When the New Testament writers use the word joy, what they are referring to is “delight,” “cheerfulness,” or a “calm gladness.” So joy is a settled frame of mind and a fixed orientation of the heart: it is a solid state of contentment and confidence. Joy is not something superficial and external: it is not just a happy demeanor or a smiling face. Joy is something that is deep within, is not fickle, and doesn’t leave quickly. For the Christian, their source of joy is God Himself, who fills His children with joy (Romans 15:13).
Take note that joy is not happiness. Happiness is a human emotion that any person can experience without God. Happiness is something shallow that is typically contingent on situations or other people. In modernity, many people are “happy” but have no joy because they are on the fast track to hell. Consequently, a Christian could have every reason to be unhappy based on their situation but be full of joy because they know God is 100 percent for them and will work out all things for good (Romans 8:28). A Christian can be full of joy yet have a face full of tears. This is what James was alluding to when he wrote (1:2), “Consider it all joy, my brothers and sisters, when you encounter various trials.” Only the Christian can have genuine spiritual joy because they know in eternity future, all the bad will turn out for good and all the good will turn into permanent, heavenly bliss.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22) and one of the many gifts that the Holy Spirit graces to us through sanctification. So how does a Christian improve their joy? Well, because joy is a fruit of the Spirit, the source of joy is God. No one can fake joy or produce it by themselves. Accordingly, with a focus on Christ, we are intentional about intimacy with the Spirit, who cultivates spiritual fruit in our lives. The specific means God has provided to cultivate joy are His Word, prayer (private and corporate), and meditation on His promises. The person who effectively uses these means sincerely trusts in the God who ordained them.
Additionally, Colossians 1:11–12 tells us something interesting: that joy has specific ingredients. Yes, joy is a fruit, but the tree that produces the fruit of joy takes root in particular soil. That soil has two crucial ingredients: perseverance and patience. Thus, you can’t have joy without its crucial ingredients. I will unpack and explain this point in what follows. As I said, our focus will be on Colossians 1:11, but let’s back up and start at verse 9. Colossians 1:9–12 states:
For this reason, we also, since the day we heard about it, have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all perseverance and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (italics mine)
Paul begins this text by saying, “For this reason, we also, since the day we heard about it.” What’s the reason? What did “we” hear about? The apostle is referring to what he said in verses 3 and 4: “We give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you have for all the saints.” In other words, Paul heard about the true faith of the Colossians, and because of their fruitful faith, Paul prayed for them—and what is Paul specifically praying for? He tells us in verses 9–10:
[A]sking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
In short, Paul is praying that their inward faith will manifest in wisdom, a holy life, and spiritual fruit. Paul continues, in verses 11–12, to tell us about his prayer requests. These are the verses where we will focus the rest of our attention. The apostle says:
[S]trengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all perseverance and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. (italics mine)
According to the logic of the verses, the apostle prays that God will strengthen the Colossians. Why? Because they are weak and need strength. What will people who are strengthened attain? Perseverance and patience. For the strengthened person who attains perseverance and patience, what will their life look like? They will have joy and cheerfully give thanks to the Father (verse 12). So, what Colossians 1:11–12 tells us is that divine power begets perseverance and patience and that perseverance and patience beget joyful thanksgiving. The crucial lesson to understand here then is that God has provided an open door so that His children may look to Him and receive joy, but joy will only grow when nourished by perseverance and patience.
Now before you make any prayer requests, let us ensure you have a solid understanding of what perseverance and patience are.
Perseverance. Perseverance can also be translated as longsuffering or being (literally) long-tempered. Longsuffering is thus the opposite of being short-tempered. According to Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary, “[Perseverance] is that quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation which does not hastily retaliate or promptly punish; it is the opposite of anger, [is] associated with mercy, and is used of God (Exodus 34:6).”
Perseverance can be loosely thought of as being able to bear other people, specifically the sins they commit against you. The person with perseverance suffers long and does not respond to sin with sin. The perfect example of One who is longsuffering is God, who, with each and every moment, bears the stinking heap of countless abominations committed against Him. God does not lash out in an uncontrolled rage because He is longsuffering. In contrast, the one who does not bear being sinned against is quick to anger because they are thinking about themselves and how they have been wronged. They want something—whether it be vengeance, compensation, or an apology—and their short-suffering will not be quenched until all their demands are satisfied. No one needs a lesson in short-suffering because that’s how we tend to respond by our fallen human nature. No person has perseverance naturally, which is why it must come from God. Furthermore, the closer a Christian gets to the Lord, the more they appreciate that if God was as short-tempered and easily offended as we are, salvation would not exist, and the story of humanity would have ended in Genesis 3.
That’s the first crucial ingredient to joy. Now we move on to the second.
