Forty-five references to joy in 52 total chapters; that's Luke's Luke/Acts emphasis. Pretty impressive I'd say.
And one of the more stupendous statements about joy is found in Acts 2:25-28. This is a Messianic prediction about the resurrected and ascended Jesus. Notice the words: "my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced" (Jesus' joy was both felt and expressed; what his heart felt his tongue sang). Also the risen Messiah is "full of gladness with the Father's presence"! Not somewhat happy or mildly pleased, but completely and thoroughly joyful!
But isn't Jesus the "Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief"? He was, but I don't think He is. As touching His first coming, which was a coming to die, He knew much sorrow; indeed a seemingly disproportionate part of each gospel is taken up with His passion and griefs. But this was but for a time, that time, the time appointed for death. He came to cry and die in behalf of sinners.
But that said we must make two observations:
1. That He was a Man of Sorrows does not mean that He was joyless. It is hard to imagine a sinner-befriending, wine-drinking, food-enjoying, child-hugging Savior being joy and and humorless. If He was, He'd be about the only human ever who could make people feel comfortable with a constant sad and serious look on His face. It seems apparent that he was full of joy; otherwise nobody would have wanted to hang with him the way they all did. So it seems that all those observations I used to hear in childhood, that Jesus is never recorded to have smiled (by implication, He was a very serious and sad man, and we should be like that, too) were both wrong and sadly mistaken.
2. We should also note that if Jesus was not full of glad-hearted and often expressive joy while on earth the first time, He failed to obey hundreds of Old Testament commands, and therefore was not a perfect Savior! If He never sang and danced and clapped His hands and celebrated the goodness and grandeur and glory and sheer kindness of God while on earth, He disobeyed countless OT commands to do so. That would mean he sinned, and that, my friends, would be the end of the gospel.
All that said, let's be sure to conclude with this: though a Man of Sorrows Jesus was full of joy while on earth the first time, and now--as the risen Lord--He is not a Man of Sorrows at all; He's the King of Joy!
We should take a cue from this: no matter how many may be our sorrows we should be full of joy. And on this side of the cross and the empty tomb we should reflect our Savior by having hearts permeated with joy and tongues that sing and tell and shout it everywhere! We should be pervasively and persuasively happy people. After all, we're called to be like Jesus.
Yes, understood. What about this biblical idea of the whole creation "groaning" because of the curse. I tend toward melancholy, as earlier noted; but I have always felt that, because of this, I have had the more realistic view of life than the sanguines.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the trick is to hold the two in tension, like Paul. "Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing."
Surely, melancholy is an appropriate temper in a world originally created to be a wonder and a joy to us, but now laboring under the curse; and we too, created in His glorious image, now fallen. How could we not be melancholy about this!
And yet, joyful because of the resurrection, and because we know the end of the story (as you have said). This is why we may grieve, but not despair... very different emotions, grief is OK, but to despair is to sin (or, as Mirelda would put it to Anne of Green Gables... "to despair is to turn you back on God."
May we be as Jesus was-- melancholy over sin (note his grief over a Jerusalem, when She would not recognize her messiah, and his weeping at the tomb of Lazarus). Similar strong emotion is appropriate for us, here and now... it's OK to grieve, it's OK to cry.
But let us, in a deep sense, also be as he was, "anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows."
Tim, I think I'm basically reiterating your post-- and recalling what you said to me some months ago after an awful tragedy in our church family... how you have learned to live with both joy and sorrow every day, at the same time. It takes a depth of understanding and experience to arrive at this.
Rejoice therefore! Again, I say rejoice! (I guess it takes some convincing at times to pull it off!)
Good Point Peter, Great stuff Tim. Perhaps I could ask the question, What about the Pauline perspective of the "already and the not yet"?
ReplyDeleteFurther, I understand joy to be somewhat synonomous with blessedness. In that case, the poor are blessed, the persecuted are blessed, the reviled are blessed.(Beatitudes)I ask this question in hope of some clarification. In light of all that the scriptures teach regarding trials, persecution, struggle, agonizing, etc,.... is joy more of an inward contentment and hope than it is an outward expression of the face? A quick read of Ecclesiastes left me trying to reconcile the concept of joy as that which can be consistantly and accurately read on the believers countenance.
Looking for some help here.
JR
I think help is on the way guys. Keep reading over the next few days and i think the nuances of all this will begin to show.
ReplyDeleteOne thing is for sure: joy is not to be faked, giddy, Pollyannish, make-believe. And this side of heaven it will always be mixed with tears.
I sat with a young man the other day, a man coming out of a dark tunnel of sin, and through to the other side. He couldn't stop crying. Why not? His sorrow over sin (and the suffering it's caused) and his joy in God and grace, were both so real and so pronounced that tears of sorrow mixed with tears of gladness were unstoppable. I shared in those tears too. In this life mingled joy and sorrow will mark every sensitive believer.
But I will still argue that while sorrow mixes with our joy, that joy is still to be constant, deep, holy, dominant, and very often expressed in outward and exuberant ways.
I hope to make this clearer as we go.
Tim