G.K. Chesterton once said, “Joy . . . is the gigantic secret of the Christian” (Orthodoxy, 231). Christianity does not deny sadness and suffering but knows them as fleeting and temporal. From its God to its gospel to its view of man, joy rests right at the bedrock of the Christian story.

What are we to do with such a sweeping claim? It sounds too good to be true. Yet this is exactly what Christian Hedonism teaches: God made man for joy, a joy that reflects God’s own Trinitarian delight. On this account, the story of reality begins in joy and ends in joy.

But how could one verify such a massive proposal? C.S. Lewis gives us one way to test it:

Supposing you had before you a manuscript of some great work, either a symphony or a novel. There then comes to you a person, saying, “Here is a new bit of the manuscript that I found; it is the central passage of that symphony, or the central chapter of that novel. The text is incomplete without it. I have got the missing passage which is really the centre of the whole work.” The only thing you could do would be to put this new piece of the manuscript in that central position, and then see how it reacted on the whole of the rest of the work. If it constantly brought out new meanings from the whole of the rest of the work, if it made you notice things in the rest of the work which you had not noticed before, then I think you would decide that it was authentic. (“The Grand Miracle,” 77–78)

One way we can test the claim is by assuming it’s true and seeing how it lights up the rest of the story. In this article, I want to trace the theme of joy through the major acts of redemptive history: God, Creation, Fall, Redemption, New Creation. In Lewis’s words, I want to put joy in the “central position, and then see how it react[s] on the whole of the rest of the work.” I think you will see that the beauty, unity, and symmetry it brings to the whole shows that joy deserves the central position Chesterton assigned it.

Before telling the story, why does joy matter? Who cares if it’s the central theme? In short, God does — and you should. God made you to magnify him, but that cannot happen without joy. As Lewis puts it, “Fully to enjoy is to glorify” (Reflections on the Psalms, 112). You exist to glorify God by enjoying him forever. This is the central claim of Christian Hedonism: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Joy matters because it’s what you were made for. Joy is the gigantic secret to glorifying God.

I. Triune God: Fountain of Joy

If joy is central in the universe, then it must be essential to the source of the universe — and that is exactly what we find. Before, behind, and underneath everything in creation is a fellowship of infinite joy. From all eternity, the Father has known the Son, and they have loved and delighted in each other by the Spirit (John 1:18; 17:24; Luke 10:21–22). The clearest picture of this glory comes at the baptism of Jesus, where the Father pronounces his divine pleasure in the Son, and that affection appears as the Spirit (Matthew 3:16–17). Jonathan Edwards, who thought more about joy than almost anyone, put it like this: “The whole of God’s internal good or glory, is in these three things, viz. his infinite knowledge, his infinite virtue or holiness, and his infinite joy and happiness” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 244).

God’s internal (ad intra) glory refers to the fullness of life that blazes at the center of the Trinity (see John 17, especially verses 4–5). God is so full that he needs nothing beyond himself to be infinitely, unchangeably, unassailably happy (1 Timothy 1:11). Wrapping our heads around this blessedness of God is like trying to free dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. We are not heavy enough or hard enough or alive enough to explore such depths. Tony Reinke says it so well: “Joy is the essence of God’s inter-Trinitarian dance of delight, between the Father and the Son, through the Spirit. Joy is divine enthrallment in the Godhead, and it is too much for us” (The Joy Project, 114).

Just as light and heat radiate from the sun at the center of the solar system, joy pulses at the heart of reality because the Trinity is there, holding all things together. The triune God is the fountain of all joy (Psalm 16:11; 36:8).

II. Creation: Overflow of Joy

But if God is perfectly happy in his own triune company, what are we to make of creation? Why did God make a world?

This question has proved a wrecking ball for the faith of many over the centuries, which is why Edwards took it head-on. He refused to say God needed creation, but he also rejected the idea that God had no designs in creation. Instead, the triune God is so full of life, love, and joy that he is inclined to share (John 10:10; 15:11; 17:26; Acts 17:25).

For Edwards, creation reveals God; it is “the excellent brightness and fullness of the divinity diffused, overflowing and . . . existing ad extra” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 243). After all, “the heavens declare the glory” (Psalm 19:1), and God’s invisible attributes are made visible “in the things that have been made” (Romans 1:20). However, Edwards argues that knowledge of God is not enough. Joy that reflects and participates in God’s own delight was always the endgame because God is not fully glorified unless he is fully enjoyed. Creation — in all its vast and variegated wonder, in all its beautiful and (often) baffling diversity, in all the dappled and the delicious, in all that grows and flows — invites us into the pleasures of God (Genesis 1:31; Psalm 104:31).

