Holiness and Happiness.
'The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.'--Rom. xiv. 17.
'The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Ghost.'--Acts
xiii. 52.
'Then Nehemiah said, This day is _holy_ unto the Lord: neither be
ye sorry, for the _joy_ of the Lord is your strength. So the
Levites stilled the people, saying, Hold your peace; for the day
is _holy_; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their
way to make great _mirth_, because they had understood the
words.'--Neh. viii. 10-12.
The deep significance of joy in the Christian life is hardly understood.
It is too often regarded as something secondary; whereas its presence is
essential as the proof that God does indeed satisfy us, and that His
service is our delight. In our domestic life we do not feel satisfied if
all the proprieties of deportment are observed, and each does his duty
to the other; true love makes us happy in each other; as love gives out
its warmth of affection, gladness is the sunshine that fills the home
with its brightness. Even in suffering or poverty, the members of a
loving family are a joy to each other. Without this gladness,
especially, there is no true obedience on the part of the children. It
is not the mere fulfilment of a command, or performance of a service,
that a parent looks to; it is the willing, joyful alacrity with which it
is done that makes it pleasing.
It is just so in the intercourse of God's children with their Father.
Even in the effort after a life of consecration and gospel obedience, we
are continually in danger of coming under the law again, with its, Thou
shalt. The consequence always is failure. The law only worketh wrath; it
gives neither life nor strength. It is only as long as we are standing
in the joy of our Lord, in the joy of our deliverance from sin, in the
joy of His love, and what He is for us, in the joy of His presence, that
we have the power to serve and obey. It is only when made free from
every master, from sin and self and the law, and only when rejoicing in
this liberty, that we have the power to render service that is
satisfying either to God or to ourselves. 'I will see you again,' Jesus
said, 'and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy shall no man take from
you.' Joy is the evidence and the condition of the abiding personal
presence of Jesus.
If holiness be the beauty and the glory of the life of faith, it is
manifest that here especially the element of joy may not be wanting. We
have already seen how the first mention of God as the Holy One was in
the song of praise on the shore of the Red Sea; how Hannah and Mary in
their moments of inspiration praised God as the Holy One; how the name
of the Thrice Holy in heaven comes to us in the song of the seraphs; and
how before the throne both the living creatures and the conquering
multitude who sing the song of the Lamb, adore God as the Holy One. We
are to 'worship Him in the beauty of holiness,' 'to sing praise at the
remembrance of His Holiness;' it is only in the spirit of worship and
praise and joy that we fully can know God as holy. Much more, it is only
under the inspiration of adoring love and joy that we can ourselves be
made holy. It is as we cease from all fear and anxiety, from all strain
and effort, and rest with singing in what Jesus is in His finished work
as our sanctification, as we rest and rejoice in Him, that we shall be
made partakers of His Holiness. It is the day of rest, is the day that
God has blessed, the day of blessing and gladness; and it is the day He
blessed that is His holy day. Holiness and blessedness are inseparable.
But is not this at variance with the teaching of Scripture and the
experience of the saints? Are not suffering and sorrow among God's
chosen means of sanctification? Are not the promises to the broken in
heart, the poor in spirit, and the mourner? Are not self-denial and the
forsaking of all we have, the crucifixion with Christ and the dying
daily, the path to holiness? and is not all this more matter of sorrow
and pain than of joy and gladness?
The answer will be found in the right apprehension of the life of
faith. Faith lifts above, and gives possession of, what is the very
opposite of what we feel or experience. In the Christian life there is
always a paradox: what appear irreconcilable opposites are found side by
side at the same moment. Paul expresses it in the words, 'As dying, and,
behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making
many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.' And elsewhere
thus, '_When_ I am weak, _then_ am I strong.' The apparent contradiction
has its reconciliation, not only in the union of the two lives, the
human and the Divine, in the person of each believer, but specially in
our being, at one and the same moment, partakers of the death and the
resurrection of Christ. Christ's death was one of pain and suffering, a
real and terrible death, a rending asunder of the bonds that united soul
and body, spirit and flesh. The power of that death works in us: we must
let it work mightily if we are to live holy; for in that death He
sanctified Himself, that we ourselves might be sanctified in truth. Our
holiness is, like His, in the death to our own will, and to all our own
life. But--this we must seek to grasp--we do not approach death from the
side from which Christ met it, as an enemy to be conquered, as a
suffering to be borne, before the new life can be entered on. No, the
believer who knows what Christ is as the Risen One, approaches death,
the crucifixion of self and the flesh and the world, from the
resurrection side, the place of victory, in the power of the Living
Christ. When we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into His
death and resurrection as ours; and Christ Himself, the Risen Living
Lord, leads us triumphantly into the experience of the power of His
death. And so, to the believer who truly lives by faith, and seeks not
in his own strugglings to crucify and mortify the flesh, but knows the
living Lord, the deep resurrection joy never for a moment forsakes Him,
but is his strength for what may appear to others to be only painful
sacrifice and cross-bearing. He says with Paul, 'I glory in the cross
through which I have been crucified.' He never, as so many do, asks
Paul's question, 'Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'
without sounding the joyful and triumphant answer as a present
experience, 'I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' 'Thanks be to
God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ.' It is the joy of a
Present Saviour, of the experience of a perfect salvation, the joy of a
resurrection life, which alone gives the power to enter deeply and fully
into the death that Christ died, and yield our will and our life to be
wholly sanctified to God. In the joy of that life, from which the power
of the death is never absent, it is possible to say with the Apostle
each moment, 'As dying, and, behold, we live; as sorrowful, yet always
rejoicing.'
