joy & affliction

Joy & Affliction

~ notes and meditations from a sermon by Douglas Wilson ~

An unrepentant heart and unconfessed sin can disrupt joy. 

Another disruptor of joy can be affliction. 

In 2 Corinthians 6.3-10, St. Paul offers his resume, showcasing the reality of affliction in his own life and saying, in the same breath, that he is sorrowful yet rejoicing. Life with Christ is no walk in the park, and God isn’t a genie in a bottle whose biggest priority is to give us our hopes and dreams on a silver platter. Those who teach that membership in God’s family results in a rose garden experience of life turn a blind eye to the fact that the strongest and most devoted saints have undergone trials and tribulations that often make ours pale in comparison. 

Having God on your side doesn’t give you a Free Ride out of life’s inevitable tragedies and afflictions. Joy, however, isn’t dependent on life’s circumstances. We must be careful to define joy. Douglas Wilson is adamant that genuine biblical contentment isn’t a trivial, bubblegum type of joy; it isn’t “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” all the time. Rather, biblical joy is bedrock that goes a thousand feet down and is grounded in a deep satisfaction in the will of the sovereign God who orders all things according to His purpose and for our good. 

This kind of joy isn’t affected by life’s events. A fickle, superficial joy doesn’t fare too well in the face of what life has on offer. This world is a messed up place. Trials are trials. Cancer is cancer. Death is death. Some Christians try to say that these things—disease, death, and destruction—aren’t really that bad after all. No, they ARE that bad. They are REAL storms. But if you have a strong house, you can stand against the storms. 

True biblical joy is built on a cliff facing the sea. The storms will come, but the house will stand. Joy in the midst of affliction isn’t stoicism; joy doesn’t pretend that things aren’t so bad after all, or that there’s no storm buffeting the house. We see in 2 Corinthians 6.3-10 that Paul gets over his afflictions by getting under the One who is in control. We must affirm the biblical testimony: God sends both rain and drought, health and sickness, life and death. In the words of Job, “Are we to accept only the good things out of God’s hand and not the bad?” God, in His providence and control, either dictates all that happens or permits it to happen. Either way, we can rest in His sovereignty: He is in control, and nothing comes to pass that He doesn’t decree or permit; everything He decrees or permits is for His glory and for our good. We find joy by resting in this truth and trusting that the God who sends the rain knows what He is doing. 

Paraphrasing Thomas Watson, Wilson says, “Sometimes we lose perspective on our trials when we focus on the one who brought the trials rather than on the One who sent them.” The idea that God can send affliction into our lives doesn’t rest well with us. Affliction from the hand of God may make us doubt His disposition towards us, but it only shows that God’s concerns are different than our concerns. God’s chief concern is His glory; our chief concern is our glory. God cares about who we are as people; we care about our life going according to plan. God’s at work in our lives for our good, but that doesn’t mean He has the same agenda we have. God sends trials into our lives, using them to further conform us to Christ and to mold us into the sort of people He wants us to be. God has a plan for all of us, and that plan is summed up like this: “that we may be like Christ.” THAT is His plan for our lives, and He uses all of life’s good and bad to chisel us into the people He desires us to be.

God is our fortress, and He sends the tempest, often so that we will simply seek refuge in Him. When we run to Him, the affliction is still affliction. Pain is still pain. Disease is still disease. The challenges are still challenges. The situation is what it is; joy enables us to come at the situation differently, but it doesn’t in and of itself change the circumstances. Afflictions can tear at our joy when we focus on the afflictions rather than on the One who sent them; by resting in God’s providence and sovereignty and trusting that He knows what He’s doing (even if it’s not what we expect or want Him to do), we can experience the joy and peace of God that surpasses all understanding.