J. Gwyn-Thomas
7
THE PURITAN DOCTRINE
OF CHRISTIAN JOY
J. Gwyn-Thomas
It may come as a surprise to some to know that the Puritan pastors were great advocates of Christian joy. Contrast the following quotation from Sibbes’s exposition of 2 Corinthians 1:24 with the common conception of a sour-faced, unsmiling, and tight-laced preacher who continually rebuked everything that would lead to joyfulness. Sibbes writes, “The end of the ministry is not to tyrannize over people’s souls, to sting and to vex them, but to minister comfort, to be helpers of their joy; that is to help their salvation and happiness, which is here termed joy, because joy is a principal part of happiness in this world and in the world to come. This is the end, both of the word, and of the dispensation of the word, of the ordinances of salvation, of the sacraments, and all, that our joy may be full; as our blessed Saviour saith, ‘These things have I spoken unto you, that your joy may be full’ (John 15:11).” Or we may quote the godly Richard Baxter:
All Christ’s ways of mercy tend to, and end in the Saints’ joys. He wept, suffered, sorrowed that they might rejoice; He sendeth the Spirit to be their comforter; He multiplieth Promises, he discovers their future happiness, that their joy may be full; He aboundeth to them in mercies of all sorts; He maketh them lie down in green pastures, he leadeth them by the still waters, yea, He openeth to them the Fountain of Living Waters, that their joy may be full.
Let me immediately state that this joy here spoken of is joy in God; the enjoyment of God arising from the soul’s most intimate communication with God.
But, since the Puritans, as watchful pastors, were aware that they were often confronted with persons who were rejoicing without grounds for so doing, it was necessary for them to expose false joy; and in so doing they threw much light upon the nature of true joy. Therefore in this paper I will follow their lead and first seek to deal with counterfeit joy. As in other aspects of Christian experience, so in this, the devil is anxious and ready to deceive and to pervert the unwary soul.
False Joy
So then, being well versed in the subtleties and deceptions of human nature, these same godly men exposed this possibility that joy in a Christian could be carnal and wrongly founded; could be indeed, a merely natural emotion with a false veneer of spirituality. They sharply distinguished carnal human delight from that which had a holy origin. Baxter gave directions against what he calls sinful mirth, and his searching examination clearly separates that joyousness which is rightly founded from that which is not. Mirth is sinful, says Baxter,
1. When men rejoice in that which is evil; as in the hurt of others or men’s sin or in the sufferings of God’s servants, or the afflictions of the church, or the success or prosperity of the enemies of the Church.
2. When it tendeth to the committing of sin, or is managed by sin.
3. When it is unseasonable or in an unmeet subject, e.g. as when an unsanctified miserable soul be taken up in mirth, that is in the power of sin and Satan and near to Hell.
4. When it is a hindrance to our duty.
5. Mirth is most horridly odious when it is blasphemous and profane.
Having thus ensured that the nature of sinful mirth should be clearly understood, Baxter directs as follows:
1. First see that thou be a fit person for mirth, and that thou be not a miserable slave of Satan in an unregenerate, unholy, unjustified state.
2. Yet do not destroy nature by over much heaviness, under pretence that thou hast no right to be merry.
3. (In direction 3 Baxter gives the true method of rejoicing, to which we shall return later.)
4. Mark well the usefulness and tendency of all thy mirth. A Christian that hath acquaintance with himself and with the work of holy watchfulness, may discern what his mirth is, by the tendency and effects, and know whether it doth him good or harm.
5. Take heed that the flesh defile not your mirth.
6. Consider what your mirth is like to prove to others, as well as yourselves.
7. Never leave out Reason and Godliness from any of your mirth. Abhor that mirth that maketh a man a fool, or playeth the fool.
8. Watch your tongues in all your mirth; for they are very apt to take liberty then to sin. Mirth is to the tongue as holidays and playdays to idle scholars; who are glad of them as time in which they think they have liberty to game and fight and do amiss.
