We have a question today from a listener named Brent. Hello, Pastor John. I want to first say thank you for your ministry and for the podcast. You have helped me grow deeper in my love for the Savior and helped me to know more of what his word says to us.

Thank you. On to my question. I have read countless times in God's word that God is where we will find our fullness of joy. But I don't know what fullness of joy looks like practically. I don't know if I've ever experienced the fullness of joy in God. What is it and how would I know it when I saw it?

Well, I love questions like this because they make me do what ought to have been done a long time ago, namely just pause over phrases and words that we use so often and see if I can identify biblical meanings, definitions, content, so that we don't just throw around our favorite phrases.

Let me just give a couple of verses where that's a really good phrase, fullness of joy or joyful. Psalm 1611 is in my DNA, I hope you make known to me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Or John 1511, Jesus says, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.

So Brent is asking in what sense is our joy full? What does fullness mean? Here's one thing it means in the age to come, but not yet in this life. And then I'll give three things that I think it means even in this life. So here's the first one that's not complete in this life, but full in the age to come.

In this life where our own sin and misery and other people's sin and misery compete to make us sad, we do not have fullness of joy in the sense of having so much joy that joy has no competitors. Jesus was a man of sorrows in this life, not just joy, even though he had the deepest joy of anyone in the universe.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 6.10, we are sorrowful yet always rejoicing. So they're right side by side. No, they're not side by side. They're contemporaneous. They're simultaneous. In Romans 12, he says, weep with those who weep. And in Romans 9.2, he describes his own heart of pain about his lost Jewish kinsmen.

I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. Unceasing anguish. I thought, Paul, you're supposed to rejoice always. And again, I say rejoice. So clearly, fullness of joy in this life does not include so much joy or such joy that all competing emotions are excluded. We rejoice and we weep even simultaneously.

But in the resurrection, this won't be the case anymore. Revelation 21.4, he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. So fullness of joy in the age to come means so much joy that all competing contrary emotions will be gone.

Now, the question then becomes, is there a sense in which we can speak of fullness of joy in God now in this fallen world of sin and suffering? And let me suggest three meanings that I think are not nonsense. They're not a contradiction of what I've just said, and they're not double talk when we say yes to that question.

Number one, we can be said to have fullness of joy in God if our joy in God is so full that it outweighs all other competing emotions and overflows in love to others. Here's where I'm getting that. 2 Corinthians 8, verse 2. "In a severe test of affliction, the Macedonians' abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed." So their abundance of joy have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.

In other words, the joy in God, not in freedom from affliction, not in freedom from poverty, their joy in God was so full it outweighed affliction, it outweighed poverty, and it overflowed in generosity. That is a real fullness, even if there was pain and sorrow along the way. Second, we can be said to have fullness of joy in God if our joy in God is so full that we know we have arrived at the end of our quest for satisfaction.

In other words, there may be ups and downs in our level of satisfaction owing to sin or pain, but we never need to be in doubt that Christ is the end of our search. We will never leave this fountain to find a more satisfying one. Here is fullness. He is fullness.

So Paul says, "I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things." And Jesus says, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst, which I take to mean I am the end of your quest for perfect and full satisfaction." And don't turn to another.

Stay here. You will in due time never thirst again. You have tasted this fullness and it will surely, surely come and remain. And finally, number three, we can be said to have fullness of joy in God if our joy in God is so full that it rises to the heights of overflowing gladness in song or other forms of exuberance.

And I say that because Paul talks about it that way in Ephesians 5.18 where he says, "Don't get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit." Be filled with the Spirit. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

Well, what is that? That's an experience of the Holy Spirit's work that so fills us with himself. That is his fruit of joy and hope and peace that we burst out in song. And many of us have tasted this, especially in corporate worship where the Spirit comes and the hearts of people are lifted to a level of joyful fullness that they cannot keep to themselves.

So that's a description of the fullness of joy as well as the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Singing and making melody to the Lord. Now one last encouraging reminder to all of us who fight with our own sinful incapacities for joy. I'm sure everyone who cares about fullness of joy groans under sin and personality brokenness because we grew up in homes where nobody ever rejoiced, nobody ever sang, there was only criticism.

We're all broken people and we feel so incapable of sustained intense spiritual joy. Well, here's the encouragement. The day is coming when Christ will finally work in us the capacities to enjoy Christ. That our capacities, not just of ourselves, but of the Father himself enjoying Christ. And I get that from John 17, 26, where Jesus prays that the love with which you have loved me, Father, would be in them.

So the love of the Father for the Son would be in them and I in them. Now that will be the climax of fullness. And we delight in Jesus, the Son, with the very delight that the Father has in Jesus. And we will love and delight in the Father with the very love and delight that Jesus has in the Father, and all of our brokenness and all of our inability will be over, and fullness will be the right word for that eternal experience.

I love hearing you talk about joy, Pastor John. Thank you for diving into this question for us, and thank you for listening to the podcast. For more details or to catch up on old episodes or to subscribe to the audio feed to get the new episodes as we release them, even to send us a question of your own, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

We return on Friday, and a listener wants to know how we determine what biblical laws we should obey, and which biblical laws were fulfilled in Christ. It's a great question and a very important conversation that we need to have. That's Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reike. We'll see you then.

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