Reflections on Real Joy

Joy is spoken of all over the Bible and is something sought by so many, but we rightly question what it really is.

Michigan State won a spot in the Final Four and the team (and some of us watching) experienced a certain euphoria as a result. But was it joy? In a sense, of course. But not in the deeply satisfying and full way that seems to be the fruit of life lived in the presence of God. That has to be something deeper, something richer, something stronger. Life needs to be punctuated with moments of victory and accomplishment and happiness, but the joy we seek is something other.

And it seems to me that it can only be had by first losing everything.

Three years ago, I was minding my own business leading a small group Bible study in my home, when I was lured outside on a ruse only to find thirty or forty people, some from 500 miles away, standing in my front yard singing ‘Happy Birthday’. I was stunned, and of course, deeply moved. Why? Because it was a kindness that I in no way expected and most certainly did not deserve.

The roots of real joy are illustrated by this. Real joy comes to those who receive what they do not expect and believe they do not deserve.

The prodigal son is stunned to receive what he does not expect and believes he does not deserve – his father’s favor and full reception. The immoral woman affectionately pours her tears over Jesus’ feet because she has received from him what she could never have imagined receiving and the right to which she had never possessed – his love and acceptance and forgiveness.

The son and the woman experience deep gospel truths: that all they have that matters they did not deserve and therefore could not have expected. Their wonder feeds their joy.

Real joy eludes us, on the other hand, because we really cannot sustain belief in the gospel. Forgetting ourselves, we allow ourselves to think that there really is some good reason for God to think highly of us, and so his favor ceases to be surprising and undeserved. And when it is that, the joy is gone.

Real joy can only come when we lose everything, every vestige of spiritual merit and expectation that we possess. And losing that can be very, very painful. We need to lose our self righteousness, the things upon which we depend. We need to lose the expectation that our success earns us favor, or our riches, or our character, or our looks, or our timeliness, or our propriety, or our ethnicity, or our hard work, or our exemplary parenting. We need to be stripped of everything in order to know that we are both deeply abhorrent to God and even more deeply loved.

When we lose everything we are in a position to marvel that we have been given everything. And knowing that we have been given everything by One who will not ever take it away is the place of real joy.

The cross is therefore our joy. To see the sin in our lives is to be shocked that the holy God would act to save us. To see our sin is to know that all that we have been given is clearly undeserved. and the more clearly we see these things, the more deep will run the channels of joy in our life.

[My thanks to Bill Kimrey, whose hand-carved celtic cross is pictured here.]