Finally directions 9–12 contain warnings against mirth degenerating into levity or profaneness, or becoming immoderate in measure. The cure for this, Baxter suggests, is to remember the presence of God, and that death and judgment are at hand, and that our souls are yet under a great deal of sin, wants, and dangers, and that we have a great deal of serious work to do; to look on Jesus Christ and remember what an example He gave us upon earth; to think on the ordinary way to Heaven described in Scripture, which is through many tribulations, afflictions, fastings; to think of the lives of saints in the past, who went to Heaven through labor, watchings and fastings, and poverty and cruel persecutions, and not through carnal mirth and sport; and finally to think of the many calamitous objects of sorrow that are abroad in the world—the millions of heathen and other enemies or strangers to Christ; the obstinate Jews; the dark corrupted state of the unreformed churches, where religion is woefully obscured and dishonored by ignorance, error, superstition and profaneness; the Papal tyranny and usurpation; and the divided state of all the churches, together with “the profaneness, and persecution, and uncharitablesness, and contentions, and mutual reproaches and revilings which make havock for the Devil among the members of Christ.”
False joy, then, is an irrational and frivolous emotion, unrelated to God and His salvation. By contrast, the road to true joy is to see that we have strong, reasonable, and spiritual grounds for rejoicing, and that such joy be always linked with its Source and Object.
The Reasonableness and Duty of Rejoicing
After this warning of the nature, unprofitableness, and danger of sinful merriment, it is necessary to emphasize that the same pastors who gave such fearful warnings against it, were also equally insistent upon proclaiming the duty of rejoicing from a right foundation. Joy in the Christian was not to them a matter of temperament, nor was it merely optional; joy was the divinely intended expression of a living faith, and so it was a constant duty to “labour to be of such a temper, as that we may glory and rejoice.” Sibbes lays it down thus, “Joy is that frame and state of soul that all who have given their names to Christ either are in, or should labour to be in.” From Christians God requires joy; to rejoice is a debt which they owe Him.
The saintly John Howe in his treatise on The Blessedness of the Righteous affirms as much in these solemn words: “Possess thy soul with the apprehension, that thou art not at liberty in this matter: but that there is a certain spiritual delectation, which is incumbent on thee as indispensable duty.” “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.” In another place Howe exclaims, “It is plain, that it is the common duty of all to delight in God.”
When Sibbes wrote that God requires joy at the hands of Christians as a duty, he also wrote, “And he doth prepare and give them matter enough of joy.” Consider, first, the ills Christians are freed from. They are freed from sin and the wrath of God, from eternal damnation, and from the sting of death. These are the greatest and most terrible ills that there are. Or consider the state that God brings them into by believing. Being in the favor of God, they enjoy the fruits of that favor, “peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” And then for the life to come, they are under “the hope of glory.” “A Christian, which way so-ever he look, hath matter of joy. God the Father is his, Christ is his, the Holy Ghost is his comforter, the angels are his, all are his, life or death, things present or things to come, all are his; 1 Corinth-ians 3:22. Therefore, there is no question of this, that every one that hath given his name to Christ is in a state of joy, if he answer his calling, or he should labour to be in it, he wrongs his condition else.”
Sibbes continues to stress this point, giving reasons why all Christians must labor to be in that state of joy. The first reason is that God, who gives them such matter of joy, may have glory from them. For what should the life of a Christian be, that is freed from the greatest ill, and advanced to the greatest good? His life should be a perpetual thanksgiving to God; and how can a man be thankful that is not joyful? Second, joy makes a man active in good, when he is anointed with the oil of gladness. Third, joy strengthens the Christian to meet suffering. We have many hard things to go through in this world. How shall a man suffer them joyfully, unless he labor to bring himself into this temper of joy? Fourth, a Christian’s joy helps others. Every man should labor to encourage others. We are all fellow-passengers on the way to heaven. Therefore to bring others on more cheerfully, we ought to labor to be in a joyful state. Those who do not rejoice bring an ill report upon the way of God, as if it were a desolate, disconsolate way; just as the spies brought an ill report upon the land of Canaan, whereupon the people were disheartened from entering into it.
