(upbeat music) - Welcome to a new week on the Ask Pastor John podcast. Today's question comes to us from Rasmus, a listener from Denmark. Hello, Pastor John, I love the truth that the fullest joy possible is to be found in God, but there's one angle to it that I don't quite understand yet.

My question is, when is this true? If I choose not to deny myself and follow Jesus, would I have more joy in this life? Or in other words, can we say that the Christian life is the most joyful life here and now? Or do we as Christians deny ourselves the greatest possible joy in this life for greater joy in the life to come?

There are verses pointing in this direction, such as 1 Corinthians 15, 19, if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But there are also verses talking about the joy of God, being greater than the riches on earth, such as Psalm 4, verse 7.

You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. Pastor John, what would you say? - There are two things that we need to grasp about Christian joy in this fallen world that I think are going to help resolve his paradox that he sees.

First, Paul calls our joy in Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy. Christian joy is qualitatively different from the joy and happiness of the world. The joy of the Christian is rooted in our spiritual taste and spiritual sight, worked by the Holy Spirit, of the all-satisfying beauty of God in Christ, especially in the great work of the gospel.

And you can see that in 2 Corinthians 3.18 and chapter 4, verse 4 and 4, verse 6, where Paul says that we behold the glory of the Lord. And he says that the Lord shines into our heart to give the light of the gospel, of the glory, the good news of the glory of Christ.

So that's what we see spiritually. By the work of the Spirit, this is the deepest root of our joy as a Christian. God frees us from being blinded by the glitzy, fleeting, deceptive pleasures of this world. He frees us from being deceived into thinking that the God-ignoring, cotton candy pleasures of the body and the mind are the most satisfying food of the human soul.

They're not. God gives us eyes, Ephesians 1.17, God gives us eyes, the enlightening of the eyes of our heart to see what is really substantial and rich and deep and beautiful and satisfying and eternal, namely the beauty and worth of all that God is for us in Christ. So in the new birth, the Holy Spirit gives us new taste buds on the tongue of our soul so that 1 Peter 2 says, we taste the goodness of the Lord.

We taste the sweetness of forgiveness of sins. We taste the removal of our guilt. We taste the removal of God's wrath and our condemnation, the precious experience of being loved by God and God being for us and not against us. We taste the friendship of the Lord and we feel a hundred spiritual pleasures day after day as God's promises, His sweet promises satisfy our days, promises to help us and protect us and comfort us and keep us until we're finally home.

The world doesn't know anything of that. They don't, they don't know anything. All of that is a miracle. All of that is made spiritually tasted by the work of the Spirit in our hearts. So the joy of the Christian is qualitatively unique and distinct from the joy and pleasures and happiness of the world, none of which are based on any spiritual sight or taste of God's glory.

The joys of the world do not have God at the bottom and therefore they're not able to satisfy the human soul. They're not able to last beyond this world and therefore they are going to be profoundly disappointing. But Christian joy has God at the bottom and therefore is utterly unique and cannot be shaken, can't be taken away at death and is utterly satisfying.

Like Jesus said in John 6:35, "Whoever comes to me will not hunger. Whoever believes me will never thirst." Our hearts were made for God. God created us to find our deepest, longest, eternal joy in knowing and treasuring Him. And therefore Christian joy is better than the joy of the world.

And I think that's what is meant by Psalm 4:7. You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. More in the sense of something better and deeper and longer. And Psalm 16, 11 says it's in God's presence is this fullness of joy, pleasures forevermore.

This is a pleasure that the world has never tasted. So it's not a matter of quantitative comparison. It's a matter of qualitative, infinite qualitative difference. This is supernatural. This is given by the Holy Spirit. It's a fruit of the Spirit in our lives, enabling us to taste and see the beauty and worth of the Son of God.

We have seen His glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. So that's the first thing that we need to grasp about Christian joy. It is a fruit of the Spirit and therefore it is qualitatively different from the joy of those who do not know God, don't believe the gospel, don't have the Holy Spirit.

Now here's the second thing we need to grasp about Christian joy. And that is it regularly brings with it affliction and trouble and sorrow, more sorrow than we would have had in this life if we had chosen not to follow Jesus. So Paul says in Acts 14.22, "Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God." He doesn't say that about unbelievers.

He says that about believers. And you can avoid these. You can avoid these afflictions by avoiding the kingdom. So Jesus does not promise His followers that life gets easier in this world. In fact, He defines discipleship as taking up a cross and denying ourselves. This means that there are many kinds of earthly pleasures that Christians will forego by choice and many sorrows that will come to us, some by choice, but many not by choice.

And the reason for that is this. Christians are called to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And this inevitably means a life of sorrow because we care far more as Christians for the outcome of other people's lives than we would have if we were not Christians. 'Cause that's what Jesus had to do.

He said, "Love them as you love yourself." And when we see these lives ruined by sin, some close to us, some not so close to us, it touches us more deeply than it would if we had chosen not to follow Christ. Therefore, Christians will inevitably have more sorrow than if we had not followed Christ.

Now, those are the two things we need to see. And now let's put those together and ask about these two texts that Rasmus has asked about. 1 Corinthians 15, 19 says, "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." Now, why would that be true?

Well, it will be true because if Christ is not raised, then the first fact that I mentioned about Christian joy, namely that it is qualitatively distinct and better, it's just false. I mean, we've lived a life of utter delusion as Christians if Christ is not raised from the dead.

The whole message of the New Testament collapses, including all of its teachings about joy, all of its teachings about the Holy Spirit. It's all bogus and everything I just said was chatter, chatter, chatter. It doesn't mean anything. It's just lips flapping in the wind if Christ is not raised from the dead.

We've based our life on a fraud. And second, if Christ is not raised from the dead, then we Christians have taken on ourselves a lot of sorrow and affliction that we could have avoided if we had just avoided Christ. So 1 Corinthians 15, 19 is true. If in Christ we have hoped only in this life, in other words, if there's no future life, if Christ isn't raised from the dead, if the whole thing is a sham, then we are of all people most to be pitied.

But Christ has been raised from the dead. The gospel is true. The Holy Spirit has been poured out. Our eyes have been opened to see the truth and worth and beauty of Christ in the gospel. All the joy that we know as Christians is supernatural and distinct from the joy of the world because it's the fruit of the Holy Spirit and has the glory of God at the bottom of it all.

And the sorrows that we take on because we are Christians are indeed more sorrows than the world embraces, but they are temporary. And with Christ's help, the yoke is easy and the burden is light. These sorrows will pass away at the end of our lives here. Our joy will be perfected and it will be plain that our joy was better and deeper and longer than the joys of unbelievers.

- Really good primer on the precious value of Christian joy here. Pastor John, thank you. And not to mention an assault on the prosperity teaching as well. Thank you, Pastor John. Thank you, Erasmus, for the question. We published this podcast three times a week and you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our episode archive.

You can reach us by email with the difficulty you may be facing in life. You can do all that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Wednesday, we return to hear from a single mother and she thinks she has the gift of singleness. Are single parents obligated to marry? That is an interesting question and that is on Wednesday.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)