Joy to the World

Christians have done some astonishing things through the centuries. But have they done anything more astonishing than to take the cheerful and exhilarating thing that New Testament Christianity is and make it into the solemn and joyless and weary routine that so often passes for Christianity these days? We have succeeded in something nearly impossible: we have made Christianity dull.

Of course, we pay lip service to its joyfulness. There is too much in the New Testament about joy for us to do anything else. We sometimes even sing hymns with words like,

Floods of joy o’er my soul

Like the sea billows roll

Since Jesus came into my heart.

But when it comes to living out the faith, there is precious little of the joy to be seen.

Take worship. We begin by clothing ourselves in something uncomfortable. Then we sit in uncomfortable pews and get ourselves into a decently uncomfortable frame of mind. Only then are we ready to worship. We sing hymns in the tempo of a dirge. We take the service with the utmost seriousness and regard it as quite wrong to laugh at any point. We listen to a sermon (the very word has a solemn ring) in which we are exhorted to some Christian duty. Churchgoing has become a duty, not a joy.

There is an element of caricature in this. But churchgoers will recognize that there is also an unpleasant amount of truth. Joy is not a quality anyone spontaneously associates with being Christian. C. S. Lewis entitled his autobiography Surprised by Joy, and he was right. To most it comes as quite a surprise to find joy anywhere in Christianity.

Where did we get all this? Not from Jesus. The Gospels give the impression that he was the most welcome dinner guest in Capernaum. He was sought out by all sorts of people, which never happens to the joyless.

And Jesus, alone I think among the great religious teachers of the world, attracted little children. Do you remember the time when he wanted to teach a lesson about humility? Luke tells us simply that “he took a child” (Luke 9:47). He did not have to send for one. There was one there. When he wanted to teach a lesson about tax money, they had to go and get a coin (Matt. 22:19); the master did not have one. But when he wanted a child there was one there. I think there were often children where our Lord was. He certainly knew about their games and could incorporate lessons from them into his teaching. He could take them into his arms and bless them (Mark 16:16).

Now, children do not gather round gloomy and unhappy people. Their elders may do this out of politeness. Not children. That they were found with Jesus is evidence that he was a cheerful person, one that the kids liked.

Sometimes a note of humor sounds in his teaching. Take, for example, the day he was speaking about the problems confronting the rich. Jesus pointed out that their riches did not help them get into God’s kingdom. Some of his hearers were amazed. At this point he could have pressed home his teaching in a variety of ways, but he chose to use the method of burlesque: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:26).

I have read learned commentators who try to work out how the camel could perform this feat. They sometimes discover a little gate near the main gate of a city through which the camel could shuffle on its knees and call it “the eye of the needle.” Or they cut the camel down to size by altering the word slightly so that it means “rope”! Such solemn souls have missed the twinkle in the eye of our Lord. He was perfect in having a sense of humor as well as in being morally upright.

Jesus could describe the hypocrite as trying to take a speck out of someone’s eye while a great plank sticks out of his own. He could picture a Pharisee going into his garden and counting up the stalks of mint so that he could give a tenth of them to God. He could think of the same Pharisee as carefully straining a little insect out of a drink and then proceeding to swallow a camel.

The note of joy runs through the New Testament. We can scarcely miss some of it. But we do not always realize that in Greek the word “grace” (charis) is practically the same as “joy” (chara). Grace basically means “that which causes joy.” Grace is bright and cheerful. One of the words for “forgiveness” is charizomai, where again we have the basic chara. These days there is a lot of talk about the “charismatic” movement, pointing us back to charisma, another one of the joy words. And this in turn reminds us that joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). Where the Spirit of God is there is real joy. The derivatives of chara occur with startling frequency in the New Testament, and we do not understand the Christian movement unless we see this.

Of course, there is a solemn side to the Christian understanding of man and his world. Sin has put a barrier between man and God, a barrier that man cannot demolish. I cannot think of anything more solemn than the New Testament view of a Christless eternity, and I do not wish anything I say to minimize the seriousness of the matters involved nor the certainty of judgment on the finally impenitent. That is serious indeed.

But the Gospel is good news, not bad news. It tells us that in the fullness of time God sent his Son, sent him to live among human beings and show us how we ought to live, sent him to die on a cross to put away our sins. And that must be the most joyful story that ever hit a sad and sin-sick old world.

That is why Christianity is so full of joy. It is not the slick and shallow happiness that fails to take note of the serious problems of life. Jesus knew those problems, all right, knew them better than anybody else does. But he knew also that God has the answer.

So when Christians celebrate the coming of their Lord on that first Christmas day, they are not engaging in some mindless happiness that has no regard to the realities of life. They are well aware that there are problems, and they are not confident that they know any more about how to solve them than anybody else does.

But they know that God does. And that God cares. They know that God did something about this world’s mess: he sent his Son.

So they rejoice, not because they are unmindful of the world’s agony, but because they remember it, and know that God is concerned. Because God sent His Son into the world, there is and must be

Joy to the world!

LEON MORRIS

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.