The Happiness of Christ

Hebrews 12:2

We know Christ takes joy in us when we obey Him and follow Him, but what about when we fail Him?

Thomas Goodwin states Christs’ “own joy, comfort, happiness, and glory are increased and enlarged by his showing grace and mercy, in pardoning, relieving, and comforting his members here on earth.”

Doctor with medicine working with primative tribe story.

The Dr has joy when the sick members of the tribe come to him for the medicine that he provides. It’s why he’s there.

Jesus does not want to come to him with our suffering and sin just because it “vindicates” his atoning work. “He wants us to draw on His grace and mercy because that’s who He is.” (Ortlund, 37)

“Christ gets more joy and comfort than we do when we come to him for help and mercy.” (Ortlund, 37)

The parent is more joyful at the healing of their sick child than the child is.

Consider Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save those who are lost.””

came: to move toward erchomai

seek: to try to learn the location of something, often by movement from place to place in the process of searching

save: to cause someone to experience divine salvation

“Jesus does not get flustered and frustrated when we come to him for fresh forgiveness, for renewed pardon, with distress and need and emptiness. That’s the point. It’s what he came to heal.” This is who He is!

Goodwin states that, “from His filling them (his children) with all mercy, grace, comfort, and happiness, himself being more full, by filling them.” Goodwin, Heart of Christ)

Read quote from Grosvenor at bottom of page 38

What then is Jesus’ joy? ‘Joy’ comes from the greek word chara and means....joy, gladness; reason for gladness, delight; joy in; at; a joy; with joy

What was waiting for Jesus on the other side of the cross? The joy of seeing his people forgiven. It was the joyous anticipation of seeing his people made invincibly clean that sent hiim through his arrest, death, burial, and resurrection. When we today partake of that atoning work, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despire our sincefulness, we are laying hold of Christ’s own deepest longing and joy.

It is a restoring of God’s creation - the garden before the fall.

This connects with other passages about joy in the NT: Luke 15:7 “I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.” John 15:11

John 15:11 LEB

I have spoken these things to you in order that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be made complete.

John 17:13 LEB

And now I am coming to you, and I am saying these things in the world so that they may have my joy completed in themselves.

He wants not only to forgive us of our sins, but He wants us!

Are we wrong to pull on Christ this much? Are we be presumptious with Him? Should we be more ‘measured’ in our approach to God?

If your child is suffocating and you provide an oxygen tank and mask to him/her, would you want them to draw from that oxygen in a measured way?

Remember, the Scriptures tell us that we are part of Christ’s body.

To have a healthy out look on our own spiritual development, our sanctification, we have to recognize who we are. We are the church; part of the body of Christ. “How does the head feel about it’s own flesh?” Eph 5:29 “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as also Christ does the church,”

How do we care for a wounded body part? “That body part isn’t just a close friend; it is part of us. So with Christ and believers.” (Ortlund, 41)

Acts 9:4 “And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

“Jesus Christ is comforted when you draw from the riches of his atoning work, because hiw own body is getting healed.” (Ortlund, 41)