If a Christian does not rejoice, continues Sibbes, it is not because he is a Christian, but because he is not Christian enough, because he favors the worse principle in him, or indulges himself in some work of the flesh. God in the covenant of grace is all love and mercy. He would have us in our pilgrimage to heaven to “finish our course with joy.”
It should be noted that in this matter of joy the Puritan pastors were being consistent to their basic principles of preaching. One of the controlling principles of their preaching was “the primacy of the intellect.” Man is a rational being, and God moves man by addressing truth to his mind. As we consider the directions given by such men as Howe, Baxter, and Sibbes, we must observe their emphatic insistence that joy is the only rational state of the Christian in view of the truth about his spiritual condition. For Christians to lack joy is utterly irrational. The state of joy is a reasonable state: it has the best of foundations, for it ultimately rests on the gracious nature and being of God. John Howe devotes a whole treatise to this subject under the title Of Delighting in God.
Joy in God and from God
In turning to this holy exercise of delighting, or rejoicing, in God, we must remind ourselves that the Puritans always sought to be God-centered in their treatment of gospel themes. Let us heed this fact before we examine their directions for the practice of holy joy, for their method requires us first to consider the object of that joy—namely God Himself, whom Howe describes as “The delectable Object.” “God,” he says, “is in Himself, the best and most excellent Being; wherein we behold the concurrence of all perfections; the most amiable and beauteous excellencies.” Baxter also exults in God Himself as he writes:
Rightly understand, what delight in God it is that you must seek and exercise. It is not a mere sensitive delight, which is exercised about the objects of sense, or phantasie, and is common to beasts with men. Nor is it the delights of immediate intuition of God, such as the blessed have in heaven; nor is it an enthusiastic delight, consisting in irrational raptures, and joys which we can give no account of the reason of. Nor is it delight inconsistent with sorrow and fear, when they are duties. But it is the solid rational complacency of the soul in God and holiness, arising from the apprehensions of that in Him, which is justly delectable to us.
Let your minds delight themselves in God considered in himself as the only object of highest delight. . . . Behold him in the infinite perfections of His Being; his Omnipotence, Omniscience, and his Goodness, his Holiness, Eternity and Immutability. And as your eye delighteth in excellent pictures of gardens or fields not because they are yours, but because they are delectable subjects to the eye; so let your minds delight themselves in God, considered in Himself as the only object of highest delight.
Our joy in God may be contemplative when the soul solaces itself in the pleasant meditation of God, or it may be sensitive delight, whereby the soul “tastes” how gracious the Lord is. The young Christian experiences more of the latter than of the former, as in the course of nature human creatures first exercise sense, and by slower and more gradual process, come on to acts of ratiocination afterwards. But in a mature believer contemplative and sensitive delight should go hand in hand.
Howe expounds at length God’s communication of His Being and attributes to man, which is the presupposition of our being able to rejoice in Him whether contemplatively or sensitively. This communication begins with, and thereafter flows from, the new birth.
God is to be enjoyed and delighted in by this delectable communication intervening by which he now frames the soul according to his own image, and gives a heart after his own heart, that is, such as is suitable to him, as he would have it be. And this way only is anyone in a possibility to delight in God, by having a good frame of spirit communicated to him and in-wrought in him. Now is he composed to delight and blessedness, being by the same workmanship created in Christ Jesus both to good works and the best enjoyments.
Here, then, is the foundation for right rejoicing. It is the fruit of the new birth; God has wrought in man the nature which is capable of rejoicing in spiritual things. Not only is God the object of joy, He too is the One Who has made it possible for us to rejoice in Himself. This He has done by His regenerating activity and His gift of the Holy Spirit.
Directions
This is what Howe writes, “partly to direct, partly to excite, unto that delightful pleasant life”:
1. Fill your minds with the essential truths of the Christian faith.
“Endeavour,” says Howe, “to have a mind well instructed in the knowledge of such things as more directly concern the common practice of a religious man, as such. That is, to be thoroughly insighted into practical truths or into that truth which is after godliness.” Howe maintains that such truths “are plain and but few,” and cites as examples “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ,” which two things, he says, comprehend the whole counsel of God. And the summary of our duties is in the Great Commandment of loving God with our whole being and our neighbor as ourselves.
