Whatever may be the impression produced by these words, no one can read them attentively, and be indifferent to the admonition they convey. They speak to our most real life, a life of mingled sunshine and shadow; and they speak in the name of a religion which is divinely holy and solemn. They have a marvellous power in awakening feeling, and if we could but know the emotion they excite in each of us, we should find them to constitute a perfect test of our actual experiences, as well as of our religious condition. In any religious assembly, there must of necessity be two widely different states of feeling. Some souls are happy, and others are depressed. To the first class, the words before us come with sweetness, adding joy to joy; to the second, they come with pain, the pain of contrast and of longing. Hence the question might be asked, “To whom are they addressed? Are they spoken to the happy alone? Must they be suppressed when we speak to the sad or to the miserable?” They are addressed neither to the one class alone, nor to the other alone. They were spoken to all hearts in the Philippian church, without distinction of condition; and without distinction they are also spoken to us. If there be any special stress in them at all, it is when they are addressed to the sorrowing, as we shall see by-and-by. The words themselves supply a hint as to how this may be. The joy that is recommended is “joy in the Lord.” It is therefore a Christian joy; and those to whom the apostle recommends it, whatever may be the diversity of their circumstances, are first of all, last of all, anyhow, under any condition, Christians. Paul knows that joy is an inevitable consequence of the possession of true Christianity in the heart, that it is the natural outcome of Christian faith, that it ought to be a pervading experience of the Christian soul through all the forms and circumstances of its life. And so he offers the same exhortation to all. Nor is it a recommendation merely: it is a command, and it strikingly takes its place among the great Pauline precepts. For the proof of this, turn to these precepts as we have them at the close of his first epistle to the Thessalonians. (See chap. v. 14-22.)
No one will suppose for a moment that the exhortation to rejoice can be applied in any sense to unbelieving men, to men of the world, to the ungodly. Granting that they have a joy peculiarly their own, it is of such a nature, and is so conditioned by the life of every day, that it would be cruel to bid them “rejoice evermore.” The worldling has too many disappointments, struggles, and cares, for a permanent and unbroken joy such as that. He may think himself fortunate for rejoicings that come now and then! Besides, how could Paul recommend a rejoicing which is not “in the Lord,” which is the only rejoicing possible to the unbeliever? Paul’s joy is consistent with every duty of the religion he preached; but to that religion the unbeliever is opposed. His rejoicing cannot be acceptable to the Lord. It is spurious. It has no true, substantial source. To such a man the apostle might rather have said, “Weep!” Christian joy is an inheritance closely fenced around; and hard as it seems to enjoy any good things in which others cannot share, we must say, “Unbelieving men and women, it is not for you.” The way here is through the strait gate, and along the narrow road.
No joy can be “joy in the Lord” which does not contain the following elements—
1. Purity. The objects that excite it must be pure. It must be free from all carnality and from all sin; it must spring from the soul’s sympathy with God, with His truth, with His goodness. Holy in its objects, it becomes a sanctifying power.
2. Calmness. It is freedom from turmoil of heart, from disquietude of life. It suffuses our feeling and our conduct with peace—peace that “flows like a river.” Hence, it is the condition of a quiet, steady Christian experience.
3. Seriousness. It does not depend on self-forgetfulness, or on a forced thoughtlessness. It is deepest in the most reflective, and is strengthened in all by an honest and habitual self-examination.
4. Humility. There is a sort of arrogance and self-sufficiency in worldly joy. Christianity puts man in his true place, and teaches him to refer all his peace to God.
5. Love. Love to man and to God; the latter as the natural effect of gratitude, the former from deep pity for his spiritual destitution, or from sympathy in a common experience of happiness.
6. Permanence. It is not a fitful, occasional, moody thing. Secondary sources of joy may fail, but God, the primary Source and Giver of all joy, remains; and the relationship between the believer and Him abides, so that the grounds of peace and of hope are everlasting.
Now it is clear that these are not the elements of a worldly joy. We do not care to reduce all that joy to a common level, and to say that it is invariably and equally destitute of all these qualities of purity, calmness, seriousness, humility, love, permanence. It is enough to say that it is not “joy in the Lord.” It does not consciously or actually spring from Him; it is not maintained by communion with Him; and it does not pay to Him its tribute of love, consecration, and praise.