This week, Randy Elkhorn joins us on the phone. He is the author of the new book, Happiness. You'll want to check it out. Randy, as you know, God is happy. Scripture tells us that God is happy. So if God is so fundamentally and essentially happy all the time in himself, why does he seem so often to be ill-tempered in the biblical stories?

I think what we've got to do is realize that sin is a reality in this world, and the suffering that comes out of sin. We're under the fall. We're under the curse. Even though Christ has become a curse for us who believe in him, we recognize that we still face the realities of sin and suffering in this life.

This sin that infiltrates the world is a temporary condition. I think this is the key to understanding how it is that God could be, from eternity past, utterly happy within himself, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, delighting in each other. I developed this in the book, and others have developed it, of course.

John Piper, in The Pleasures of God, develops it tremendously, and somewhat in Desiring God as well. That is this union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Father who says, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased." I think it's Luke 10, where it says, "Jesus then rejoiced in the Holy Spirit after telling his disciples to rejoice that their names are written in heaven." But he has always been happy.

He will always be happy, and he is predominantly happy now. Sin is a temporary condition, so the causes for God's unhappiness are themselves temporary, and his primary identity is as a happy God, not an unhappy one. Sin is so prevalent, and the Bible is written to deal with the sin problem and point out the sin problem, hence we often do see a God with anger and wrath.

It's easy to overlook all of the loving-kindness passages, and all the God delighting in his people, and God being pleased, and the Master in Jesus' words saying to the servant, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into your Master's happiness." Enter into a happiness far more ancient than the world itself, a happiness that preceded all creation, a happiness that goes on undaunted and will continue forever.

God not only says this to us so that at the end of our life we might be welcomed into his happiness, but so that we can front-load, so to speak, that happiness into our life right now because of his redemptive work. Even then, when people will say, for instance, "Well, Jesus is called the Man of Sorrows," and I get this a lot from people, and I'm writing a book on happiness.

By the way, unbelievers would always think it was great when I tell them I was writing a book on happiness. Then when I would say it to believers, they'd say, "Whoa, wait a minute," and scrunch up their face. "Do you mean like giving joy? I mean, why are you talking about happiness?" I get a couple-page letter from a pastor telling me why I shouldn't write on the subject of happiness and all of that.

But for unbelievers, they see the appeal of it because that's what they long for. But look at Jesus. He's called the Man of Sorrows, which people point out, but that's in Isaiah 53, and it's specifically in relationship to his redemptive work, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

He's pierced for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and all of that. But even that redemptive work was done for the joy set before him, according to Hebrews 12. So if we picture Jesus going around in perpetual sadness or anger and grumbling and looking to condemn more than to extend grace, then we're really not seeing the Jesus of the Bible.

Children were attracted to him, by the way. Who are children attracted to? They're not attracted to unhappy people. When people today are saying, "Well, I've got the joy of Jesus way, way deep in my heart, even though my life is pretty miserable," it's like, "Well, you know what? I think that joy needs to work its way to your face once in a while." After all, we are called to rejoice in the Lord always, and again, I say rejoice.

And God, if he were not happy, would not call us to be happy. And furthermore, if God were not happy, he could not be the source of our happiness, because God can't give us what he doesn't have. We are to value joy, happiness, gladness, delight, precisely because our God is characterized by that, and the gospel we preach to people should be a gospel of a holy God, yes, but also a happy God.

Yes, amen. Passages like 1 Timothy 1:11 and 1 Timothy 6:15 explicitly tell us that God is happy or blessed, as most translations put it. You know, I heard you recently argue in another interview somewhere that all the times in the Bible that talk about God delighting in someone or something means that God is essentially joyful because he is always postured to delight.

That's a fascinating point you make. Exactly, because, you know, who delights? A person who has the capacity to delight and the desire and orientation to delight. A person who delights in delighting, who is pleased by pleasure, who is happy in happiness. Yeah, that is so insightful. And, you know, some theologians say that God's wrath is the flip side of his love.

So if there's no love in God, there's no wrath. They both come together. Anger against sin is the flip side of his desire, then, for his creation to rejoice. Would you say that? Yes, absolutely. Because I think the very fact that he is unhappy with sin is an indicator that sin is what robs people of happiness.

So he is happy with that which is not only in conformity to his holy standards, but that which is in conformity to his happiness and delight. He wants the best for us. He wants sincerely for us to participate in his happiness. And his joy and his delight and sin is the enemy of all that.

Yes, it sure is, Randy. Thank you for your time. We're talking about Randy Elkhorn's new book, Happiness, my pick for the book of the year in 2015. And tomorrow I'm going to ask Randy, how does worry and anxiety poison our joy? I'm your host Tony Reinke. I'll see you tomorrow on the Ask Pastor John podcast.