Joy is Our Duty

A strong emphasis on joy being a duty as well as a privilege is charateristic of Puritan teaching.  They all affirmed that joy is an essential part of God’s kingdom, not just icing on the cake.  A Christian life that does not manifest joy is not a true representation of God’s nature.  Romans 14:17 tells us that the kingdom of God is not a matter of observing religious rituals, but is experienced in the righteousness and peace and joy of the Holy Spirit.  Romans 15:13 fills out this picture of what is essential in Christianity: “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  We see throughout John 14 that Jesus, when He was about to leave His disciples and return to the Father, took great pains to assure them that He had made provision for their joy.  He promised that the Holy Spirit would come to them specifically as the Comforter.  Christ was so solicitous about this because He knew the essential part joy plays in the life of the individual believer.  Nehemiah 8:10 shows how indispensable it is in the spiritual life: “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”  Thomas Manton brilliantly explains the superiority of Christian joy over that of the world: “Certainly joy revives us in well-doing, it renders the functions of body and mind free and vigorous, that we may walk with alacrity and good conscience.  The joy that we impress upon you is not a wantonness by which we cast away care and labor, and give ourselves up to ease and lusts, as those do that make their life nothing but recreation; but such a joy that makes us go about our duties and callings with encouragement.”  True happiness is not found in going on vacation.  Christians experience sweet refreshment when they delight to go about the business God has given them.   

Faith and Joy

Puritan teaching emphasized that without faith joy cannot be maintained.  Thomas Manton carefully analyzed their connection, and wrote of faith:  “It is a help to joy, it represents the excellency, truth and reality of spiritual things.  That which we rejoice in, must be good, true, present.  All joy arises from the presence of some good, either in actual possession, or in firm expectation.  It is the nature of faith to make things that are absent, present to us, it gives being to hope.”  Richard Baxter echoed these thoughts: “”It is only a life of faith that will be a life of holy, heavenly joy.  Exercise yourselves therefore in believing contemplations of things unseen.  It must not be now and then a glance of the eye of the soul towards God, but a walking with Him, and frequent addresses of the soul to Him, which must help you to the delight which believers find in their communion with Him.”  All of the Puritan teachers exhorted their congregations to regularly contemplate the unspeakable joys of heaven.  Do this and everyday for the Christian will be a festival of rejoicing.  Baxter wrote: “God  is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.  If once you have a God, a Christ, a heaven to rejoice in, you may rationally indulge in constant joy.”  And whether you are in poverty or prosperity doesn’t matter.

The Duty of Joy—2

God has given us hearts that are capable of enjoying Him.  He has given us sufficient knowledge of Himself in the Bible to make Him the object of our highest delight.  The Lord has united the labor of a Christian in seeking Him with delight, so that believers obeying God’s commandments becomes the believer’s greatest joy.  Richard Baxter, one of the most eminent Puritan authors, wrote: “Delight in God is the health of your souls.”  John Howe wrote that Christians should greatly admire the wisdom of God in making a connection between the duties of the righteous and their happiness; that He has given us laws in the keeping of which there is great reward.  Joy is so fundamentally important as an evidence of godliness that the Christian who does not consistently manifest happiness is in a dangerous condition.  Baxter held that people dishonor God if they do not consider Him the most worthy object of their delight.  He further affirmed that, “The want (lack) of delight in God and holiness is the way to apostasy itself.  Few men will hold on in a way that they have no delight in.”  He warned that if we do not “taste that the Lord is good,” our hearts will easily be drawn away to forbidden pleasures. 

