Finding the Root of Joy
Introduction
I am a pretty bad gardener. I consistently kill plants, both indoors and out. Even the plants labeled “easy care” or the ones you find in lists of “Top 10 hardy houseplants” are often reduced to dry sticks in my care. I bring a plant home, and I think “this time, I am going to keep this plant alive!” I watch it closely, and at the first sign of lagging health, I spring into action. I increase fertilizer in the water. I move it to get more sunlight. I prune dead leaves or even whole branches. I pluck dead flowers. Eventually, the entire plant is looking so sad and on the verge of death that I go to Google. The first thing I always read is “check the roots.” Inevitably, this is the problem. Over-watered, and underpotted, my plant has languished while I have cared for every other part of it except the most necessary. In fact, I have almost always made the problem worse in an attempt to cure it.
As we examine our own Christian life, we are often in danger of making the same error as I do in my gardening. We rightly identify a problem in our life. Maybe we are struggling with contentment and joy. Maybe we have a sin issue we cannot overcome. Maybe we have made a poor decision, and we are struggling to deal with the consequences of those choices. Regardless, we identify the problem in our life, and we spring into action. We work harder. We do more things. We “pluck leaves and clip branches” in our life, all the while letting the real problem continue, and sometimes even making it worse.
The book of Philippians is often called the Epistle of Joy. The apostle Paul wanted the people of Philippi to experience joy in their Christian journey, and it seemed to be eluding them. Instead of jumping in on the fruit and the leaves of their Christian life, Paul keeps pulling their attention back to their root. Three times in chapter 2 alone, Paul brings them back to Christ.
Jesus’ perfect obedience, death, and resurrection united us to Him. Sometimes when we use good confessional terms like “imputed righteousness” we can get a picture in our head of a ledger book in which Jesus’ sacrifice is written down beside our name. It is credited to our account in a bookkeeping way. Instead, scripture tells us time and again that our salvation joins us to Christ in a mystical union. We do not have Christ’s righteousness assigned to us in some theoretical way. It is really ours because we are in Union with Christ. Paul comes back time and again to the root of joy in our Union with Christ Jesus. Our joy is rooted in sharing the mind of Christ, receiving the indwelling work of Christ, and participating in the fullness of Christ.
We Have the Mind of Christ
Philippians 2 opens with a string of imperatives, or commands to action. Read alone, it can seem like a stream of machine-gun fired things to do, coming one on top of another before you can even catch your breath from the last one.
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:1-4 ESV)
It’s easy to go through this list like a checklist of obedience, “love, check. Full accord and unity, check. No conceit, check.” All we need to get this joy thing looked after is some elbow grease and a whole lot of self-deception. The second we look up from reading this we have to come face to face with the reality of how self-centered our interests are. We feed ourselves the deception that we are focused on our kids, or our commitments, or our husbands, or our job, or our church, or our parents, or our schooling, or, you fill in the thing. But start a conversation about pet peeves, and immediately we come face to face with our own interests and preferences. The things that drive us the most crazy – balled up socks left everywhere but the hamper, blatant and obvious grammatical errors in print, another driver moving too quickly or too slowly and hampering an otherwise possible left-hand turn. You get the point. These things are all focused on self. They are far too trivial and come up too frequently for us to entertain for long the notion that we are primarily focused on the interests of others.
This list does not stand alone for exactly this reason. The moment we begin to focus on the fruit in this list, Paul draws us back to the root.
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:5-11 ESV)
Often when we consider the sufferings of Christ we want to jump immediately to the physical and spiritual pain and suffering of the cross. Paul clearly includes that in this passage, but it isn’t the whole of what we understand when we consider Christ’s lowering himself. Question 27 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism asks and answers it this way:
Q 27: Wherein did Christ's humiliation consist?
A: Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time.
When we consider Jesus’ humility we are considering that from the moment his physical body was conceived in Mary’s womb, until the resurrection, Jesus was debasing himself. The entire period of his physical, earthly life was suffering, emptying, humiliation. During that time, the 2nd person of the godhead, the Son, was still God. All things were still in him and through him, and sustained by him. The wind and waves obeyed Him all the time, and around the globe, not just when he dramatically demonstrated it for his disciples. He was feeding the multitudes the entire time, not just when thousands watched Him do it on Galilean hillsides. He was always God, but He was also man. His body was finite, bound by natural and religious laws of His own creation, mortal, weak, completely human. Even if Jesus’ physical body was, as some suggest, the strongest, buffest, most physically fit human body ever made, it would still have been so far beneath His divinity as to be considered humiliation.
