Daily Devotionals

Devotional: March 21st

JOY UNSPEAKABLE AND FULL OF GLORY

Whom, not having seen, ye love; on whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls. - 1 Peter 1:8-9

It is a proof of the low average of Christian life that this language seems to most commentators all too wide and exuberant to describe the ordinary Christian. But the Apostle is speaking about the ideal type, about the possibility; and if the reality of an average Christian experience does not come up to that, so much the worse for the experience. It does not affect the possibility in the very slightest degree. I admit the language is strong. But, as we have already remarked, it is not so difficult to explain the strong epithets as applied to the possibilities of Christian joy, even here, as it is to break up a sentence so compactly knit as this into two halves, one referring to this side of the grave and the other to the world beyond.

But notice that, whatever maybe the depth and greatness of this joy, Peter clearly anticipates that it is to be simultaneous with the " heaviness arising from manifold temptations."

The two emotions may subsist side by side, neither neutralizing the other, nor the bright and the dark so blending as to make a monotonous grey. But the occasions for sorrow may be keenly felt, and the joy which comes from higher springs may none the less possess the soul. The separate existence of the two extremes rather than their coalescence in an apathetic middle state is best. Paul’s apparent paradox is a deep truth, "as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing."

And then the language of Peter reminds us that the gladness which thus belongs to the Christian life is silent and a transfigured "joy unspeakable and glorified," as the word might be rendered. " He is a poor man who can count his flock," said the old Latin proverb. Those joys are on the surface that can be spoken. The deep river goes silently, with equable flow, to the great ocean; it is the little shallow brook that chatters amongst the pebbles. And so all great emotion, all deep and noble feeling is quiet; as Cordelia, in the play, says, she can " love and be silent," so we at our happiest must be glad and silent. If we can speak our joy, it is scarcely worth the speaking. The true Christian gladness does not need laughter nor many words; it is calm and grave, and the world would say severe. " The gods approve the depth and not the tumult of the soul."

The true Christian joy is glorified, says Peter. The glory of Heaven shines upon it and transfigures it. It is suffused and filled with the glory for which the Christian hopes, like Stephen when " God’s glory smote him on the face " and made it shine as an angel’s. Joy may easily become frivolous and contemptible, and there is nothing more difficult in the conduct of life than to keep gladness from degenerating and from corrupting the character. But the effect of Christianity, even on the common human joys, is to exalt and dignify them, besides the effect in giving the joys proper to itself which are in their very nature exalted and exalting. It changes, if I may so say, the light, fluttering Cupids of earthly joys, with flimsy butterfly wings, into calm, grave angels with mighty plumes.

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