The purpose of creation is to invite creatures into God’s own joy because our delight in him magnifies his worth. Thus, Edwards concludes that God’s ultimate end in creating and sustaining the world is the pleasure he takes in his self-knowledge, holiness, and happiness, eternally increasing in a glorious society of created beings.

III. Fall: Longing for Joy

God made man to enter that happy society. He designed us for the peculiar privilege of embodied dominion over his wild and wonderful creation. He charged us, his image-bearers, with being sub-creators and under-kings, rightly ruling his world, enriching and enhancing the beauty we found there, and seeing and savoring him in all (Genesis 1:28; Psalm 8:6–8).

We were made for this joy, and for a time, Adam and Eve participated in this grand charge. But our time in paradise, alas, was short-lived. Our first parents gave ear to the ancient dragon, despised the offer of unbroken fellowship with God, and instead chose to make mud pies in a slum. At the fall, we were severed from the triune God, crippled in our calling of dominion, and left with an inconsolable longing for joy.

Sin plagues mankind on this side of Eden. We are sinners who sin, bent away from God and refusing to seek our happiness in him. We rebel against joy. Sinners will not (and cannot) come to God as the living fountain of all that is good, true, and beautiful and sate our deepest longings in him. Instead, we seek to smother our appetite for the infinite with teaspoon pleasures and tinsel toys (Jeremiah 2:13). We do not glorify the Creator because we trade pleasure in him for that of creatures (Romans 1:18–25; 3:23). Everything we do bears this smudge, and nothing we do can reverse the tragedy.

We are cut off from joy, yet an awareness of this huge happiness still haunts us. You know of what I speak: a longing we feel we cannot live with yet cannot live without. So, we try to ignore it or distract ourselves long enough to forget, but it’s always there — stalking us, ensuring that nothing in this world can stop the ache. And how could it? We have eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Our souls wear the imprint of paradise. We suffer from cosmic nostalgia, “our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off” (Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 42). The world and everything in it can never satisfy our insatiable desire; they only remind us of the one who can.

Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, sloth — in fact, everything that’s wrong with the world — emerge from this ache for a transcendent, full, and lasting joy. We writhe violently to silence this God-hunger, hurting ourselves and others. “And when our tiny loves go unsatisfied (as they must for people untethered from their Maker), we bemoan our lot and rage against the stars” (Ben Palpant, Letters from the Mountain, 92).

IV. Redemption: Freed for Joy

Of course, if that were the end of the line, reality would not be a story of joy but of sin, sadness, and death. But man’s fall did not catch God off guard. He storyboarded the plot long before it happened; before the foundation of the world, he planned a triune conspiracy of redemption (Ephesians 1:3–14).

The Father elected us for joy. None of the fallen has any claim to his grace. No sinner can call in a debt God owes. By rights, our rebellion against joy merits death (Romans 6:23). Yet before the ages began, the Father set his love on a peculiar people. He unconditionally elected some to enter into joy (1 Peter 1:3–9). Why would he plot such a scandalous act of grace? “In election, God pursues his own exaltation by inviting sinners to enjoy him forever” (The Joy Project, 40).

But this joy comes at great cost. Sin, with a voice that cannot be gainsaid, demanded punishment. Someone had to pay. So, at just the right time, the Son came to purchase our joy. He did so by becoming a man of joy (and for a short time, sorrow). Jesus — fully God and fully man — entered the tale at the darkest point, glistening with the oil of God’s gladness (Hebrews 1:9), and what he accomplished is breathtaking.

He defeated the dragon that wrought havoc in the garden. He initiated the doom of the rebel rulers of this world. He began to reverse the curse and undo death. He secured himself a cosmic kingdom and an everlasting throne. And his greatest triumph: For all this joy set before him, he endured death on a cross, bearing the punishment of the Father’s elect so that he could justly declare them just (Hebrews 12:2; Romans 3:24–26). Now those justified by faith are free to “rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Romans 5:11).

As if that wasn’t enough, when the King of joy sat down on his throne, he sent the Spirit of joy to call and claim those whom he purchased (Romans 14:17; Acts 13:52). Now that same Spirit, God’s own joy, dwells in the saints. This is what Jesus meant when he promised that his joy would be in us and our joy would be full (John 15:11). The Spirit guarantees our joy.

