Theological Journal – February 27 What’s Joy Got To Do With It? (5)

Welcome to Lent 2020! I hope you have a “joyous” (in the sense we will exploring it from here on out) Lent!


So, according to James, as a church struggles to be faithful to Jesus, their faithfulness will evoke opposition and rejection. To make it through we must set our minds and hearts that we are suffering for Christ in spite of it all and we will hang in there in the struggle. In this endurance we will find joy, the sure mark of God’s presence with us, and God’s work in us will continue moving us to good end he has designed for us.

In the Bible three types of joy texts can be found:

-J1: joy because certain events or occasions evoke it (here we find texts in which joy, gladness, mirth and the like are the expected or natural human responses to a variety of occasions, such as festivals, worship, or other occasions associated with the temple activities (Num 10:10; 2 Sam 6:12; 1 Chr 15:16; Ezra 3:12-13; Eccl 10:19), the naming of a king (1 Kgs 1:40), weddings (Jer 25:10), wine (Judg 9:13; Ps 104:15; Eccl 10:19), a good word (Prov 12:25), wise offspring (Prov 15:20), or seeing a friend or relative (Exod  4:14).).

-J2: joy because things causing sorrow, distress, grief, or other forms of unpleasantness are or will be removed (In a number of biblical texts, joy and rejoicing are contrasted with sorrow, grieving, mourning, and the like, including the Psalms, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (MT Ps. 30:6; MT: rinnâ (“ringing cry, jubilation,” LXX agalliasis).  Later in the same Psalm, we read, “You have turned my mourning into dancing, and clothed me with joy” (MT Ps. 30:12, śimḥâ; LXX 29:12, euphrosynēn). Weeping and mourning are replaced with dancing and joy; they are not experienced simultaneously. In Psalm 51, the penitent sinner prays, “Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice” (51:8; śāśôn wĕśimḥâ;;'; agalliasin kai euphrosynēn).

-J3: joy notwithstanding and amid difficulty, oppression, distress, defeat, death. This kind of joy is not a feeling as much as a disposition or affection (as Jonathan Edwards might call it; see below). “The letter to the Philippians may be the Pauline epistle in which joy plays its most prominent role (1:4, 18, 25; 2:2, 17, 18, 28, 29; 3:1; 4:1, 4, 10).  Although penned while he was imprisoned and uncertain about the outcome of his imprisonment and whether he would live or die, Paul here writes that even if he is “being poured out as a libation,” he remains glad and rejoices, and calls on the Philippians also to rejoice with him (2:17-18). Paul also exhorts them, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice” (4:4; cf. 3:1; 4:10). In the context of the letter, this exhortation is preceded by the famous “Christ-hymn” (2:5-11), in which Paul recounts the path of Jesus: he who was in the form of God emptied himself; humbled himself; and was obedient even unto death; it is this one whom God has exalted and honored. It is this Jesus whom Paul yearns to know, both to share in his sufferings even unto death and to experience the power of resurrection from the dead (3:10-11; Col. 1:24). To share in suffering is to share the very life of Christ. Elsewhere Paul also plots the course and significance of his own life along that of Jesus’ life, the one to whom he is joined in dying and rising, in life and in death (Rom. 6:3-11; 14:7-9; 2 Cor. 4:9-10). 

“Paul’s joy, then, is a joy notwithstanding the circumstances of his imprisonment and affliction, because he has faith that he is sharing in the sufferings of his Lord and hope that he will share in Christ’s resurrection. Even as Paul’s identity is now reconfigured by and through the one who loved him and gave himself for him (Gal. 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25), so Paul’s joy is occasioned by his participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus. His conviction that he is joined to Christ in his suffering, and the hope that he will be joined to Christ in his resurrection, converge to give him joy in his present dismal circumstances” (Marianne Meye Thompson, “Reflections on Joy in the Bible” at https://faith.yale.edu/sites/default/files/thompson_joy_in_the_bible.pdf, 10). So grounded on the conviction that difficult, threatening circumstances do not prove that God is absent this kind of joy gives one a “deeply grounded sense of well-being in the present world, even when things in the present world do not seem to be going especially well” (3).

This joy notwithstanding is the kind I am interested in here. We might say that J1 and J2 are forms of joy we live toward while J3 we live from. And the latter is what I want to get a better handle on. It is easy to rejoice in good time or at pleasant events. Less easy, perhaps, to persevere through difficult times in hope and anticipation of the joy to come when God acts to save or rescue us. Almost impossible, it seems to me, as I have indicated several times already, to experience joy while in the midst of difficulties which remove all reason for it.


It is also this last form of joy (J3), I believe, that offers the most profound witness to the Bible’s God and which is notably missing from many churches in the West today.  


So tomorrow I will try to dive a little deeper into the nature, conditions, and blocks of such joy.