Joy

Article III in the 2022 Advent Devotionals series

Recently, I have been really into word etymologies. Something about tracing a word back through time to find its roots feels like discovering a treasure that is just barely out of sight. There’s a lot of richness to language and in the study of the history of words.

When thinking about the advent theme of joy, I found myself wondering about the word’s origin. It’s a pretty simple word from an orthographic perspective: three letters, one syllable. And yet, as a concept, joy is anything but simple, even as current usages of the word often dilute its meaning. In the Old Testament, the concept of joy is used over a hundred times, with fifteen different Hebrew words for joy. In the New Testament, eight different Greek words represent this concept. In English, we are much more limited. You could chalk that up to either English’s lack of proper vocabulary for the concept or the aforementioned simplification and misunderstanding of the word in our language, or both.

The word for joy most commonly used in the New Testament in the Greek is the word χαρά which is also translated as “delight” or “gladness”. In the Greek, the root word χαρ- means “to lean towards” or “to be favorably disposed,” so joy can be translated as “the awareness of God’s grace” or “grace leaned into” which is a very different lens through which to see joy (Strong’s Greek).

Many people wrestle with the idea of joy, wondering how they can be joyful in a genuine way when they are weighed down by the burdens of this sinful world. Often this is the result of a conflation of joy and happiness, which happens particularly in the western world when the God-given right to pursue happiness and the commercialization of instant gratification become ingrained in our minds. It’s hard to look at a character in the Bible, like Paul who suffered imprisonment and persecution, and understand how he was joyful when happiness seems improbable. Thankfully, joy is not happiness and thus is not based on circumstance. Instead, joy is an awareness of the grace of God, and further, a leaning into that grace.

My church is focusing on the Heidelberg Catechism this month as we think about advent. These first two questions were sent out as I was in the process of writing; I end with them because I think they sum up well the idea of leaning into the grace of God as joy in this season leading up to Christmas:

Q& A 1: What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has delivered me from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, also assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Q&A 2: How many things must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort?

A. Three: first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am delivered from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance.

This article is part of a series. For more articles in this series, see below.

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