In fact, there is no human comparison to be made to Christ's humiliation, so why would Paul root our humility in this? How could we aspire to something so impossible for us? Paul tells us that we should have this mind of humility and focus on others because it is already ours in Christ Jesus. Christ the Son emptied himself, setting aside the glory due Him as a person of the Godhead. If we are in Christ, we will do nothing out of self ambition, or conceit because the same Christ who did not consider his own divinity, has given us His mind. When Paul tells us to be of the same mind, it is not my mind, or your mind, or John Calvin’s mind, but Christ’s mind that we share. When he calls us to the same love, it is the love of Christ, the same spirit is the Spirit of Christ, the same purpose is the purpose to which Christ calls us.
The beauty of Christ’s total sacrifice on our behalf is not just some elaborate example to which we should aspire. That very sacrifice was made for us, and also given to us. We abandon our self-interest, pride, discord, and selfishness by turning back, time and again, to the beauty, and the enormity of what Christ has done. The deeper we look into Christ’s humiliation, the less we consider ourselves. Can we share the mind of Christ who did not consider His equality with God, and be concerned for our own preferences, comfort, or conveniences? Consider the trivial things we say are robbing us of joy: the balled socks, open cupboard doors, and right-of-way violations. Is it the mind of Christ that elevates those things to such prominence in our minds?
The deeper we gaze into the beautiful mystery of Christ’s incarnation, the more we turn, like Paul, away from us, and into the worship of the exalted Christ.
“that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11 ESV)
This is the joy to which Paul calls the Philippian church and the joy to which he calls us.
Christ is at Work in Us.
Compared with the holy humility of Jesus, our own sin is a fearful and terrible thing. We would have no joy at all if we were given just the mind of Christ to see and discern our own sin, but were left alone to fight against it. As we consider those annoyances and inconveniences driven from our own pride, not the mind of Christ, Paul reminds us of another essential element of our union with Christ.
“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:12-13 ESV)
Our obedience comes because God himself is presently and actively at work within us. The exalted Christ has not forgotten His own. We are united to Christ and receive not only his mind, but also his power, at work within us, “both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” Union with Christ does not only change our direct obedience, it also works actively to change our will. We are not brought into union with Christ to be little androids, obeying the orders being inserted into our programming. God is actively changing our desires, giving us the want to go with the work.
I really love John Calvin’s commentary on this passage in which he says Paul “represses drowsiness as well as confidence. . . . The Holy Spirit, calls us to consider, that he wishes to work upon living organs, but he immediately represses arrogance by recommending fear and trembling”. We see the interconnection here between bearing the mind of Christ through our union with Him, and the Spirit at work within us to will and to work. If it is God who works all obedience within us, we cannot think of ourselves highly. How can we operate from selfishness, or empty conceit when the very desire to obey comes not from ourselves, but from God. Within this root of union with Christ, we find rest, and joy in the finished work of Christ.
Our Union to Christ is Union to One Another
But notice an essential element of this entire passage, and really of this entire book. Paul calls them to make his joy complete through their obedience, both in verses 1 and 2, and in verses 16 – 18. He calls them to be of one mind, one love, and one accord with each other. Not only does Paul tell them his joy is linked to them and their faithfulness, he tells them that they cannot have joy apart from each other. Remember that the deeper we look into the beauty of Christ’s humiliation, the less we will consider ourselves? It is also true that the deeper we look into Christ’s humiliation, the more we will love Christ’s church. We cannot experience the fullness of joy without the church.
Ephesians 1: 22 – 23 says, ”And he [God the Father] put all things under his [God the Son’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. (ESV)
If our joy is rooted in Christ, then it is found in its fullest within the church which is described as the fullness of Christ. Our union with Christ is not, primarily as an individual, and neither is the joy found through our union with Christ. When we are united to Christ, we are united also to every other. Again, this is not in some theoretical “we’re all in the same book of life” way. We have spiritual union with each other because we are in Christ. Yes, individually we possess the mind of Christ, and individually we have the power of Christ at work within us both to will and work for His good pleasure. But also, together, as the church, we have the mind of Christ, and the power of Christ at work within us. Our joy in Christ is realized in the church, not when things look the way we want, or when people behave the way we think they should. Our joy in Christ is made full because we are called to have the mind of Christ who emptied himself for the Church whom He calls His fullness.
Ladies, this retreat is called One Accord, I presume from this passage of scripture. Are we? Are we seeking accord by seeking the mind of Christ? Are we seeking the good of our sisters in Christ, and sister congregations over our own good, and our own congregations? Are we grumbling and disputing about and with each other, or are we corporately a shining light to our culture, our towns, our Presbytery, our Synod? If Paul were in this room, would he say of us, like he says later of Euodia and Syntyche, that we have been laboring for the gospel? Or would he say of us what he says in Philippians 2:21, “. . .they all seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ”?
When we talk about joy it is really easy to “cultivate” joy the way I have cultivated plants. We look to the fruit of our joylessness – our grumbling, our complaining, the things or people we think are causing our grumbling or complaints. We clip away activities. We change locations. We do everything on the surface except examine our roots. True joy can only be rooted in our union with Christ.
