“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” G.K. Chesterton

There are many words that you might use to describe my life in the past few months: busy, ordered, full, obedient. Unfortunately, joy is not atop that last. Yet, in the past few days, the Spirit has been gently pointing me to remember the incredible joy afforded to us as believers in Christ. The Scriptures are replete with reminders to remember our joy, showing us that true joy in our God is a serious and central matter to Christianity, not an ancillary or peripheral affair.

In the apostle John’s vision on the island of Patmos, he was told to transcribe letters from Jesus to some of the significant churches of his time. To the church at Ephesus, founded on Paul’s missionary journey in Acts 19, said letter including the following: “I know your works, your toil, and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false” (Rev. 2:2). Patient endurance, check. Works compelled by the love of Christ, check. Orthodoxy, check. Orthopraxy, check. It sounds like the Ephesians are killing it as believers awaiting the return of their beloved Christ; after all, they check off all the boxes that the modern church emphasizes, do they not? But the letter continues, “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first” (Rev. 2:4). Apparently, while keeping up their habits, they had forgotten the significance of warm affection for Christ (joy in Jesus) which was supposed to compel them.

But, it wasn’t just the Ephesians who needed such goading toward joy. The apostle John, in the letters to the churches that he penned later in his life, emphasized joy. The introduction of his first letter (which smacks of the prologue to the gospel he penned), drives down to this point: “and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete” (1 John 1:4). John didn’t pull that phase out of thin air or borrow it from a Greek source; he remembered those words straight from the last lengthly prayer Jesus prayed in his presence: the high priestly prayer. Jesus said, “While I was with them I kept them in your name, which you have given me…But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves (John 17:12; 14). And this was not the first time Jesus mentioned or emanated joy to his disciples as if it were the cherry on top of his teachings. Joy was central to the gospel Jesus declared to his disciples and the world. A few hours earlier, Jesus anchored all his teachings to the disciples by saying the following: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). He also explained that the joy he offered could co-exist with and even transmute real experiences of suffering. Knowing the deep grief they would experience upon his parting, Jesus pre-assured them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20).

The lesson of joy was laced throughout Jesus’s teaching and very way of life, and the joy of which he spoke and from which he lived was not a naive, fragile joy. It was a resilient buoyancy birthed from confident assurance in the nature and character of God. Jesus was a man of sorrows, well-acquainted with grief, but he was also full of joy. Children were drawn to him like a magnet, and children don’t love the morose. After his reluctant conversion to Christianity, C. S. Lewis remarked that he was surprised by the joy of Christianity, a reality also noted by G.K. Chesterton, one of Lewis’s spiritual influences.

Joy in Jesus

On Easter, French believers chant, “L’amour de Dieu est folie!” (the love of God is folly). They seem to understand the hilarity of the love of God, the unthinkable reality that the Risen Jesus has made a way for sinners to have access to the joy of God! Perhaps I need to chant this daily to remind my heart to enter the joy of the Trinity. I think that’s what Jesus (through John) was trying to remind the Ephesians. He was inviting them to remember the joy of their salvation, the holy hilarity and rejoicing relief the good news of the life, death, and resurrection had made alive within them.

I think sometimes that in a land loaded with lesser joys and drowning in lesser delights, our joy in Jesus is siphoned out and exported to a thousand externals. We buy the lie that joy is a sunny day at the beach, a clean home, a new pair of shoes, an excellent work review, or a delicious vacation. It’s not that those things aren’t joyful, but they are tiny slivers of the solid joy found in our God. Attaching our joy to the mercy of externals is a terrible way to live. The Scriptures invite us to live as those who our joy in the unchanging character and glorious presence of the Triune God. In fact, the verse that precedes John’s mentioning of joy in his first letter reads, “that which we have seen and heard we proclaim to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).

Fellowship with God fills us with joy, as we were made for and from the fullness of the inter-Trinitarian love. That joy is not jostled by financial downturns. That joy is not dimmed by diagnoses. That joy need not rise and fall with our performance. It is solid, as solid as the Savior who came to make a way for sinners to have access to the presence of God once again.

Yet, like the ancient Israelites, we are a people prone to forget. As such, we do well to pray with the repentant David, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (Psalm 51:12).

Maybe it’s time to get the word out about the gigantic secret of joy in Jesus. Our world could use some resilient, buoyant, unchanging joy these days. Perhaps the best place to start is in our own hearts and homes.