was striving for it while the throngs were trying make Him their king by force. On the road to His ruin He would not allow any to call Him a victim. He refused the tears of the onlookers, He scorned the shame of that awful instrument of torture, He tore down that wretched symbol of death and rebuilt a new paradigm. And we can be sure of this, that our Lord accomplished His Father’s will on earth just as it is done in heaven-with the fullness of joy.
The Father saw all of the events of the Passion in light of His own glory, with full assurance of the power of His love to utilize and transform the evil of this dark world for the greatest exaltation of majesty and mercy this same world has ever seen. You may find it difficult to believe that God could make good out of your sufferings and disappointments. But who can remain in a state of such disbelief under the shadow of the Cross? This holy paradox silences the world’s suffering, for truly, no greater injustice has ever been committed than the killing of God’s perfect, eternal Son. There is no crime that has ever been conceived or ever will be imagined that is more odious than Calvary. Whenever you are tempted towards self-pity or doubt in God’s providence, fix one eye on the Cross and the other eye on the Tomb. Therein lies the answer for all the fallen-ness this world contains, and all of the wickedness in your own heart.
Questions.
In his letter to the Galatian church, Paul entreats his readers to remember their roots. In the middle of the letter he asks the searing question “What has happened to all your joy?” This is the question you never want to hear. I shared last week how this question was once posed to me, and the effect it had. We have established that joy is seeing the world in light of Jesus Christ glorified. What does this mean in the day to day life of a believer?
1. Joy is a commandment! First, we must acknowledge that joy is a commandment from God that is clearly articulated throughout the Old and New Testaments. Psalm 33, Psalm 47, Isaiah 12, 44.23, James 1.2 are all good examples of this. Of course, we can’t forget Paul’s encouragement in Philippians 3.1 and 4.4. We should not take these as suggestions, but inescapable commands. A command with the same weight as “Thou shall not kill.” Or “Thou shall not bear false testimony.” The Lord is saying clearly throughout scripture “Thou shall be joyful.”
As with every commandment, joy should be a concern for every Christian. There are always those among us who don’t particularly care either way whether your heart is full of joy, you will dutifully go about your lives, obediently fulfilling your God-given purpose. For you, joy is nice when it happens but you seem to get along fine without it. Certainly you would never presume to ask for such a thing when there are millions of people in this world who are suffering far worse than you, and you’re not going to be found complaining!
This is not acceptable to God according to the scriptures. This is a form of false humility. The fact is that if you are in Christ, you are a bondservant of an eternally joyful God. Joy is to be normative!
2. Repent! If you lack joy, it could be that you are guilty of two things: You are failing to put your trust in Christ alone, and you are instead putting your trust in lesser things. Just as partial obedience is disobedience, partial trust is distrust. And if our total trust isn’t in Christ, it will be in something lesser. We hang our hopes on the tangible things we can feel and touch and see, thinking they will bring us happiness. We look at our job or our spouse or our house or our kids or our things and say “You bring me happiness! Comfort me! Meet my needs! Give me peace! Security! Success! Acceptance!” Many of us have developed such a pattern in our lives of fueling up on “favorables” that we are unaware that this is at its root a form of idolatry. In this way, our golden calves have become anything that promotes and protects our sense of well-being. For this we must repent! Is it not our charge to bring joy into the world, not take joy out of it? Did not Jesus say we are to be salt and light of the world? Our Lord also said “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Again, Paul encourages the Philippians to “shine as lights in the world.”
Here is the prophet Jeremiah, speaking the words of the Lord to the people of Israel:
“My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold new water.” -Jeremiah 2.13
3. Remember! Preach yourself the gospel. Paul went on to teach the Galatians how to revive the joy they once had but then so quickly lost. He pointed them once again to the fundamentals of the gospel: Justification through faith apart from works, our identity in Christ as heirs of the New Covenant, living by the power of the Spirit, conquering the fear of man.
4. Believe! Cultivating joy is like cultivating faith: it is not happened upon, it is found in the mining of the life drawing near to God. We always try to make it more than this, as if it is some mystical and enlightened answer. But the path to joy is simple and accessable.
It is the determined, intentional and tangible pursuit of Christ though the disciplines of the Word, prayer, fasting, worship, hospitality, generous giving, service. Will these things ensure that we have joy-filled lives? No! But these things can open the door for the Holy Spirit to operate freely on us and through us. These things help us draw near to God, and His word promises that if we draw near to Him He will draw near to us.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that so easily entangles, and let us run the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” -Hebrews 12.1-2