2. “Be principally intent to have your soul become habitually good and holy, by its own settled temper and complexion inclined, and made suitable to the way of righteousness and life.”
The paths of righteousness are agreeable and pleasant only to a restored, sound, and healthy soul; you must be good in order to do good with any enjoyment. “Tis not to be hoped it can be delightful to act against inclination.” Therefore, since heart-rectitude must be had, it must be sought earnestly and without rest. Often ought heaven to be visited with such sighs and longings as that of the psalmist, “O that my ways were directed to keep Thy righteous judgments. Let my heart be sound in Thy statutes, that I be not ashamed” (Psalm 119:80). In other words—seek the new birth, and make it your business to be holy, always and everywhere, until it becomes more natural to you than being unholy!
3. Persevere in holiness and continually mortify all evil desires.
“Your work is not done as soon as you begin to live,” writes Howe, “as care about an infant ceases not as soon as it is born. Let it be therefore your constant business to tend to your inward man; otherwise all things will soon be out of course. God hath coupled delight with the labour of a Christian, not with sloth and neglect of himself. Consider thy soul seriously. Wretched man! who tillest the field, but not thy soul; and lovest to see thy garden neat and flourishing, but lettest thy spirit lie as a neglected thing, and as if it were not thine.” So Baxter says, “O leave your beastly and childish pleasures and come and feast your souls in God. Think not of joying both together.”
4. Be frequent in the actual exercise of gracious principles, and in practicing and doing as they direct.
“Exercise yourself unto godliness. Turn the powers of your soul upon God. Act seasonably the several graces of the Spirit that terminate directly upon him. Let none grow out of use. At some times repentance, at others faith, now your love, then your fear: none of these are placed in you or sanctified in vain. Retire much with God, learn and habituate yourselves into secret converse with Him, contemplate his nature, attributes and works, for your excitation to holy adoration and praise.” As gracious principles are more frequently exercised, they grow more lively and vigorous, and will thence act more strongly and pleasantly. Warning his readers against partiality in keeping the commandments, he concludes, “Pass thus, in your continual practice, through the whole circle of Christian duties and graces, with an equal respect to all God’s commandments; not so partially addicting yourselves to one sort of exercise, as to disuse and neglect the rest; which kind of partiality is that which starves religion and stifles the delight of it.”
There is no short cut, says Howe, to a holy life: to become holy we must live according to God’s commands in all departments of life and in all its relationships, public and private.
5. Understand that the Christian religion is intrinsically a delightful thing.
“Be ye confirmed in the apprehension, that religion is in itself a delightful thing, even universally and in the whole nature of it.”
As this may sound strange doctrine to some, I beg leave to quote Howe more fully. He contends that a double error will be avoided if this direction is obeyed:
1. The first error—that religion is in the whole nature of it such a thing to which delight must be alien and banished from it; as if nothing should belong to, or could consist with it, but sour severities, pensiveness, and sad thoughts.
2. The second error—That if any delight did belong to it at all, it must be found only in peculiar, and extraordinary assurances and persuasions of God’s love; and be the attainment consequently of none but more eminent Christians.
The basis of Howe’s claim, that Christianity is intrinsically delightful, is found in the gracious operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, whereby the Christian possesses a rectified heart. Acts even of self-abasement, self-denial, and self-devoting, proceeding from such a source—how can they but be pleasant? Or as Baxter would say—“Penitent sorrow is only a purge to cast out those corruptions which hinder you from relishing your spiritual delights. Delight in God is the health of your souls.”
6. Apply yourselves to the doing of all the acts of true religion for a higher reason, and with a greater design, than your own delight.
Otherwise, says Howe, you destroy your own work and despoil your acts of their substantial moral goodness, and consequently of their joyfulness also. “That is not a morally good act, which is not referred to God, and done out (at least) of an habitual devotedness to Him, so as He be the supreme end thereof.”
