JESUS CHRIST-JOY
The
religion of Christ is the religion of joy. Christ came to take away our sins,
to roll off our curse, to unbind our chains, to open our prison house, to
cancel our debt; in a word, to give us the oil of joy for mourning, the garment
of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Is not this joy? Where can we find a joy
so real, so deep, so pure, so lasting? There is every
element of joy – deep, ecstatic, satisfying, sanctifying joy – in the gospel of
Christ. The believer in Jesus is essentially a happy man. The child of God is,
from necessity, a joyful man. His sins are forgiven, his soul is justified, his
person is adopted, his trials are blessings, his conflicts are victories, his
death is immortality, his future is a heaven of
inconceivable, unthought-of, untold, and endless blessedness. With such a God,
such a Savior, and such a hope, is he not, ought he not, to be a joyful man?
Octavius Winslow
To be in
Christ is the source of the Christian’s life; to be like Christ is the sum of
His excellence; to be with Christ is the fullness of His joy.
Charles Hodge
I bear my
testimony that there is no joy to be found in all this
world like that of sweet communion with Christ. I would barter all else there
is of heaven for that. Indeed, that is heaven. As for the harps of gold and the
streets like clear glass and the songs of seraphs and the shouts of the
redeemed, one could very well give all these up, counting them as a drop in a
bucket, if we might forever live in fellowship and communion with Jesus.
C.H. Spurgeon
I’m a hedonist because I believe it is impossible
to desire pleasure too much. But I’m a Christian
hedonist because I believe the pleasure we cannot desire too much is pleasure
in God and all that He is for us in Jesus.
Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries,
2004, p.27. www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
You weren’t
created for boredom or burnout or bondage to sexual lust or greed or ambition
but for the incomparable pleasure and matchless joy that knowing Jesus alone
can bring. Only then, in Him, will you encounter the life-changing,
thirst-quenching, soul-satisfying delight that God, for His glory, created you
to experience.
Sam Storms
One Thing, Christian Focus, © Enjoying God Ministries, 2004, p.18. www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
Believer! is
not this the source – the proper source of your joy – that Jesus lived, and
suffered, and died for you – that He paid “all that great debt” you owed to law
and justice, and washed away the foul stain of your guilt, in His own most
precious blood?
John MacDuff
The Throne of Grace, Alexander Strahan Publishers,
1865.