Audio Transcript
We hear many painful stories of suffering from you that you write up and send to the inbox. Thank you for welcoming us into your life. Thank you for sharing. To be honest, many of those stories are heart-wrenching, many too painful to even address from a distance on this podcast. But they bring tears to our eyes as we read about the things you have endured and the ways God has sustained you through the darkest season of your life.
When we read the agonies of Gethsemane, we see in Christ’s tears — his tears of blood — a suffering that is unmatched in human history. And yet, there, as we read the crucifixion narrative together right now in Luke, we are told something that’s hard to believe: Christ was sustained through it all by joy. That’s today on Ask Pastor John: The joy that sustained Jesus.
Here’s the question from an anonymous listener: “Pastor John, how does Christian Hedonism relate to the agony of Gethsemane, like we see in Luke 22:39–46? You argue that obedience without delight is hollow. But what I think is the most God-glorifying act in all of history, the cross, was fueled not by any sensible joy but expressed in the crushing weight of bloody tears. How does this work?”
Heart of Jesus
Well, the last thing I want to do is minimize the agony of Jesus in the hours before his death. One of the most moving, sobering, convicting sermons I ever read is a sermon by Jonathan Edwards called “Christ’s Agony.” It’s based on Luke 22:44, which says, “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” This is such a sacred and awful moment in the life of Jesus that I am very hesitant to intrude upon it.
However, there is a passage in the book of Hebrews that invites us into the heart of Jesus as he was enduring Gethsemane and enduring the cross, and it shows us some fraction of the mystery that enabled him to bear the horrors of crucifixion and the weight of the sins of his people. I think it’s not wrong to look into that with all humility and trembling — to look in and see what God wants us to see. The text is Hebrews 12:2, but before I read it, let’s remember that leading up to this text are forty verses of illustrations in chapter 11 of Hebrews of how the Old Testament saints were able to obey God in triumphs and in suffering.
For example: “By faith Abraham obeyed” (Hebrews 11:8). So, faith is the power of obedience. And then in verse 35, it says that, by faith, “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment” (Hebrews 11:35–36).
“In the hours of Jesus’s greatest suffering, he was the most beautiful example of endurance by faith.”
Then, when these forty verses of examples of obedience by faith are complete, the writer says that because we are surrounded by such an amazing cloud of witnesses — these examples of faith — we should run our race with endurance. They endured by faith, so you can endure by faith (Hebrews 12:1). But then he gives one more example of endurance — namely, Jesus — and he says we should look to Jesus. Why? Because in the hours of his greatest suffering, he was the most beautiful example of endurance by faith. Jesus is the climax of all those saints who lived and endured and died by faith.
Joy Set Before Him
However, here’s the striking thing. It doesn’t say that Jesus endured the cross by faith. It says he endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). The joy that was set before him got him through Gethsemane and the cross. So, it looks like enduring by faith (the way the Old Testament saints did) and enduring for the joy set before him are very close, if not the same reality, which is exactly what we expect in view of Hebrews 11:1, which defined faith like this: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for.” So, Jesus saw great joy. He hoped for great joy just over the horizon in three days, and as he believed that, he trusted his Father for that. He treasured that, and the substance of that hoped-for joy became present in his faith. Faith is the substance of what we hope for, the present experience of the substance of what we’re hoping for.
There was a great joy set before Jesus. He believed, he trusted, he treasured it, and it became a present reality. So, we can describe the heart of Jesus in two ways, which mean (I think) essentially the same thing: “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross,” or “By faith he endured the cross” — because faith is the present experience of the substance of that joy (Hebrews 12:1–2).
Now, what does that tell us about Gethsemane, where so much of the agony of Jesus’s endurance was already beginning? I think if we dared — I don’t think we would dare, but if we dared — to ask Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, “Jesus, do you have joy?” I think he would have said in great patience, “Why are you asking me this?” But if he would have answered us, it would have gone, I think, something like this, through his bloody tears and his agony: “I can see it. I can taste it. It’s going to get me through.”
This future, hoped-for joy in the presence of his Father had a present, obedience-sustaining power, because faith now is the substance of things hoped for. This is how a hoped-for joy becomes a mighty force of love in the present. No greater act of love has ever been performed than when Jesus endured the cross to save his enemies (Romans 5:8–10).
Profound and Mysterious
So, what I’m arguing for is that Christian joy is a profound and mysterious thing. I don’t think it’s right to strip joy of its feeling, as if it were a thought or a conviction or an act of willpower. Joy is a feeling. It’s a good feeling. It is the sort of feeling we will have in the presence of God forever. Psalm 16:11: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” We must not strip the biblical language of joy and pleasure of its deeply satisfying emotional reality. The goal of eternity is enjoyment of God — real enjoyment, a feeling. It really satisfies.
Nevertheless, the fact that it can coexist with sorrow and affliction and agony means Christian joy is something far more substantial — I get that from “substance”; it’s “the [substance] of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). It’s far more substantial, more durable, deeper, more wonderful than the pleasures that come merely from the world.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6:10 that he was “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” He said in 2 Corinthians 7:4, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” — in, not after. And I think that’s part of the mystery of Gethsemane.
The joy that was set before Jesus sustained him, and I think it sustained him because his faith was so real that it became the substance of that joy in the present, in the garden — the substance of what was hoped for. He tasted the joy in the midst of his agony, and it sustained him.
“For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).
