Audio Transcript
We like to think in simple categories. It’s easier that way, and easier to be clear in explaining things. So, if I ask, “How are you doing?” you will probably respond in terms of “good” or “bad,” and then explain why you are feeling good or bad. By default, we are doing fine until we are doing bad, but it’s normally one or the other, up or down like a light switch: We’re good. We’re bad. Then along comes the apostle Paul and pulls this on-off switch off the wall and breaks it into pieces to teach us that the very good and the very bad coexist in this life. Today on Ask Pastor John: the many flavors of holy joy.
It’s a question from an anonymous listener to the podcast. “Pastor John, you have been writing and speaking for decades about the importance of joy in the life of God and the life of a Christian. You have made the case that joy in God — not only in his gifts but in his person — is essential to glorifying God. You have argued that the reason that God’s God-centeredness, his pursuit of his own glorification in all he does, is not megalomania is precisely because he magnifies his glory through our enjoyment of him. You have pointed out that the apostle Paul not only spoke of being ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,’ but that he also said, ‘In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy’ (2 Corinthians 6:10; 7:4). That last statement seems staggering. If it can be present in such different circumstances, can you help me even begin to imagine what true joy is?”
Joy in All Circumstances
That very statement from 2 Corinthians 7:4 has arrested my attention for a little over a year (since I taught 2 Corinthians last year) and just wouldn’t let me go, because it seems to demand that we dig into the nature of joy to figure out what he could possibly mean by calling his experience joyful in the light of so many different sufferings.
He mentions 26 sufferings, different kinds of affliction in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28. It’s not just Paul’s experience of joy in all those afflictions that drives me, but many, many different circumstances in the Bible are the circumstances in which we are told to rejoice. It’s just incredible how many there are. Here are a few.
- Rejoice in your future inheritance (1 Peter 1:3–6).
- Rejoice that your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:20).
- Rejoice in the plundering of your property for love’s sake (Hebrews 10:34).
- Rejoice in being poured out for others (Philippians 2:17–18).
- Rejoice in spending and being spent for souls (2 Corinthians 12:15).
- Rejoice in your weakness for Christ’s sake (2 Corinthians 12:9–10).
- Rejoice in being slandered and persecuted and rejected (Matthew 5:11–12; Luke 6:22–23).
- Rejoice in being shamed for Christ’s name (Acts 5:41).
- Rejoice in contributing to others’ needs (2 Corinthians 9:7).
- Rejoice in the partnership of other believers (Philippians 1:4–5).
- Rejoice in people being converted (1 Thessalonians 2:19–20).
- Rejoice in the unity of believers (Philippians 2:2).
- Rejoice in truth (1 Corinthians 13:6).
- Rejoice in the law of God (Psalm 119:14, 111, 162).
- Rejoice in the Lord (Philippians 4:4).
- Rejoice in the hope of the glory of God (Romans 5:2).
- Rejoice in God (Romans 5:11).
That’s for starters.
The variety of circumstances in which we are told to rejoice demands this: Joy is not a static emotion but one that changes in intensity. That’s pretty obvious for everybody, but also — this is what I’m drawing out now that feels fresh to me — it varies in quality. So, what do I mean by quality? I mean the nature or the kind of experience joy is — not just how intense it is but how different it is, or how it can feel so different from one kind of experience to the next. And yet, all of them could be called joy, which I think means a positive emotion that we really want to have. That would be my kind of bottom-line definition of joy.
Six Qualities of Joy
For example, I think we can distinguish (this is my best effort so far; I’m pressing into this in a fresh way recently) six categories of joy — namely, by what we’re responding to. Joy differs according to what we’re responding to. What are we responding to? That infuses its quality into our joy.
So, I think there is
- hope-infused joy,
- thankfulness-infused joy,
- trust-infused joy, then
- peace-infused joy, then
- physical-pleasure-infused joy, and then
- love-infused joy.
Let’s take those one at a time.
