Saving Faith as the Awakening of Joy in Jesus

The focus of this weekend is on enjoying Jesus. And so, I want to begin by making the case from the Gospel of John that saving faith in Jesus is the awakening of joy in Jesus. In other words, I’m going to try to show that, in the Gospel of John, Jesus did not think of the enjoyment of Jesus as a later attainment but as part of what saving faith actually is.

This can be a little unsettling for some people, because they are genuine believers in Jesus but don’t feel like they enjoy him. Several weeks ago, I was with a man who had passed through a crisis several years ago and said that he had not experienced any joy since then as a Christian. My response to him — and if you are a genuine Christian, my response would be the same to you — was, “I don’t believe you.” And over the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I was able to draw out of him significant expressions of glad affections for God and for the goodness of God and the patience of God and the power of God and the preciousness of Christ — affections like thankfulness toward Christ and treasuring Christ and hope in Christ. And I pointed out that thankfulness is not a grim emotion. It is a glad emotion, even if it is felt through tears. Treasuring Christ is not a gloomy emotion. It is a glad emotion, even in the midst of sorrow. Hope is not a dark, cheerless emotion. It is a glad emotion, even in prison, or in the hospital, or at the graveside.

In other words, I want to warn you ahead of time that some of you have conceptions of Christian joy that are inadequate to account for biblical reality. Do you have a conception (indeed, an experience) of joy that can account for the phrase in 2 Corinthians 6:10, “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” — not sequential, but simultaneous? Do you experience joy that makes sense out of Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 7:4, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy”? In them. Not just after them — in them. Do you have an experience of joy that can make sense out of Ecclesiastes 7:3, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad”? In other words, there are experiences of loss and sadness that take you to depths of joy you could not have known any other way.

So, all of that just by way of warning you not to jump to the conclusion that you are not a believer because you don’t experience a certain exuberance called joy, or because you lack the categories for making sense of sorrowful joy. (Of course, you may not be a believer. And if that’s the case, I am praying that God will awaken a taste for the greatness and the worth and the beauty of Jesus in your heart.)

Book of Believing

One of the most provocative observations about saving faith is that the book of the Bible that talks more than any other book about the saving effect of believing — namely, the Gospel of John — never uses the noun faith or belief (pistis) but uses the verb believe (pisteuō) 98 times. That cannot be an accident. What was John communicating to us by never using the word faith or belief but instead using the verb believe 98 times?

“There are experiences of loss and sadness that take you to depths of joy you could not have known any other way.”

I’m going to suggest what I think is at least part of the answer to that question — and a very important part, because it reveals the nature of saving faith in a way that is often overlooked or minimized, with the effect of weakening the church and her radical witness in the world. I don’t claim to have the whole answer as to why John wrote this way. I am sure, given how many layers there often are in John’s thinking, that this is not the whole story of why John always used the verb and never the noun. But I think it is an important layer. Indeed, I think it is essential to our life of faith — or, as John might prefer, our life of believing.

Often you will read in those who comment on this question something to this effect: John wants to communicate that faith is not passive but active. That sounds right. But regularly, those commentators go on to imply that what they mean is that faith causes us to be active, and to do things, like obey Jesus and love each other. But when they make the move from saying, “faith is active” to saying, “faith brings about actions,” they have made a move that overlooks and minimizes one of John’s intentions.

I don’t think that John chose to emphasize the verb believe because believing causes other actions besides believing. It does. Faith bears fruit. But I don’t think that’s why he used the verb 98 times. I think he chose the verb believe because believing in its very nature is a kind of acting — an acting of the soul or the heart before this acting of the soul produces any other kinds of actions (like love for people). And the kind of acting of the soul that believing is reveals something crucial about the nature of saving faith itself.

And keep in mind that we really are talking about saving faith — or saving believing — in John. Over and over, John says, “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life” — that’s saving faith, saving believing (John 3:36; 3:15, 16, 5:24; 6:40, 47; 11:25; 20:31). The issue in John’s Gospel is how to have eternal life and not remain under the wrath of God (John 3:36), and the answer is believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

Believing and Receiving

What is the nature of such saving believing? What kind of soul-acting is he talking about?

Let’s begin with John 1:11–13, where John shows us that believing in the name of Jesus is virtually interchangeable with receiving Jesus.

[Jesus] came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

John chooses his words to make plain that receiving Jesus is what believing does. John interprets for us the action of the soul in believing: namely, the soul is believing in Jesus when the soul is receiving Jesus. And we shouldn’t limit receiving Jesus to the first act of conversion. Believing that saves is an act that the soul does forever.

Jesus! I do now receive him.
More than all in him I find.
He hath granted me forgiveness.
I am his, and he is mine.

We can sing that every hour of every day.

Now a double question arises: Receiving Jesus as what? And what is this soul-act of receiving? What is the heart or the soul actually doing when it is receiving Christ?

I’ll mention two answers to these questions in John’s Gospel, and then we will look at the texts.

Drinking and Eating

First, receiving Jesus is the soul’s act of drinking the living water that Jesus is — drinking with sweet soul-satisfaction, drinking with enjoyment. Second, receiving Jesus is the soul’s act of eating the bread of heaven that Jesus is — to the soul’s satisfaction, the soul’s enjoyment. So, believing in Jesus, in a saving way, is like eating the best food and drinking the most satisfying water when you are desperately thirsty.