In short, the triune God, through the incarnation and work of Jesus, accomplished absolutely everything necessary to bring his elect into his own life, love, and joy through the grand drama of redemption. The gospel is the good news that God made a way for us to fully glorify him by fully enjoying him forever!

V. New Creation: Destined for Joy

With the coming of Christ, the tale turned, setting us on course for the Happy Ending. But we do not yet see the climax of joy. We are still, in many ways, on the outside of the door, knocking to get in. Much of our happiness has an already–not yet quality. But it will not always be so.

One day — Lord make it soon! — our King will return and set up a new heaven and new earth in which our joy will eternally increase (Revelation 21:1–7). The Bible captures this always-improving, never-regressing bliss with two main descriptions.

First, we shall see God. Any remaining barriers between us and the Fountain of Joy will be finally removed, and we shall drink delight from the headwaters (Revelation 22:17). At present, much about this beatific vision remains mysterious and beyond our imagination, but the core of the experience is simple. Samuel Parkison summarizes it:

The hope of one day satiating one’s insatiable desire for happiness in the infinitely self-happy God is what we mean by the beatific vision. . . . Creaturely happiness, in the fullest sense, is . . . a begraced participation in the ceaseless self-happiness of Father, Son, and Spirit.

This is what we were made for — to get into the joy that made the sun and other stars.

What more could we want than this? It may seem unspiritual to add anything to the beatific vision, but God does — and we must not try to be more spiritual than God. Together with seeing God, we will be sub-creators and under-kings over the new creation. We will reign with our King (Romans 8:17; 2 Timothy 2:12; Revelation 3:21). As sons of God, we will practice embodied dominion over God’s very good world, making it a brighter mirror of God’s glory for eternity. In this way, we will aid in God’s original design for creation and (in Tolkien’s words) “actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation” (On Fairy-stories, 79).

We are destined for joy. That’s where the story ends — or better yet, where it really begins. But we dare not delay in pursuing it. The stunning truth that emerges from this story is that God wants you to, made you to, freed you to pursue happiness in him — every day, all the time, relentlessly. So, rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice! He is highly honored when you are deeply satisfied in him.

From eternity to eternity, reality is a story of joy — the joy of the triune God poured out in a world, purchased for man, and prolonged forever. Joy is the central note of this symphony. In a rare instance, Chesterton may have understated his case. For the Christian, joy is not merely gigantic; it’s glorious and God-like.

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I will not forget my first day on the underwater treadmill.

A stubborn knee injury ushered me into this unfamiliar arena of warm-water therapy. I signed up, feeling like a nervous ninth grader as I fumbled with the gym locker.

Around me, a trio of thirty-somethings traded sleek bathing suits for business casual, dried their damp hair, and puckered before the mirror. They glossed their plump lips and compared lap times and work schedules while fastening earrings and slipping into stylish shoes. Presto! Easy-breezy was their vibe.

I, on the other hand, felt frumpy as I cinched my faded beach towel around my waist and flip-flopped out of the locker room toward the therapy room, passing by an Olympic-sized pool of swimmers who skimmed through the cold water with ease.

Next, I entered a time warp as I skirted the “old-people’s pool,” speckled with women in their seventies and eighties. They pranced awkwardly in the water, elbows raised crookedly above swim caps, mirroring the teacher who bleated instructions as she waved a pool noodle.

Descending into the tepid water, I was surprised by a pang of sadness. The suddenness of aging crept close and lingered. It was a whisper that pricked: You are no longer a thirty-year-old with boundless energy and smooth, pretty skin. Nor are you forty, ushering children toward college and feeling strong and ready for anything.

True. I am approaching my mid-fifties, with deepening crow’s feet and a cranky knee. A wave of gloom swept over me as I exercised, feeling as though the best days of my life had vanished.

But that feeling? It was only that: a feeling. A foolish, crooked feeling.

What I required that morning was not only an attitude adjustment but divine correction. Elisabeth Elliot said it well: “We can’t really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight-edge of Scripture.” So, what does the Bible teach us about aging to the glory of God?

1. Self-denial is for every age.

A popular worldly mindset has wandered into some aging Christians: My later years are mine, to do with as I please. I have observed many aging women who seem to meander through their retirement years, their vision myopic: endless days spent serving themselves heaping portions of “me time.”

