The Duty Of Joy

I have heard it said that joy cannot be an emotion. The argument goes something like this: We are commanded in Scripture to be joyous. God would not command us to do something we cannot do. We cannot spontaneously conjure up an emotion in ourselves. Therefore, joy cannot be an emotion. I could not disagree more with this argument.

I should preface this post by saying that I am sympathetic to what people who make such arguments are trying to achieve. Emotions and feelings in our culture have been corrupted to a degree that we can barely understand. We foolishly pursue meaningless and fleeting feelings of exhilaration through possessions, experiences, and prosperity and we carelessly call this “the pursuit of happiness” or even “joy”. In an effort to compensate against this folly, I can understand the temptation to downplay the emotional aspect of joy. Nonetheless, stripping joy of its emotional nature ultimately leads to a misunderstanding of who God is and what His purpose is for our lives.

First, I want to look at a quotation from Pascal:

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves."

We all know this to be true. Every fiber of our being cries out for happiness, satisfaction, contentment, joy and gladness. There is not a single human action that is not, at it's core, rooted in the quest for joy or gladness. Even the depraved culture in which we live affirms that this is so. After all, the reason we go from one idol to another is because the happiness we seek is not found to last in any of them. When the joy fades and the gladness leaves from one idolatrous source, we move on to the next one.

Now, the argument above claims that feelings cannot be commanded because we are not capable of turning our emotions and feelings on or off. We have all tried over and over again to "be happy" but we fail miserably. So the first part of the argument seems to make sense. However, suppose we used something other than feelings to make a similar argument. Let’s look at repentance and faith for example. How would the argument look then?

Repentance and faith are both commanded throughout the Bible. Yet the Bible also tells us that human nature is totally depraved, and human beings are incapable of conjuring up faith or initiating repentance. That does not cause us to argue that God doesn't command repentance and faith. Just because I am incapable of producing something doesn't mean that God can't command it of me.

Let's look at the example of Jesus speaking to Nicodemus. Jesus told Nicodemus that unless he is born again he will never see the Kingdom of God. Unless Nicodemus is born of the Spirit, Jesus tells him that he will never be saved. The fact that Nicodemus cannot be born again by himself did not mean that Jesus could not require it from him.

There is a profound fallacy in the argument that joy cannot be an emotion, which is that God cannot command from His creatures what they can't give. Of course He can and does! He does this from Genesis to Revelation, commanding repentance and faith. Yet, we know that the Bible also tells us that we are simply incapable of obeying this command due to the hardness of our hearts and our fallen nature. God must give us new birth, new hearts and He must put His Spirit in us before we can ever obey the command. Hopefully, you already see where I am going with this :)

Now, let's see what linguistics can teach us about joy.

Joy = χαρᾷ in Greek

Joy = שִׂמְחָה in Hebrew

Defined as “the EMOTION of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying...”

Joy is by definition an emotion. Indeed, not only is joy an emotion, it is caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying. Let's look at joy in context and see if joy is contextually congruent with emotion:

"In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls."
1 Peter 1:6-9

There are two things to note in this passage: 1. The object of their joy; and 2.The nature of this joy.

1. The object of their joy is clearly seen to be Jesus Christ Himself, whom they see by faith (not with their eyes) and whom they love. The entirety of their joy rests on and in the object of it - God in Jesus Christ.

2. The nature of this joy is said to be one that is "inexpressible and filled with glory." Here is what Jonathan Edwards has to say about this joy:

"Unspeakable in the kind of it; very different from worldly joys, and carnal delights of a vastly more pure, sublime, and heavenly nature, being something supernatural and truly divine and so ineffably excellent; the sublimity and exquisite sweetness of which there were no words to set forth. Unspeakable also in degree; it pleasing God to give them this holy joy with a liberal hand, and in large measure, in their state of persecution."

The Religious Affections - p. 23

I would find it quite disturbing if someone tried either exegetically or theologically to prove that the joy of these people was not an emotion. One would almost have to perform some sort of intricate theological surgical removal of the meaning of the words in order to come to that conclusion. In other words, to say that joy is not an emotion or a feeling is to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.

Now, let us close with what we do know to be true. Jesus Christ is the all-sufficient, all-satisfying, all-supreme Lord, King and Savior of His people. He commands us to "rejoice in the Lord," "delight yourself in the Lord," "shout for joy," "consider it all joy" and many more commands regarding joy. To say that joy cannot be an emotion because we cannot have it in our own strength is to deny the very truth of our inability to love God and our concurrent responsibility to do so.

God desires for us to have emotional joy and gladness in Him (Psalm 37:4) and to remove the emotional aspect of our salvation is to truncate the gospel, leaving it at "you are justified." What is the point of being justified, if there is no pleasure or joy that I can find in God. It would only mean that God is not satisfying and not capable of bringing me the joy I seek - the very joy that He has in Himself, the emotion of gladness and happiness that He finds in relationship with Himself. The greatest gift He has given us is that of Himself and it is supposed to give us the most profound and deep joy. Don't truncate the gospel by removing the emotional component of the gospel of His glory and our joy.

John Piper does an excellent job of explaining in depth what I have attempted to explain briefly in this blog. I would highly recommend his sermon entitled, "Let Your Passion be Single."

You can find it here:

http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/ConferenceMessages/ByDate/1814_Let_Your_Passion_Be_Single/