7. Yet disallow not yourself to taste and enjoy the pleasure of well doing; yes, and (secondarily and in due subordination) to design and endeavor that you may do so.
Note, says Howe “with great admiration of the Divine goodness that hath made and settled such a conjunction between the duty of the righteous and their delight; that hath laid such laws upon them, as in the keeping whereof there is such a reward.” Baxter says, “Understand how much these holy delights are pleasing unto God, and how much he is for their pleasure.”
8. And because that disposedness of heart unto such a cause of holy practice, may not be constantly actual, and equally sensible at all times, you must take heed, that as to the distempers and indispositions you now discern in your own spirit, you do neither indulge yourself nor despair; but take the proper road of redress.
Watch against sin, pray, and hope in God till joy and spiritual vigor arise in you once more. I shall conclude these directions with Howe’s eloquent plea for diligence and thoughtfulness:
You must expect to be dealt with as a sort of creature capable of understanding your own concernments; not to be hewed and hammered as senseless stones that are ignorant of the artists’ intent, but as living stones to be polished and fitted to the spiritual building, by a hand that reasonably expects your own compliance and co-operation to its known design. Therefore if ever you would know what a life of spiritual delight means, you must constantly strive against all your spiritual distempers that obstruct it, in the power of the Holy Ghost.
One might briefly summarize these directions in these words—know the plan of salvation; make sanctification your life work despite the opposition and wiles of the old nature; and constantly practice good works in all your ways and stations in life, remembering that your new nature is tuned to delight by the Hand of the Master, to whom you must live, and realizing that He delights in your delight and to this end has sent His Spirit to enable you to live joyfully to His glory.
The Danger and Sin of Failing to Rejoice
As we have heard the Puritans urging us to joy in God, we may have already worked out our reasons or excuses for lacking this joy. We may have pleaded to our self-justification, our temperament, extenuating circumstances, the cares of office, or even the state of mankind both politically and religiously. Yet I venture to suggest that before you acquiesce in your joyless condition any more, you should pay heed to what our Puritan mentors would say of the sin of failing to delight in God and the implications of failure so to do. Bear with me in this summary of Baxter’s words to the joyless man:
1. Thou vilifiest and dishonourest him, if thou judge Him not the worthiest for Thy delight.
2. If thou delight not in him, thy thoughts of God will be seldom or unwelcome and unpleasant thoughts.
3. Thy speech of Him will be seldom. The worldling thinks and talketh of his wealth and business; the proud man in his dignities and honour; the voluptuous beast in his lusts and sports and meats and drinks, because they most delight in these. And so must the Christian think and talk of his God . . . as being his delight.
4. Lack of joy will keep you away from holy duties, in which you should have communion with God.
5. It will corrupt your judgments, and draw you to think that a little is enough. A man that hath no delight in God and godliness is easily drawn to think that little and seldom and cold and formal and heartless, lifeless preaching and praying may serve the turn; and any lip service is acceptable to God. And hence he will be further drawn to reproach those that go beyond him, to quiet his own conscience.
6. If you delight not . . . you will do that which you do without a heart, with backwardness and weariness.
7. Lack of joy makes men apt to quarrel with the word, and every weakness in the minister offendeth them, as sick stomacks that have some fault or other still to find with their meat.
8. It greatly inclineth men to carnal and forbidden pleasures, because they taste not the higher and more excellent meats.
9. The want of delight in God and holiness, doth leave the soul a prey to sorrows, every affliction that assaulteth it may do its worst, and hath its full blow at the naked and unfortified heart.
10. The want of a 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, when all other delights must be forsaken for it.
In considering the effects upon the soul of the lack of joy, let us remember that the Puritans taught that joy and sorrow, delights and afflictions were not contrary conditions but complementary. Indeed Baxter urges that we should use afflictions as a great advantage “for your purest and unmixed delight in God.” “When all friends have forsaken us save only one, that one is sweeter to us than ever.” We cannot be excused from joyfulness while our God reigns and is “the same, yesterday, today and forever”!
