Joy and the Excellence of Christ

The most gloriously joy-filled being in the entire universe is Jesus Christ.

To live your life in a radical quest to reflect His glory and experience His joy is the most satisfying endeavor a human being can pursue. Everything else pales in comparison. There is no joy to be found anywhere else under the sun like the joy that comes from the excellence of Christ.

The prophet Isaiah knew this to be true, and wrote this word from the Lord: “Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn't satisfy? Listen diligently to Me . . . and let your soul delight itself in fatness” (Isaiah 55:2). Solomon, wise in the ways of the world as he was, knew this also, and he wrote, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2:11).

So while there is no abiding joy to be found in things “under the sun” (as Solomon put it), there is supreme joy in Christ. And the good news is that Christ Himself wants His people to participate in this joy! On the evening before His crucifixion, Jesus said to His Father, “But now I am coming to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13).

Did you catch that? Jesus wants HIS joy to be fulfilled in YOU! Amazing! Miraculous! The Son of God, Who from eternity past has dwelt with the Father and the Spirit in the holy inferno of the glory and joy of the three-in-one Godhead, passionately yearns to fill you with His joy! As Alexander Means wrote in his ecstatic hymn, “What wondrous love is this, O my soul!” Yes, indeed. Wondrous and full of joy!

And people think Christianity means weighty obligation! Where do they get such an erroneous idea? They get it from Christians who have never learned or have forgotten that “in [His] presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). They get it from believers who wrongly suppose that their “Christian duty” is unrewarded religious responsibility.

In his “Letters to Malcolm,” C. S. Lewis wrote, “It is the duty of every Christian, you know, to be as happy as possible.” That is what our “duty” is: to be so impassioned with Christ that His infinite delight floods our souls with the overflow of His boundless joy. This boundless joy, this ocean of Christ’s excellence, is what delivers us from the perilous weight of religious obligation, and turns the “got to” of duty into the “get to” of delight.

King David, after being confronted with his sin of seeking His delight outside of the Lord, prayed, “Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation” (Psalm 51:12). All of us should pray that prayer who have been seeking joy anywhere but in the infinite excellencies of Christ Himself. Let us pray it, now.