John 6:35 shows that Jesus is the eternally satisfying bread and water — the two staples of life (in this case, eternal life), food and drink. That’s what we must have. We must eat and drink to live forever. So Jesus says,

I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6:35)

The parallel between coming so as not to hunger and believing so as not to thirst tells us that Jesus saw this believing as a coming to drink and a coming to eat. This is the act of faith — the act of believing.

There is no spatial, or physical, or geographical movement at all in this coming. That’s not what coming means. What is moving is the heart, the soul, the will, the affections — the capacities of the soul to drink and eat and taste and savor and be satisfied.

“Believing is receiving — receiving the manifold treasures that God is for us in Jesus.”

This coming to water is the movement of thirst. And this coming to bread is the movement of hunger. These are soul movements, not body movements. They are the heart actions of desiring, longing, drinking, feeding, embracing, treasuring, tasting, feasting — on Jesus.

And then notice the implication of these two phrases in John 6:35: “shall not hunger” and “shall never thirst”:

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

The words not and never imply that coming to Jesus for soul food and soul drink results in eternal life — not temporary refreshment but eternal life. If your soul finds its thirst and hunger satisfied in Jesus (and all that God is for you in him), you will never thirst, never hunger, never die. “Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever” (John 6:58).

Constant Soul Movement

So, what is believing in the Gospel of John? It is receiving Jesus (John 1:12). And what do we receive him as? We receive him as “living water” and as “bread from heaven.” This Jesus-water and this Jesus-bread are the two staples of eternal life — food and drink that nourish and satisfy forever. If we do not eat this bread and drink this water, we perish. That is what it means to receive him and to believe.

And so it goes throughout the Gospel of John. Believing is receiving — receiving the manifold treasures that God is for us in Jesus.

• It is the motion of God-given thirst putting its lips to the fountain of received water.
• It is the motion of God-given hunger placing its tongue on the richness of received bread.
• It is the motion of the soul’s embrace going out to enclose the received Savior (10:9).
• It is the soul movement of leaning into the light of received glory (3:18–19).
• It is the action of the glad and eager soul, opening the door for the friend (15:15) and helper (14:16) and Lord (13:14) and teacher (3:2) and shepherd (10:14).

So, when I ask, “Why does John never use the noun belief or faith but uses the verb believe 98 times?” my partial answer is this: John loves to foreground believing as the spiritual act of the soul in receiving and coming and drinking and eating and enjoying Christ.

This is not yet the movement of the body in acts of hands-on obedience and love. What is moving in the act of believing is not the body but the affections — soul hunger toward Christ, soul thirst toward Christ. John loves to speak of believing not so much as a condition or a state of the soul but as an act of the soul — a spiritual imbibing, ingesting, embracing, savoring the all-satisfying glories of Christ.

Believing is not even a state of satisfaction in Christ or a state of pleasure in Christ. Rather, John wants to emphasize that we never put down the cup of living water, as though we’d had enough. We never lay aside the loaf of heaven’s bread, as though we were stuffed. Believing doesn’t do that. It never will to all eternity.

“The more deeply I drink from the fullness of Christ, the more deeply I love my brothers and sisters.”

Believing is receiving constantly and coming constantly. Christ is ever giving himself as drink and food for our souls. We are ever putting our lips to the cup and our tongue to the bread. Life in Christ is like a branch in a vine, not like a full cup sitting on a table beside a full pitcher. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit” (John 15:5). Believing is what a branch does in the vine. It drinks. It eats. It never stops. It abides. The sap of Christ is its ever-flowing life. Forever.

There is, no doubt, more to be seen about why John loves the word believe more than the word belief. But this is one reason: He wants you to be saved, to have eternal life. And you do not have eternal life if you are not receiving Jesus as the satisfying water for the thirst of your soul and as the satisfying bread for the hunger of your heart.

Flowing In to Flow Out

Let me close by bending the implications of this understanding of saving faith outward to our cultural moment of conflict and acrimony among Christians, not to mention others. It has a surprising effect.

Jesus said to the woman at the well,

Everyone who drinks of this water [in the well] will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13–14)

Then add to that what Jesus says in John 7:37–38:

If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

In other words, when we turn from the broken cisterns of this world (including the false hopes of politics) and drink from Christ, our hearts not only become deep, tranquil reservoirs of satisfaction in Christ; our hearts also become outflowing rivers of living water. The sweetest experiences of being satisfied with the fullness of Christ are those moments when the rivers of affection carry all obstacles before them in love to our brothers and sisters — indeed, to our enemies.

This happens to me regularly in corporate worship as I am drinking in the glories of Christ. Noël and I are standing in our usual spot in the sanctuary as our leaders take us to the fountain of Christ in truth-saturated, Christ-exalting, worshipful singing. And as I drink from Christ in those songs, waves of affection often break over me — affection for the very people who make me so upset by what they say on social media. Disagreements don’t go away, but the humbling and satisfying water of life and bread of heaven wash away the impurities of pride and anger and petty worldliness. The more deeply I drink from the fullness of Christ — that is, the more deeply I believe and receive him, enjoy him — the more deeply I love my brothers and sisters. Rivers of life-giving water flow out as they flow in.

So, I commend Christ to you as soul-satisfying living water and soul-satisfying bread of heaven — for your enjoyment, for the sake of your eternal life, and in the hope that from your Christ-satisfied heart will flow rivers of living water for the sake of unity in Christ’s body and the reaching of the world.