Let us seek to learn the two lessons: Holiness is essential to true
happiness; happiness essential to true holiness. _Holiness is essential
to true happiness._ If you would have joy, the fulness of joy, an
abiding joy which nothing can take away, be holy as God is holy.
Holiness is blessedness. Nothing can darken or interrupt our joy but
sin. Whatever be our trial or temptation, the joy of Jesus of which
Peter says, 'in whom ye now rejoice with joy unspeakable,' can more than
compensate and outweigh. If we lose our joy, it must be sin. It may be
an actual transgression, or an unconscious following of self or the
world; it may be the stain on conscience of something doubtful, or it
may be unbelief that would live by sight, and thinks more of itself and
its joy than of the Lord alone: whatever it be, nothing can take away
our joy but sin. If we would live lives of joy, assuring God and man and
ourselves that our Lord is everything, is more than all to us, oh, let
us be holy! Let us glory in Him who is our holiness: in His presence is
fulness of joy. Let us live in the Kingdom which is joy in the Holy
Ghost; the Spirit of holiness is the Spirit of joy, because He is the
Spirit of God. It is the saints, God's holy ones, who will shout for
joy.
And _happiness is essential to true holiness_. If you would be a holy
Christian, you must be a happy Christian. Jesus was anointed by God with
'the oil of gladness,' that He might give us 'the oil of joy.' In all
our efforts after holiness, the wheels will move heavily if there be not
the oil of joy; this alone removes all strain and friction, and makes
the onward progress easy and delightful. Study to understand the Divine
worth of joy. It is the evidence of your being in the Father's
presence, and dwelling in His love. It is the proof of your being
consciously free from the law and the strain of the spirit of bondage.
It is the token of your freedom from care and responsibility, because
you are rejoicing in Christ Jesus as your Sanctification, your Keeper,
and your Strength. It is the secret of spiritual health and strength,
filling all your service with the childlike happy assurance that the
Father asks nothing that He does not give strength for, and that He
accepts all that is done, however feebly, in this spirit. True happiness
is always self-forgetful: it loses itself in the object of its joy. As
the joy of the Holy Ghost fills us, and we rejoice in God the Holy One,
through our Lord Jesus Christ, as we lose ourselves in the adoration and
worship of the Thrice Holy, we become holy. This is, even here in the
wilderness, 'the Highway of Holiness: the ransomed of the Lord shall
come with singing; the redeemed shall walk there; everlasting joy shall
be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness.'
Do all God's children understand this? that holiness is just another
name, the true name, that God gives for happiness; that it is indeed
unutterable blessedness to know that God does make us holy, that our
holiness is in Christ, that Christ's Holy Spirit is within us. There is
nothing so attractive as joy: have believers understood it that this is
the joy of the Lord--to be holy? Or is not the idea of strain, and
sacrifice, and sighing, of difficulty and distance so prominent, that
the thought of being holy has hardly ever made the heart glad? If it has
been so, let it be so no longer. 'Thou shalt glory in the Holy One of
Israel:' let us claim this promise. Let the believing assurance that our
Loving Father, and our Beloved Lord Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, who in
dove-like gentleness rests within us, have engaged to do the work, and
are doing it, fill us with gladness. Let us not seek our joy in what we
see in ourselves of holiness: let us rejoice in the Holiness of God in
Christ as ours; let us rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. So shall our
joy be unspeakable and unceasing; so shall we give Him the glory.