Joy and the Word and Ministry
Again, spiritual responsibilities should not take away our joyfulness, else we misconceive our office. Ministers are to be “helpers of our joy,” for they constantly utter and propound matter and grounds of joy from the Word of God. To the objection that ministers make God’s people to sorrow and often vex and trouble them, the saintly Sibbes replies, “Indeed, carnal men think so and they cannot brook the sight of them as men opposite to their delights and carnal course. Those who judge ministers so are not true believers, for they (i.e. true believers) account ministers as helpers of their joy.” He analyzes how ministers help forward the joy of God’s people as follows:
1. “By acquainting people with the ill estate they are in. For all sound comfort comes from the knowledge of our grief and freedom from it. They must plough before they sow, and the law must go before the Gospel.”
2. By showing the remedy for sin, which is in Jesus Christ. “Joy comes from reconciliation with God in Christ, joy comes from peace. Now ministers are messengers of reconciliation and messengers of peace, and messengers of joy.”
3. By advising in cases of conscience what people should do.
4. By forcing joy as a duty upon them.
5. In death itself, ministers help God’s people in a joyful departure hence, to give them a good and comfortable departure out of this world, drawing comfort out of the Word for this purpose.
Here is Sibbes’s answer to the complaint that faithful preaching makes against joy by arousing pangs of conscience:
A physician comes, and he gives sharp and bitter purges; saith the patient, I had thought you had come to make me better, and I am sicker now than I was before. But he bids him be content, all this is for your health and strength and for your joyfulness of spirit after, you will be the better for it. So in confidence of that, he drinks down many a bitter portion. So it is in those who sit under the ministry of the word of God, though it be sharp and severe, and cross their corruptions, yet it is medicinal physic for their souls, and all will lend to the health of the soul, in joy afterwards.
Others will object that the Word of God is for doctrine—“to teach and instruct”—and not particularly for joy. No Puritan would contend against the value of the Word of God for all teaching and exhortation and all reproof—but they would add, surely, that all these tend to comfort. “Doctrine,” says Sibbes, “is for comfort; for what is comfort but a strengthening of the affections from some sound grounds of doctrine imprinted upon the understanding, whereof it is convinced before?” Comfort is but doctrine applied to a particular comfortable use. “It is a kind of joy to the soul to have it stablished in sound doctrine, that is the ground of comfort. So that notwithstanding anything that can be objected, the end of the word of God, especially in the dispensation of it, is to joy and comfort.”
Not that the minister has it in his own power to give joy; only the Holy Spirit can do that. The minister is only the helper, not the author, of joy. Sibbes writes, “The Spirit of God can only comfort, because he knows all the discomforts of our hearts, he knows all our griefs, all the corners of our hearts, that the minister cannot do. The Spirit strikes the nail and seals the comfort to the soul: we are but helpers.” Therefore we must beware lest we exalt any means of grace—whether the ministry, reading, or any outward task or person—above the Spirit, and look to it for comfort rather than to Him.
Joy and the Troubled Conscience
The Puritans held that the testimony of a good conscience is a ground of both comfort and joy. Heaven is begun in a good conscience, they said, even as hell is begun in an evil conscience. Sibbes puts it in this way: “Now when the conscience witnesseth aright, it witnesseth with God, and God is always clothed with joy.”
However, these pastors often had to deal with Christians who were inclined to over-introspection and who lived exact lives, yet were troubled in conscience. They had to face the problem—why was this? and how can this condition be put right?
First, what is conscience? Sibbes says, “Conscience is in fact a court set up in man by God”: for conscience acts as a registrar of our actions, a witness to our conduct, an accuser of our faults, a judge, passing sentence, and an executioner.
