John 15:11 These things have I spoken to you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. This saying is strange, because our idea of Christ is that of the man of sorrows. Only on one occasion are we told that He rejoiced. But the saying seems stranger still when we look at the circumstances under which it was uttered — in sight of the agony and the Cross. Then remember to whom it was spoken: to men for whom He had predicted martyrdom. I. WHAT WAS THE BLESSEDNESS OF CHRIST? Note — 1. That the blessedness of the infinite God is essentially in. comprehensible. The thought of God is necessarily the thought of One infinite and eternal, without limit or change. But we can only conceive of blessedness as a change from the less to the more blessed. We know the light by knowing the darkness, and joy only by its changes. We are obliged, therefore, to think of God as rejoicing in His world, and as rising to a higher gladness when He had peopled His universe with creatures. In these two contradictory thoughts, both of which we must think and yet cannot reconcile, lies the mystery of the ever blessed God. 2. In God revealed in Christ, the mystery is yet deeper. How, if one with the Infinite, could His joy ever fail? Why, if foreseeing the results of His mission, could He sorrow? But observing Christ on His human side, His blessedness as the God-Man must be in some measure comprehensible. He humanity was as perfect as His divinity, and the emotions of the human Christ we can partly understand; and this will lead us to a comprehension in part of His Divine joy. 3. The elements of His joy were two fold. It came, He tells us — (1) By keeping the Father's commandments. It was the feeling that He did not live for Himself — that He existed as Man to reveal the full glory of eternal love, that every toil and sorrow were helping on the Divine plan for man's redemption — that formed His joy. (2) By abiding in the Father's love. Men might desert Him — this never did. His human nature might tremble, but His eye pierced beyond the sorrow into the sunshine of the Divine law behind it, and that was a mighty joy. Hence His frequent hours of prayer. (3) Combining these two elements, we may understand how it was that He spoke of it so soon after His Spirit was troubled. For His blessedness and suffering arose from one source: the doing of the Father's will. The consciousness of complete self-surrender gave Him gladness; yet the surrender produced the sorrow. II. CAN THAT JOY RE COMMUNICATED? We find the answer in the preceding verse. Like their Master, the disciples were to surrender life to be the organ of God's will, and then the consciousness of His love would dawn. In a sense, joy and sorrow are incommunicable. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," etc. But they are communicable just as we are one in sympathy and purpose with a friend. I know nothing of the joy of a stranger; but I do know the joy of a man with whom I am bound by the deep sympathies of love. So to enter into Christ's joy we must become Christ-like. Amid anxiety and sorrow, a man first gives up his all to God; and amid His suffering there flashes the conviction, "God loves me," and there steals over his heart a blessedness which is the joy of the Lord. III. THE FELLOWSHIP OF CHRIST'S BLESSEDNESS IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF PERFECT JOY. Perfect joy has two conditions. 1. In its source it must be self-surrender to the highest love. All inward discord destroys joy, and that discord only ceases when a man loses the thought of self in devotion to something he regards as greater. The man who toils for wealth is never satisfied, because in the pursuit he is trying to lose the sense of self. The pleasure seeker plunges into every excitement that will drown reflection. The ambitious man loses the thought of self in the intense yearning for future achievement. In fine, man pants for the Infinite — for a boundless something to which he may yield his heart and be conscious of himself no more. This explains the idea of final absorption into the Deity, and the belief in the eternal sleep of death. But fellowship with the eternal joy of Christ furnishes the only anodyne to the unresting sense of self. 2. Real enjoyment must be independent of outward changes. The longing to attain a state of life superior to the accidents of time and change shows this. The wisest men have spoken of following the right, in the face of all consequences, as the source of the highest joy. The fellowship of Christ's joy gives this. It gave it to Paul, who was enabled there by to glory in infirmity. Even death, which damps the joy of all other men, consummates the blessedness of those who, through fellowship of life, are partakers of the joy of Christ. (E. L. Hull, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. |
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