Complete Joy
God wants us to experience the joy of knowing Him. That joy is based on His electing grace and His promise to keep us till the end.
Scripture
Commentary
IT is a wonderful proof of our Saviour’s deep attachment to his people that, having made their salvation sure, he is also anxious concerning their present state of mind. He wishes that his people should be, not only safe, but happy; that they should be not merely saved, but that they should rejoice in his salvation.
You cannot always rejoice, because although your treasure is not of this world, yet sometimes your affliction is here. Poverty is sometimes too heavy a cross for you to sing under it. Sickness casts you on a bed upon which you have not as yet learned to rejoice. There will be losses in business, disappointment of fond hopes, the forsaking of friends, the cruelty of foes, and any of these may prove the winter nights and nip the green leaves of your joys and make them fade and fall from your bough. You cannot always rejoice, but sometimes there is a needs-be that you should be “in heaviness through manifold temptations.” None of us, I suppose, are so perfectly happy as to be without some external trials, and our joy will, therefore, need to be looked after lest these water-floods should come in and quench it. We shall need indeed to cry to him, who alone can keep the flame burning, to trim our lamps and supply them with fresh oil.
Sometimes there will come deep depressions of heart, you can scarcely tell why or wherefore. That strong wing on which once you could mount as an eagle, will seem to flap the air in vain. That heart of yours which once flew upwards as the lark rising from amidst the dew, will lie cold and heavy as a stone on the earth. You will find it hard, indeed, to rejoice. Besetting sins, too, will cripple your holy mirth, so that when, like David before the ark, you, too, would dance for very joy, internal corruptions will make it almost impossible. Beloved, it is not easy to fight evil in our own souls, and to sing at the same time. Christian soldiers, we know, ought to do it, and march to battle with songs of triumph, nerving their spirits to deeds of desperate valour; but oh! how often the garment, rolled in dust and blood, compels us to stay for a while the shout of certain victory. Trials from within, from Satan’s suggestions, from the uprising of the black fountains of corruption, are not easy to bear, and we have reason enough, if our joy is to remain full, to be guarded and strengthened by a power not our own, even from God himself.
I have heard of a minister who once said, that a Christian lost nothing by his sin, and then he added, except his joy.
There is such a thing as becoming habituated to melancholy. My own tendency is sometimes to get into that state of mind, but, by the grace of God, I shake it off, for I know it will not do.
A CHRISTIAN’S JOY LIES MAINLY IN REVEALED THINGS. If this were not so, it would not find its fitting sustenance in inspired words. If the Christian’s joy consisted in the wine-vat, the feast, or his riches, John would not have written as he does:
He thanks God for all earthly joys, but he cannot feast his soul upon them, he needs something better. When John writes, “These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full,” there is nothing about prosperity in this world, but all about fellowship with Christ, from which I infer that everything revealed to us in the Scriptures has for its supreme purpose the filling up of the believer’s joy.
I think I could prove, if there were time, that all the doctrines have a tendency, when properly understood and received, to foster Christian joy. Let me mention one or two of them. There is that ancient, much-abused, but most delightful doctrine of election,—that before all worlds Jesus chose his people, and looked with eyes of infinite love upon them, as he saw them in the glass of futurity. What! Christian! Canst thou believe thyself “loved with an everlasting love,” and not rejoice?
Surely it was the doctrine of election that made David dance before the ark. He told Michal when she sneered at him, “I danced before the Lord that chose me before thy father Saul.” Surely to be chosen of God, to be selected from the mass of mankind, and made the favourites of the heart of Deity, surely this ought to make us in our own very worst and dullest moments sing for joy
Beloved, there is a mourning which comes from the Spirit of God, but it is a joyous mourning, if I may use so strange a phrase.
Sorrow for sin is a sweet sorrow, do not desire to escape it!
True evangelical repentance is food to the saintly soul. I do not know, beloved, when I am more perfectly happy than when I am weeping for sin at the foot of the cross, for that is the safest place in which I can stand.
Trials wean us from the world, and surely that is a most blessed thing.
If we had no idols in children, friends, wealth, ourselves, we should not need half the trials we have. Foolish loves make rods for foolish backs. God save us from this, and when he does, though the means may seem to be severe, they are intended to intensify our joy by destroying the cause of our worst sorrows.
Every precept and command of the Word of God is meant to help our happiness. “Do thyself no harm,” is the very essence and law of all the ten commandments. It is love speaking in the imperative mood, saying “Thou shalt not:” but all for our good.
to be able sometimes to admit, “I was wrong,” to know you know more to-day than yesterday, because the Spirit has been teaching you, why this is joy, this is pure delight, and such as God would ever have us to know. So I venture to repeat, that all the writings of Scripture, doctrinal, experimental, or practical, all have for their object that which John declares in these words—“that your joy may be full.”
We do our best to teach you God’s truth; but we are like gold-beaters, we get a little bit of truth, and we hammer it out so thin. Some of us are mighty hands at this, and can make a tiny fragment of truth-gold cover an acre of talk. But the best of us, those who really do seek to bring out the doctrines of grace and love, are but poor workers at it.
ARE WE ALL BELIEVERS? IS THE BOOK A SOURCE OF JOY TO US? These are significant pronouns—“we”—“you”—“your.” Who is that? Is that you? Does it come to you and make your joy full? If you do not know, or much care about it, then it does not speak to you. If you find plenty of joy elsewhere, and it does not speak to you, it will not force itself and intrude upon you. It gives you no joy, because you have enough elsewhere.
But others of you long for this joy. You are uneasy, unsatisfied, cannot find a tree in which to build your nest. Oh! dear friend! I am so glad. May you grow weary and heavy-laden of spirit, for then I have a whisper for you,—Jesus Christ came to call such to him.
Joy is the essence of Christianity
The exercises of godliness are to him not charms against an evil, or the worship of God a slave-work, or prayer a burden. The godliness, which is kindled by the loving-kindness of God is true happiness and felicity. The fear of God does not bring to the Christian gloomy self-denial and renouncing of the world, as if the Christian’s life consisted solely in the suppression of ardent desires and want, but in joys which he experiences, according to the exhortation of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle for the fourth Sunday in Advent (Phil. 4:4): “Rejoice in the Lord alway; and again I say rejoice.” Or according to the Lord’s promise in the Gospel for the third Sunday after Easter (John 16:22): “Your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
If our joy turns sometimes into sorrow when affliction without and temptation within, as it were, threaten to take it by storm, we know, for our edification and comfort, that Christ will come again and turn our sorrow into joy.
In those contexts joy is the result of abiding in Christ (John 15:4), asking and receiving in prayer (John 15:7b; 16:24), and resultant fruit bearing (John 15:8)
Those who depart from the visible fellowship of the church never were part of the fellowship, that is, they never believed in Christ Jesus and never had eternal life (1 John 2:19; cf. John 6:60–7163). Yet John’s theology of perseverance is precisely a theology of perseverance in faith in Christ Jesus64 and persevering by Christ Jesus (John 10:27–30). Believers are sustained in their faith by a fresh proclamation of Christ Jesus and his teachings, applied [in this context] in specific ways to combat the Christological heresy that threatened the health and life of the church by denying that the Christ is Jesus, the incarnate Son of God.
My Notes
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