There is, however, a way to a good conscience: namely to follow the directions given earlier in this paper, which should lead to a state of joy. But if a good conscience still does not breed joy, this, says Sibbes, is because of (1) the imperfection of our state in this world. It is possible for our conscience to be misled by faulty reasoning or ignorance. Or (2) conscience may look to feelings and not to faith. In such a case the reason is “distempered by melancholy and reasons falsely.” Or (3) conscience may be looking only at that which is still left of the old nature. Sibbes graphically corrects this by saying that God’s children should have two eyes, one to look on that which is good, that God may have glory and they comfort, “instead of the eye fixed wholly on the remainders of their rebellious lusts.” Or (4) conscience may fail to enjoy comfort because the sinner is slow to accept the full truth of his inward corruptions and to rest only on the work of Christ. On this, “God will bring us to comfort,” says Sibbes, “but it must be by the sense of our own unworthiness. He will forgive our sins, but it must be by the sight and sense of our sins. He will bring us to life but it must be by death. He will bring us to glory but it must be by shame. God works by contraries; therefore in contraries believe contraries.”
So if we would have joy in the testimony of conscience, we must not deprive ourselves of joy because we are not perfect in grace; “but rejoice that God hath wrought any measure of grace in such unclean and polluted hearts as ours are. For the least measure of grace is a pledge of perfection in the world to come.”
We shall, however, infallibly forfeit true joy if we indulge ourselves in any sin. Knowing how readily we all grasp at excuses for sin, I close this section with a quotation from Manton:
Sin taketh away joy and peace: the whole strength of men and angels, cannot make the conscience of a sinner to rejoice. Yes, the children of God must take heed, that they do not violate peace of conscience by allowing the least sin; you are to walk so that you may be in a condition capable of joy; none walk sweetly, but they that walk strictly . . . Acts 9:31, “They walked in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost,” and that is a sweet couple.
Joy and Faith
Without faith joy cannot be maintained. Thomas Manton in his exposition of John 17:13 commenting on the words of our Lord “that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves,” writes 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 ariseth from the presence of some good, either in actual possession, or in firm expectation. It is the nature of faith to make things absent, present, it giveth being to hope, it sets up a stage in the heart of a believer, where God is represented acting whatever he hath promised.
Baxter echoes these thoughts in his tenth direction on how to delight ourselves in God. He writes:
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 unto Him, which must help you to the delight which believers find in their communion with him.
Manton exquisitely summarizes the means by which joy is maintained through the divinely appointed graces and ordinances. Faith he says, giveth the title, hope the sight, obedience the evidence. The Word is the fuel for faith and hope. Prayer brings us nearer to Him, thus nearer to the Fountain of Joys. . . . The sacraments lead us into sweeter experiences—“it is as when a man hath a good lease confirmed to him. It is not the bread and the wine which rejoiceth the heart, but the renewing of the Covenant.” Lastly, meditation refreshes the soul and feeds joy. “Hereby we have a Pisgah-sight, it giveth us a foretaste of heaven, and filleth our souls with joy and blessedness.”
Joy and Service
We have already seen that joy in God ought to make the believer a more willing and more active servant. In fact, however, almost the only thing that we have heard about joy in our generation is of the joy of winning souls. I trust that the difference in emphasis between this and the Puritan teaching has already been noticed! I thought it would be profitable to outline a sermon of Baxter’s called “Right Rejoicing.” His text, be it noted, was Luke 10:20: “Not withstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”
Baxter opens by showing that the disciples had “abundant matter for rational, warrantable joy. . . . For the subjection of the devil was a gift of Christ, foretold by the prophets, it was victory over the strongest enemy, over the most subtle enemy, the most malicious enemy. It was an honour to be instruments and to be partakers in the success of the Gospel.” Where, then, was their fault?
1. They looked too much at the matter of dominion over the subjected and ejected devils, and relished most delightfully in the external part. But the great end of these miracles they too much overlooked; they left out of their rejoicings the appearances of God, the advantages of faith, the promotion of the spiritual Kingdom of Christ, and the greater mercies of the Gospel as to themselves and others.
2. They took too great a share of the honour to themselves, being more affected to see what great things they were made the instruments to accomplish, than what honor did thereby accrue to God and benefit to man.