But nowhere does the Bible suggest that we age well when we embrace a self-centered orthodoxy bent on pursuing personal hobbies, scrolling away the hours, or embarking on perpetual cruises. This is Satan’s bag of tricks, meant to breed spiritual apathy. In fact, to revel in such pursuits reveals a heart-posture of faithlessness, proof positive that we view our lives as ending, rather than truly beginning, when we die.

The results are tragic, as many opportunities to serve God and others are ignored. If our aim is to chase the winds of youth, beauty, entertainment, or more accouterments, we will live superficial, selfish lives. How foolish to spend swaths of time, money, and energy fighting to re-sketch what time has erased. Complaining, navel-gazing, and self-gratification will never satisfy our hearts.

Proverbs 31:30 warns, “Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” One major way we “fear the Lord” is by tenderheartedly obeying the Bible, which says that in order to be Jesus’s disciple we must deny ourselves, pick up our crosses, and follow him (Matthew 16:24) — a commandment without an age limit.

See how Jesus flips the world’s script? A wise woman will spritz the perfume of self-forgetfulness over her wrists and give her life away by treasuring God and serving others. A handwritten note, an extra half-hour spent in prayer, sharing a basket of warm muffins, reading the Bible to a hurting friend — these are all tender ways to deny ourselves. And in denying ourselves worldly wants, we will actually get joy.

2. God is our timeless portion.

This joy comes to us in Christ:

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
     you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
     indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance. (Psalm 16:5–6)

God has wisely numbered our hairs and our heartbeats, and in Christ has gifted us a stunning, unfading inheritance. With each passing birthday, we can come more awake to a grand truth: We are pilgrims passing through, awaiting the permanent place God is preparing for us.

Wrinkles, achy joints, gray hairs, and sagging skin are gracious reminders that we were created for more and heaven is near. Through the pain and challenges of aging, we are afforded a tender opportunity to press into the words of Jesus in 2 Corinthians 12:9: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Yes, Christ is our eternal inheritance, our portion.

3. There is work only seasoned saints can do.

Once we reach our later years, it is time to roll up our sleeves and cheerfully work. God has a precious ministry designed specifically for us as older saints: teaching younger women.

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. (Titus 2:3–5)

The job of training younger women takes patience, time, and repetition. This is a mantle to be taken joyfully and seriously. As older women, may we remember the enduring faithfulness of God (Psalm 37:25) as we teach younger women what we have learned through our failures, our sins, and our repentant obedience to him. Imagine if each one of us denied ourselves something and then obeyed God’s directive in Titus 2, pouring truth into the hearts of our daughters, granddaughters, and great-granddaughters, as well as the younger women in our church. How the body of Christ would be strengthened!

So, as skin loses its soft glow and deeper wrinkles emerge, when health concerns increase and the loss of youthfulness stings, remember: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). By God’s grace, we can grow more servant-hearted with each passing year, giving our lives away in increasing measure to God and others.

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So, young man, you’re sick of the passivity that plagues our time. You’re tired of being a spiritual nothing in your household, parroting the same stale prayers before meals, unable to speak intelligibly of your faith or lead your family toward heaven. You’re done being an un-man: un-serious, un-helpful, un-faithful.

You are now awake to your purpose as head of the family. You groan over lost opportunities and resolve, “No more.” You determine to begin at once — hallelujah. But is it wise to begin everything all at once?

Long family devotions with little kids, where none existed before. Zero tolerance for theological error, when you yourself are still learning the faith. Severe standards of maturity in the home to make up for wasted years. Your spirit becomes exacting, exhorting, correcting — for their good! You feel pressure to catch up to where you should be by now. You turn up the heat; the undercooked becomes overcooked through good intentions, through zeal exercised without discernment. The bull charges forth, dragging his family behind him.

Brothers, we have a word from God teaching us how to lead onward without destroying those we love. A very brief word from Jacob in Genesis 33 helps us hedge against the dangers of overzealous leadership. I hesitate to go there, because for every one man who leads too hastily, nine others lead too slowly or not at all. To most men, I say, “Get up and get going! Pick up the pace! Heaven lies before us; flee from the wrath to come!” But to a few (including myself at different seasons), I implore, “Brother, lead on softly.”

Family Reunion

Jacob did Esau dirty. He knows it; Esau knows it.