The Duty of Joy

To the Puritans, joy in the Christian was not just a matter of personality, neither was it optional.  John Howe, affirming that God requires joy of all believers, wrote: “Settle this persuasion in your hearts, that the serious, rational, regular, seasonable exercise of delight and joy is a matter of duty, to be charged upon conscience, from the authority of God, and is an integral part in the religion of Christians.”  Another stellar Puritan, Richard Sibbes, agreed with that, stating: “Joy is that frame and state of the soul that all who have given their names to Christ either are in, or should labor to be in.”  We are not only required by God to have joy, but in salvation we have abundant reasons for joy, regardless of our outward circumstances.  Consider, Christians have been freed from the most terrible condition possible—being subject to the just wrath of God.  Knowing they have been set free from the greatest harm and that they now possess the greatest good, how can joy not be an eminent characteristic of the lives of Christians?  For such blessed ones, to lack joy is utterly irrational.  The Puritans emphatically insisted that that joy is the only rational response believers can make to these things.  More tomorrow.

Puritan Joy

At the top of my list of favorite Christian authors are the great Puritan teachers of the 17th century.  When most people today hear the word “Puritan” they think of Nathanial Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter and the infamous Salem witch trials.  No other group of people have been so castigated by history as the Puritans.  They are presented as the most sour and stern group of conscience-ridden, fun-haters you could possibly find.  Why?  Probably because they were profoundly God-centered Christians. Jesus Himself said “If they hated Me, they will hate you.”  The Puritans were Christ-exalting.  The irony is that they were also the most joyful, happy people you could ever hope to meet.  I have found in their magnificent writings a consistent emphasis on the happiness of the Christian life.  More than any others, I think the Puritans accurately reflect the biblical teaching concerning joy.  They present happiness not only as the privilege but also as the duty of all Christians.  I will explore this a little more tomorrow.

Christian Joy

1 Peter 1:8 is a magnificent statement that one effect of faith in Christ and love for Him is that “you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.”  While the overall thrust of this verse is clear enough, getting a practical handle on it is more elusive, at least it has been for me.  Thomas Manton’s thoughts on this passage have been very helpful to me, the gist of which follows.  He said that this is a joy that can better be felt than explained.  No one can know the strength and sweetness of this glorious joy until it is experienced.  Those who do not believe cannot conceive of such a profound and holy joy.  One drop of this is more than an ocean of worldly pleasure.  Jonathan Edwards penned a famous description of the joyful raptures of his wife Sarah.  Once you have enjoyed something of this godly joy in your soul, no power on earth can turn you away from Christ.  Generations of martyrs stand as a shining monument to the power of rejoicing in Christ.  Those who believe in and love Christ will taste this joy, even in the midst of life’s trials (1 Peter 1:6), and such glorious experiences are unshakable evidence of salvation.  

All Joy

“Count (or “consider”, or “reckon”) it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).  “Count it”, that is, even though your natural senses will not find trials to be joyful, your spiritual judgment must regard them as such.  Trials do not just happen by chance.  We must consider them as under the sovereign hand of God.  Without this, we have no foundation to view trials as designed by a loving God for good purposes.  We will experience trials as either bitter or sweet depending on how we judge them.  The remarkable command to “count it all joy” may seem to be impossible.  Are not joy and sorrow spontaneous feelings that cannot be controlled?  I think this accounts for the language used in this verse.  We are commanded to carefully consider these things, and on the basis of Scripture to come to a reasonable conclusion.  The Bible gives Christians sound reasons for responding to life’s hardships with joy.  James 1:5 tells us that if we lack the wisdom needed to manage adversity with joy, we are to ask God.  Carefully consider these things.  You will find great blessing in doing so.

A Powerful Joy

Thomas Manton wrote some very thoughtful remarks on the joy Christians experience in this life, especially in affliction.  With profound insight, he compared the comfort and encouragement God gives with what the world offers.  The joy of the world is only temporary, and often ends in sorrow.  Getting drunk results in a hangover, if not something more deadly.  But the joys of the Christian “end well,” as Manton put it.  The enjoyments of the world enslave those who use them.  There is no lasting satisfaction in them and often much hurt and danger.  In contrast, the delights of God are pure and have great power to uplift us in the midst of adversity.