Thus, our Lord was here curing what Baxter terms their “diseased joys,” “lest Satan should take advantage of their carnality.” Hence we learn what joy is allowed and commanded to those who serve. It is joy in the greater mercies of God which should call forth our greatest joy. Our interest in heaven is a greater mercy than any service here on earth. Our joy must be in reference to His honor—for this greatest honor arises from His greatest mercies and thus He called on the disciples to look upon the greatest of His gifts. Moreover, as Baxter puts it, “As to the degree of their rejoicing, he would not have them give the greater share to the lesser mercies but to rejoice so much more in their heavenly interest.” “He alloweth them no joy in this or any temporal or created thing whatever, but as it proceedeth from God, and tendeth to him as our ultimate end. We must not rejoice in our victories over Satan, or any other enemy for itself, and as our end, but as it is a means to the glory of God and men’s salvation.”
The error of our well-intentioned teachers was not that it is wrong to rejoice with the angels over one sinner that repenteth but that our greatest joy should be in Him who made it possible—the Father who sent the Son, the Son who saves, the Spirit who works, and the Kingdom which is being extended to the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And even the joy of service should be drowned in the greater joy of the eternal inheritance that is ours in and through Christ.
Joy and Heaven
All Puritan teachers exhort their congregations to contemplate heaven and its unspeakable joys in the strongest terms possible. I will conclude with a few extracts from Baxter on this. First, the latter part of Right Rejoicing:
1. What should be rejoiced in, if not the Lord of life Himself who is the everlasting joy and glory of the Saints? . . . Other things may be the means and conveyance, but God is the matter of our joy. . . . What is heaven but the fruition of God?
2. It is congruous that we now rejoice in that which we must everlastingly rejoice in. Heaven is the state of everlasting joy, and therefore the foresight of it by faith is the only way to rational, solid comfort here.
If heaven be the matter of your joy, you may go on in your rejoicing and everyday may be your festival. For God is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. You only have the Day that hath no night and the feast that hath no end, or intermission, unless it is caused by your errors and misapprehensions. If once you have a God, a Christ, a heaven to rejoice in, you may rationally indulge in constant joy and may rationally rejoice in poverty, reproach, contempt and calumny, in imprisonment, banishment, sickness, or in death as well as in a prosperous state: and you transgress the Laws of Reason if you do not.
3. Rejoice if your names are written in heaven: for this is a divine, a pure, a profitable, and a warrantable joy. . . . Here is joy that you need not be ashamed of: of which you can scarcely take too much: of which you need not to repent. The more you are thus joyful, the more acceptable to God. . . .
O that our souls and our assemblies did more abound with this holy joy! And O that Christians understood the excellency and the usefulness of it, and would set themselves more constantly to the promoting and the maintaining of it in themselves! Whoever of you is most joyful in the Lord, I dare persuade you to be more joyful yet: and so far should you be from checking yourselves from this Holy Joy, that the rest of your duties should intend it, and you should make it your work by the help of all God’s ordinances and mercies to increase it.
And lastly, from The Saints’ Everlasting Rest:
The Christian knows by experience now, that his most immediate joys are his sweetest joys: those that have least of man, and are most directly from the Spirit. That’s one reason, as I conceive, why Christians who are much in secret prayer and in meditation and contemplation (rather than they who are more in hearing, reading and conference) are men of greatest life and joy: because they are nearer to the well-head, and have all the more immediately from God Himself. There is joy in these remote receivings; but the fulness is in his presence.
Compare the joys which thou shalt have above with the foretastes of it, which the Spirit hath given thee here. Judge of the lion by the paw, and of the ocean of joy by that drop which thou hast tasted. Alas, all this light that so amazeth and rejoiceth me, is but a candle lighted from heaven, to lead me thither through this world of darkness! If the light of a star in the night be such, or the little glimmering at the break of day; what then is the light of the sun at noonday. If some godly men that we read of, have been overwhelmed with joy till they have cried out, Hold, Lord, stay Thy hand. I can bear no more! Like weak eyes that cannot endure a great light, O what will then be my joys in Heaven, when as the object of my joy shall be the most glorious God, so my soul shall be made capable of seeing and enjoying him. And tho’ the light be ten thousand times greater than the Sun’s yet my eyes shall be able for ever to behold it.
I close with the answer to the first question in the Westminster Larger Catechism—“Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God and fully to enjoy him for ever.”