Joy - What is It Really?

In the church today there is much talk of the “joy of the Lord.”  Be filled with the joy of the Lord is a common directive as someone is praying for a depressed or seemingly unhappy person.  This is also commonly referred to as entering in.  And if that person begins to laugh, to enter in, especially uncontrollably, the minister believes that God has touched him or her with the joy of the Lord.  Is this what joy really is?  Is it laughing hysterically in the middle of a church service or is it something much deeper and much more satisfying than the giggles or a good belly laugh?

I looked up the English definition of joy and from the various sources, I believe that a simple common definition would be an emotion or a state of felicity caused by something good or really satisfying.  From what I can comprehend, the expression of joy, i.e. laughter is actually gaiety.  The joy is the condition of the heart from which gaiety or laughter can break forth, however, laughter is not a conclusive indicator of joy.  Proverbs 14:13 says, “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and the end of that mirth is heaviness.”

The Biblical definitions in Hebrew and Greek are much the same as the English interpretation.   There are different words to convey different aspects of gladness and the expression of exceeding joy Biblically is more often associated with leaping.  However, generally they are similar.

In Galatians 5:22, we see what is called the fruit of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.   It is interesting to me that joy and self-control are not contrary to one another because they are both fruit.  Is frenzied, disruptive, disorderly laughter during Biblical teaching really a fruit of the Spirit then?  This kind of manifestation has always been rationalized by the passage from Acts 2:13 where it says that some people thought those who were filled with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost were drunk with wine and the apostle Peter answers them by saying, “These men are not drunk as you suppose.”  Much has been made of that scripture to justify almost any kind of weird behavior in the church.

However, the scripture does not say they were rolling around wildly laughing, or barking, or roaring, or any of the other behaviors we are told today are manifestations of the Holy Spirit.  The Bible says that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled.  And later in Acts 2:11-13, the Bible says, ‘“…we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues! Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”  Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”’  And then Peter explains the phenomenon as a fulfillment of a prophecy of Joel – sons and daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions, old men will dream dreams, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.  There is no mention of laughter or acting like a drunken fool. 

And most importantly, when Peter was preaching, explaining what this was all about, the people were “cut to the heart” (not giggling, not guffawing, not barking, not jerking all over the place) and responded to Peter’s warnings and supplications.  About three thousand people repented, were saved, and baptized that day.

There are a couple of scripture passages that stand out to me as really defining the fruit of the Spirit of “joy.”  In Acts 5, the apostles are brought before the Sanhedrin (the Jewish ruling council in Jerusalem), are flogged, and then ordered not to speak in the name of Jesus.  The scripture then states in Acts 5:41  “The apostles left the Sanhedrin, full of joy because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.”  These guys had just been flogged.  Flogging is getting beaten with a whip, was not fun, and was extremely humiliating.  I seriously doubt that the apostles were having a good belly laugh over it.  What happened was that the Holy Spirit filled them with such a sense of well-being, purpose, and truth that they were exceedingly glad.  They were exulting because they had suffered disgrace for Jesus and that was a great honor.  Theirs was a state of bliss even in their physical suffering and threats of further violence if they disobeyed.  Their faith and the love of Christ overcame fear and pain.

The other scripture that captured my heart is Hebrews 12:2-3 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.  Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”  Was that joy just a good, cleansing laugh?  Not at all.  That joy is the salvation of men and women, the redemption of the entire creation from sin.  That is the joy that Christ carried in his heart and that is the joy that we should carry in our hearts as Christians.  We should also be looking ahead to the same joy because we know that if we are obedient to truly follow Christ and do what he wants us to do, we will endure scorn, shame, and opposition from sinful men.  The joy of their salvation, not just ours, is what supersedes weariness, depression, self-pity, and vanity.

Those of you who think that it’s okay to be disruptive during the preaching of the Word of God don’t realize that you are aiding and abetting the devil because he doesn’t want people to hear the Word.  The last service I went to where there was out of control behavior and laughing, even from the preacher, I have no clue as to what he was speaking about because it was so broken up and rambling.  He was laughing, the people were laughing, and really it was unproductive and not conducive to learning anything.  I looked around and I thought, “We are such shallow creatures and very self-absorbed.  We want to please ourselves and not God.  Where is the ministry in keeping with the fruit?”