Patience. Patience (or endurance) refers to the ability to passively “remain under” something like a trial, a persecution incident to service in the gospel, a God-ordained chastisement, or undeserved affliction. Patience can also refer to actively persisting in well-doing. Patience can be loosely thought of as remaining under situations or things as opposed to bearing other people. It’s crucial not to miss that patience only grows under trials. James 1:3 mentions “knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.” An impatient Christian is thus merely an untested Christian. No one ever learns patience unless they have to wait for or endure something.
Again, according to Vine’s, “Patience is the quality that does not surrender to circumstances or succumb under trial; it is the opposite of despondency and is associated with hope.”
Now if I’ve explained perseverance and patience properly, it should make perfect sense why they are the crucial ingredients of joy. They are both focused on God, who is an eternal and overflowing fountain of joy. Hence, the only way a person can have legitimate delight with a settled frame of mind and a fixed orientation of the heart is if they are fixed on something that is fixed. Joy is never situation grounded or self-grounded; it is always God grounded, and that God-centeredness will prove to be the most resilient in times of trial. Neither perseverance nor patience is focused on the self, whose heart is a black hole of never-ending dissatisfaction. It’s no wonder then why joyless people tend to also be angry, bitter, and vindictive—because all they find is continual dissatisfaction while focusing on the person in the mirror. The person who has perseverance and patience has joy because in all things and despite all things, by faith they are assured and comforted that God remains sovereign, good, faithful, kind, and immanent and will keep His own until the end.
In Colossians 1:11, there’s a reason why the apostle Paul prayed for the church at Colossae: that they would be built up by divine power. The apostle writes:
For this reason also . . . we . . . have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be . . . strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for the attaining of all perseverance and patience. (italics mine)
Consequently, the person who has perseverance and patience is who they are because they have been strengthened by God: the joyful person is thus characterized by inner strength. Contrast this to the joyless person, who is characterized by inner weakness: they lack perseverance, tend to be merciless and angry, are quickly frustrated and are retaliate even faster. They are also impatient and are quick to quit when things get tough. Because the joyless, impatient person is inwardly weak, they are dependent on external provisions to support their fragile hearts: like other people who must respond in pre-selected ways, like schedules that have to be followed down to the minute, or like circumstances that must bend to their desires. If those external supports do not comply, the response is rage. Truly, they do not appear to be weak when they unleash their wrath with zealous outbursts, convicting threats, and harsh criticisms of the offenders who crossed them. However, all that hullabaloo masks weakness: lashing out is easy and demands very little inner strength of character. However, perseverance and patience demand tremendous inner strength that will continually look to God for acceptance and love despite rejection, ridicule and unjust treatment from others. That strength will also nudge them forward even when the challenges seem insurmountable. This is why God must strengthen us so that we can respond like Christ and not merely react with our flesh.
To reiterate the central point of this episode, while joy is a fruit of the Spirit, joy’s crucial ingredients are, number one, perseverance and, number two, patience. Therefore, do not expect joy without seeking both perseverance and patience, and do not seek perseverance and patience without the strengthening of Yahweh. As with everything else in our Christian life, our strength comes from God.
This brings us back to the beginning of our Scripture focus: Colossians 1:9. The apostle Paul was praying for the Colossians. Specifically, he was asking God to empower them with the perseverance and patience that the Christian life requires. Yes, strengthening with perseverance and patience is “according to [God’s] glorious might,” but the apostle doesn’t mean that it takes just divine power to make a person longsuffering and patient. What the apostle does mean is that faith is the conduit through which God’s power for perseverance and patient flows to us. The Holy Spirit causes all Christians to be spiritually fruitful through hearing with faith (Galatians 3:5), and prayer is the most tangible outward expression of inward faith. Thus, those who sincerely trust God will cry out to Him, and the Lord is faithful to respond with His divine power. Those who trust the Lord find joy because the closer a person is to God, the more and more satisfied they are in Him. From that deep, inward satisfaction overflows as joyous gratitude. You see, the joyful person is also a deeply thankful person. They are thankful about all the wonderful things God has already given His own: like salvation, the sanctification of the Spirit and a heavenly inheritance that will endure forever. Are you not thankful that God has already gifted you the most valuable treasure of all-time?
I will end with two quotes on joy from Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The first is as follows:
God has ordained it so that a spiritual man is wretched without the love of God in his heart. If you and I want present happiness without God, we had better be sinners outright and live upon this world than try to be happy in religion without communion with Jesus. Present happiness for a genuine Christian in the absence of Christ is an absolute impossibility. We must have God, or we are, of all men, most miserable.
The second quote is as follows:
Let the soul obey God. Let it be holy, pure, gracious. Then is it happy and truly living, but a soul sundered from God is a soul blasted, killed, destroyed; it exists in a dreadful death. All its true peace, dignity, and glory are gone; it is a hideous ruin, the mere corpse of manhood. The new life brings us near to God, makes us think of him, makes us love him, and ultimately makes us like him. My brethren, it is in proportion as you get near to God that you enter into the full enjoyment of life—that life which Jesus Christ gives you and which Jesus Christ preserves in you. “In his favor is life” (Psalms 30:5).
Dr. C. H. E. Sadaphal