At the behest of their mother, Rebekah, Jacob conned his blind father into giving him the blessing instead of Esau. He pretended to be Esau — his mom cooking Esau’s special dish. They even went so far as to glue hair on smooth Jacob to be furry like his brother.

The scheme worked. Jacob received Esau’s blessing, fulfilling the Lord’s declaration to their mother, but through questionable means. When Esau showed up for his blessing and discovered what had happened, he skipped ahead in the stages of grief. Rebekah informed Jacob, “Behold, your brother Esau comforts himself about you by planning to kill you” (Genesis 27:42). Jacob ran away.

Decades later, God tells Jacob to return home. He and his people have grown prosperous — as have Esau and his people. Two nations have formed, yet Jacob still fears to face his past. However, when this elder brother rides out to meet the younger, Esau receives Jacob home. They share a moment of reconciliation; then Esau invites Jacob and his family to follow him back to their territory in Seir.

Here we pick up the story and find our lesson. As Esau invites Jacob to accompany him and his warriors back, Jacob halts the jubilee to tell Esau that he can’t join him just now. Listen to Jacob’s pastoral words:

My lord knows that the children are frail, and that the nursing flocks and herds are a care to me. If they are driven hard for one day, all the flocks will die. Let my lord pass on ahead of his servant, and I will lead on slowly, at the pace of the livestock that are ahead of me and at the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir. (Genesis 33:13–14)

In this polite refusal, we find wisdom to lead our loved ones well in this life. We must know whom we are leading to get our people home.

Know Your Flock

Jacob enjoys fresh acceptance from Esau and blessing from God, but notice what he doesn’t do. He doesn’t ride off at full speed with Esau and his men. Rather, he looks back and around him and — whether or not he is making an excuse not to go with Esau — utters words of a true shepherd:

My lord knows that the children are frail, and that the nursing flocks and herds are a care to me. If they are driven hard for one day, all the flocks will die.

In other words, he considers whom he is leading. He knows his flock. They are a care to him. Full speed for him is not the best speed for them. He could ride off with his brother, if that was his goal, but what of his flock? What of the children? They are frail and the flocks nursing. He knows that if he drives them too hard — if he overdrives them, as the KJV puts it — all the flocks will die.

Too much of a good thing, too quickly, does exist. Requiring your four-year-old boy to memorize the whole Westminster Catechism might be premature. Maybe your church needs some teaching on eldership before you seek to change immediately. Perhaps your wife, discipled as she was in feminism, needs some patience and time to jettison the lies she has been brought up to believe. What is good in a future season for someone else may not be good in this season for your family. You may desire to ride on with Esau, but love and wisdom might have you walk slowly with your flock.

Brothers, you may even have to say no to some wonderful opportunity to gallop ahead. You may need to postpone going overseas or joining a beautiful church plant because the pace would drive your young family too hard. None of us has a generic flock, nor do we have an unchanging flock. We must know them season by season and consider what pace is best.

Prayer and fasting and wisdom are needed to discern when to increase the pace and not to. I do not mean to discourage you from following after great and hard things. But as shepherds, we must have the category of overdriving our flocks. We need to know not only where we are leading but whom we are leading and the speed they can travel.

Lead Them Home

Brothers, lead at a pace they can follow. In some seasons, you will need to say, “Let my lord pass on ahead of his servant, and I will lead on slowly, at the pace of the livestock that are ahead of me and at the pace of the children, until I come to my lord in Seir.”

Jacob knows whom he leads. He is among them, knows their strengths and their frailties, knows what they can and cannot endure. And in that season of his life, a hard day of driving them at Esau’s pace could be fatal. Thus, he resolves to go slowly. Or, as the KJV beautifully has it, “I will lead on softly.” Lead on softly — does this ever describe your leadership?

Our aim is to get these people to that place where God dwells. We want a pace fast enough to get us there, but a pace that the younger members can endure. We determine shepherding speed not by how fast we can run, or how fast they can run for a short time, or even how fast they will run eventually, but by how fast they can safely travel now, for a sustained time, adjusting as we go.

A good shepherd wants to mature them, strengthen them, speed them up in due time, but he also wants them to survive. Aren’t you glad our Shepherd is like that? He pushes us and tests us, but we also know this very well: “He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (Isaiah 40:11).

Thus, we also say, “I will lead on softly.” We do not crush with ideals or keep up at another family’s speed or forget that we are strengthened by grace. We consider where we are going, whom we are leading, and how best to get them to that better country.

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