1 John 1:4

1 John 1:4

The Joy of the Lord and its Fulness.

I. Joy, as it is commonly understood and exemplified among men, is a tumultuous feeling, a quick and lively passion or emotion, blazing up for the most part upon some sudden prosperous surprise and apt to subside into cold indifference, if not something worse, when fortune threatens change or custom breeds familiarity. All the joy of earth partakes more or less of that character, for it is dependent upon outward circumstances, and has no deep root in itself. Even what must in a sense be called spiritual joy may be of that sort. Such joy is like "the goodness which, as a morning cloud and as the early dew, goeth away." It is Christ's joy that is fulfilled in him who is truly and heartily the "Bridegroom's friend." Christ's twofold joy: (1) His joy as the Bridegroom possessing the bride and (2) His joy as the Son possessing the Father.

II. This joy, "His joy," is to become ours; it is to "remain in us." "Our joy is to be full" by "His joy being fulfilled in us." Let us notice first the reality and then the fulness of this fellowship or partnership of joy between Christ and us. Christ would have His joy to be really ours. First, in His standing with the Father He calls us to share, and, secondly, He makes us partakers of, the very same inward evidence of acceptance and sonship as He Himself had when He was on earth; and, thirdly, we have the same commission with Christ, the same trust reposed in us, the same work assigned to us. The chiefest element of Christ's joy is that He is "meek and lowly in heart"; and therefore "His yoke is easy, and His burden is light" so easy, so light, that we may count it joy to bear them. We must share that meekness of His, that lowliness of heart; we, like Him, must be emptied of self, for no true joy is or can be selfish.

III. The reality of this joy, Christ's own joy remaining in us, may now be partly apparent. But who shall venture to describe its fulness? "That My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." Misery ends and fulness of joy comes when we think, and feel, and wish as God does. Therefore fulness of joy may be ours, ours more and more, when "beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord," this glory of His being the Father's willing Servant and loyal Son, "we are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

R. S. Candlish, Lectures on First John,p. 18.