1. Hope-Infused Joy
Different hopes give rise to joy with different qualities. For example:
- hope to be with Christ
- hope for relief from pain
- hope to be totally done with sinning
- hope for the best of physical pleasures
- hope for friends with shared passions
- hope to build something beautiful
- hope to be treated with new expressions of kindness by an infinitely wise God
And on and on. The joy of each of those hopes will feel different from the others, but they are all joy.
2. Trust-Infused Joy
Or take trust-infused joy. Trust-infused joy is very much like hope-infused joy with the added aspect being joy in a person who is trustworthy to make something good happen. We might hope for the good thing to happen, but we trust in a person — in Christ — to secure it, to make it happen. So, there is the added personal pleasure of confidence, not just in a good thing that’s coming, but also joy in a good, strong, wise person that’s committed to us. The joy of trust — trust-infused joy.
3. Thankfulness-Infused joy
And then thankfulness-infused joy. Thankfulness-infused joy is quite different. It’s not looking forward to a good thing coming but looking back on a good thing that already happened that you experienced. And thankfulness-infused joy will take on as many different qualities as there are different kinds of things and persons to be thankful for.
“Different hopes give rise to joy with different qualities.”
For example, you’re thankful for a person who shows up in your life at just the right moment when you needed him. It’s the very person that you are thankful for; it’s person-oriented. Or you’re thankful for some exquisite pleasure that you had watching the sunrise this morning on the beach. Or it may be some huge relief from pain that you got a few days ago after a long illness. And you still feel deeply, happily thankful for them.
All those experiences of joy are different, but they’re all joy.
4. Peace-Infused Joy
Then there’s peace-infused joy. A peaceful conscience is a joyful experience. Oh my — it’s not just like other joys; it’s peace-infused. The absence of conflict is a happy experience. The presence of relational easiness with another person, the kind that you enjoy when everybody’s on the same page, and you don’t have to impress anybody. Everybody can be relaxed and accepted and loved, and there’s just sweet peace like oil running down on the beard of Aaron, like Jesus, something like Psalm 133:2 says.
5. Physical-Pleasure-Infused Joy
And then there’s physical-pleasure-infused joy. Physical-pleasure-infused joy is the joy we have from the countless physical pleasures that God has given us to enjoy. Delicious food, beautiful fall leaves, sexual delights with a spouse, the fragrance of lilacs in the spring, or bacon cooking in the morning. And the list, of course, could go on indefinitely. Spiritual, Christ-honoring joy is not identical with those physical sensations, but the quality of the joy is affected, shaped, infused, and formed by the pleasures we experience.
6. Love-Infused Joy
And then finally, there’s love-infused joy, when the psalmist says, “Delight yourself in the LORD” and “Be glad in the LORD” (Psalm 37:4; 32:11). And when Jesus says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Matthew 22:37), that kind of love is not an action of the body. It’s a response of the heart to the worth or beauty or greatness of God or some quality of a person that you delight in. So, it’s a kind of joy that is infused with our love for that person.
Joy as a Desired Gift
Now, the point of distinguishing those six kinds of joy — hope-infused joy, thankfulness-infused, trust-infused, peace-infused, physical-pleasure-infused, love-infused — the point is to help us realize that when Paul tells us to rejoice always, which he does (1 Thessalonians 5:16; Philippians 4:4), and to rejoice in all kinds of circumstances, from the worst to the easiest, we don’t have to imagine that joy is just one static thing, one static emotion which has to be duplicated in every situation, squeezed in, as though what you were feeling in bed with your wife is the same thing you should feel in affliction when your back is being shredded. Those are not going to be the same experience.
I suspect there are as many different, nuanced qualities of joy as there are kinds of experiences Christians can have. And common to all of them is that joy is a positive emotion: An inner experience of the heart that we want to have. It’s not felt as a duty. It’s felt as a desired gift. It is, as the Bible says, a fruit of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:22).
