Theological Journal – February 28 What’s Joy Got To Do With It? (6)

The perhaps surprising dominant note in the New Testament is joy. All three kinds of Joy we looked at yesterday are present in it. N. T. Wright offers helpful insight into this matter in his article “Joy: Some New Testament Perspectives and Questions” (http://faith.yale.edu/sites/default/files/wright.pdf). He briefly examines the Old Testament and concludes regarding the reasons and character of joy, “The reasons include a mighty act of God to bring about victory over evil and the rescue of God’s people from its grip. The character of joy includes the vigorous and vibrant celebration of the goodness of the created order, expressed through the activities which signal and symbolize human well-being – eating, drinking, the joy of marriage, music and dancing” (2).

Israel’s return from exile in Babylon is a threshold moment. The Lord has brought the people back to the land, to be sure. But something was missing. The great promises of Isa.40-55 and Ez.36-45 had not been fulfilled. In particular, God’s presence in the temple, the Shekinah, was missing. Indeed, when later Rabbis talked about the demerits of the return it was the absence of the Shekinah to which they pointed.

Joy was still present on the festivals and celebrations Israel had always observed and those added later (Hannukah, as a result of the mid-2^nd century b.c. Maccabean victory over the Seleucids). The disparity between promise and reality lead to a future orientation anticipating the full fulfilment of these promises and the predominance of hope over joy. This was the situation into which Jesus was born.

After Jesus and with the early church joy took the lead role, as we already noted. Wright analyses the three parables in Lk.15 and notes,

“The emphasis throughout the chapter is on the appropriateness of celebration, of ‘joy’, as a result of what has happened and is happening in the welcome of (repentant) ‘sinners’ – in other words, as a result of what is happening in the public career of Jesus. And, by implication, as a result of what will happen at its conclusion: ‘this my son’, and then ‘this your brother’, ‘was dead and is alive again’ (15.24, 32). The public career of Jesus, characterized by (among other things) his celebrations with ‘sinners’, will reach its appropriate climax in his death and resurrection, and the whole thing together explains why celebration, ‘joy’ – in the form of feasting, music and dancing (15.25) – is not only appropriate in itself but constitutes a sharing of the joy of heaven, that is, of God himself. This is a moment when heaven and earth come together, as in the Temple. And this theological dimension is matched by the eschatological: the story of the son who is lost and found, dead and alive again, reflects the dominant Jewish story of the period, that of shameful exile and rapturous return. It is the story Jesus’ contemporaries were eager to experience in full at last. It is the story which, in one way and another, Jesus was telling and enacting wherever he went” (5).

At last, in the ministry of Jesus, the long-hoped for fulfilment of the promises of the return from exile were coming to pass. The joy of the return was over the return of the presence, the Shekinah, to Israel in the presence of Jesus as the new temple of Israel. 


Wright looks in particular at the gospel of John and Paul’s letter to the Philippians. And here we find J3 featured extensively.


-amid abundant warnings of a hostile and inhospitable reception among the Jews Jesus also speaks to his disciples of both his own and their joy in his Farewell Discourse in John (14.28; 15.11; 16.20-24; 17.13). All this in a gospel that revolves around the presence of God in Jesus as a new tabernacle (1:14) and temple (2:19) from which living water will flow (7:37-39; Ezekiel’s prophecy). The joy amid persecution and opposition is grounded in God’s new act of rescue and his presence on earth as a new temple – New Exodus and New Creation writ large! Here joy outpaces hope since the realization of God’s great promises has arrived.


-Philippians is “both an expression of joy and an invitation to joy” (7). Neither Paul nor the Philippians are “sitting in the catbird seat,” though. The former is in prison and the latter under duress for the sake of the gospel. Nevertheless, or “notwithstanding,” 

-Paul prays with joy (1.4)

-He rejoices in his present imprisonment (1.18)

-He longs for their progress and joy in the faith (1.25)

-Their loving unity will make his joy complete (2.2)

-He rejoices with them and wants them to rejoice with him (2.17, 18)

-The return of Epaphroditus will bring them joy, so they must receive him with joy (2.28, 29)

-The central command of the second half of the letter is simply that they should rejoice (3.1; 4.4)

-the second of these passages, uniquely in Paul, involves a repetition (‘I say it again: “rejoice!”’)

-The Philippians themselves are his ‘joy and crown’ (4.1; see also 1 Thess.2:19-20)

-Paul himself is rejoicing that they have been able to send him practical help (4.10).

Both author and recipients appear to be practicing J3 joy! Why?

The achieved sovereign lordship of Jesus, that’s why.

“The central poem about Jesus in Philippians 2.6-11, now widely recognised to be the theological heart of the letter, has many biblical and theological resonances, but at its centre it is a celebration of the radically different kind of lordship attained, and now exercised, by Jesus. It picks up the larger themes of Isaiah 40—55, in which Israel’s God triumphs over the pagan gods and lords of Babylon and reveals his royal presence in the strangest of ways, through the work of the ‘servant’ (Isaiah 52.7-12 with 52.13—53.12; Isaiah 45.23 is quoted explicitly at Philippians 2.10). The joy which suffuses the whole central section of Isaiah is based on this victorious divine sovereignty, revealed in this way, and Paul encapsulates the same quality through his reworking of these themes with Jesus at their heart” (7).

And all this in contrast to and in the face of the supposed lordship of another sovereign, the emperor himself. Philippi was a Roman colony with accoutrements of and propaganda for the empire everywhere. Thus the gospel places the church there head-to-head against mighty Caesar. A crucified criminal against the regal master of the world’s greatest power!

The joy Paul and the Philippians have, then, is a highly political one. They act on the basis of the resurrected and enthroned Lord Jesus in whose work new creation has dawned and a new perspective from which believers are to operate. The enthronement of Jesus and his sovereign rule over all creation is the reason for their joy.

“In terms of theology and ethics, the virtue of ‘joy’ is inculcated and practised by the celebration of Jesus as the world’s true Lord, who has revealed the true manner of ‘lordship’ in his shameful death, and has thus revealed also the way in which that lordship is presently exercised (i.e. through the humble, mourning, peace-making, justice seeking character sketched in the Beatitudes)” (9)

The source for this joy is the shared commitment of the community to live together according to the posture and practice of their Lord (2:6-11). How else could they witness to their “citizenship in heaven” (3:20) except by their presence and practice in the public life of Philippi as witness and even protest against the false claims to lordship of the empire.

This we arrive at a first stage of a conclusion to the question that spawned this series of posts. We can maintain joy even under conditions of persecution, privation, and even threat of martyrdom because we know, have internalized, and are embedded in a community of similarly-minded and committed believers. This joy is not the exuberant and emotional pleasure of J1 joy. Nor is it the celebrative emotion of a deliverance effected (J2 joy). It is a sober, tough, sometimes teeth-gritted perseverance and contented willingness to stand up under the pressure of a false lord for the sake of the world’s true Lord. And it yields a response in and among us that can only be called joy.

More to come on joy in future posts in this series.