Doctrine of Inner Happiness and Negative
Volition; 3 John 2b-3
3 John 1:2 NASB Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper
and be in good health, just as your soul prospers.
Psalm 31 is a psalm of David. We are not told what the
particular circumstances were, it was just a time when he was feeling
overwhelmed by circumstances, perhaps pursued by enemies or perhaps it may have
come later in life during the Absolom revolt; we do
not know. We do know that many of these psalms strike a cord with us, the resonate in our soul because we go through similar
situations in life where we feel attacked, assaulted by circumstances or people
or situations. In verse 7 we see a positive statement from David. NASB
“I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness, Because You
have seen my affliction; You have known the troubles of my soul.” Adversities
attack the soul. This particular psalm is called a lament psalm because it
focuses on a particular problem. This lament psalm begins with a trustr section.
Psalm 31:1 NASB
“In You, O LORD, I have taken refuge [put my trust]; Let me never be
ashamed; In Your righteousness deliver me.” So he starts off by reflecting in a
somewhat intimate way in prayer to the Lord. He is basically telling the Lord
that He is the one he has confidence in, “Don’t let me be ashamed.” In other
words, don’t miss this opportunity, Lord; don’t for get about me, I am putting
all my trust and confidence in you but don’t embarrass me in this situation. He
recognises this appeal to the integrity of God: “In your righteousness deliver
me.” He is appealing to the righteousness and justice of God to deliver him in
the midst of this adversity. Then there is a plea in verse 2.
Psalm 31:2 NASB
“Incline Your ear [pay attention] to me, rescue me
quickly; Be to me a rock of strength, A stronghold to save me.” David says
there is a time factor here, Lord, let’s speed things up a little. He appeals
to God to be a rock and a fortress and then in the next verse: “For You are my rock and my fortress; For Your name’s sake You
will lead me and guide me.” In the first section he is appealing to God to
deliver him, then he reaches a doctrinal conclusion.
Psalm 31:4 NASB
“You will pull me out of the net which they have secretly laid for me, For You are my strength. [5] Into Your hand I commit my
spirit; You have ransomed me, O LORD, God of
truth.” This is one way the psalmist approaches the problems of adversity.
In Psalm 42 we see another
reflection on the problems in the soul. Again, this is a lament psalm where the
psalmist is in the midst of some sort of pressure situation from adversity, and
we see how he turns to the Lord.
Psalm 42:5 NASB
“Why are you in despair, O my soul? And {why} have you become disturbed within
me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him {For} the help of His presence.”
What does he mean by disturbed? In the Hebrew it is the qal
perfect of hamah which means to roar. He is talking about his
soul. “Why are you roaring within me?” This is a man who is under distress. He
is under so much pressure he is screaming on the inside. “Hope [be confident]
in God” is where the shift takes place in this psalm from the focus on the problem
to the focus on the solution.
At the beginning of the
psalm the psalmist reminds God of his desire for Him. Psalm 42:1 NASB
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul
pants for You, O God.
Psalm 42:4 NASB
“These things I remember and I pour out my soul within me” He is not sleeping
at night, he just thinks about these things; they go through his thinking over
and over again. We go through circumstances like that in life where we just
think about them over and over, we find it difficult to sleep at night, we
can’t relax. This is what
Psalm 55:22 is talking about: “Cast your burden upon
the LORD and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be
shaken.” The idea of casting cares upon Him is the idea of abandoning problems
to God. David hasn’t reached that point yet in Psalm 42:4. It is only by
disciplining ourselves to continue through the process that we learn to grow;
we learn to trust God in that process, it doesn’t come easily.
Psalm 42:6 NASB
“O my God, my soul is in despair within me; Therefore I remember You from the land of the
Psalm 42:9 NASB
“I will say to God my rock, ‘Why have You forgotten
me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?’” See the
honesty here. He is honest about the fact that he is feeling defeated,
depressed and discouraged but he has not lost the focus.
Psalm 42:10 NASB
“As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me, While
they say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’” Then he comes back to the
refrain again. [11] “Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become
disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him, The help of my
countenance and my God.” It is learning to wait on the Lord. Christian
happiness and tranquillity is not saying everything is going well when it is
not. That is called denial. What we see here is that honesty with the fact of
the circumstances in my life is pure hell but somehow God is going is going to
resolve the circumstances. Romans
We could summarise by
saying that the central enemy of our soul is negative volition toward God.
Negative volition manifests itself in a lot of different ways. It is simply
ignoring doctrine; it is just not a priority. A lot of people who are negative
haven’t rejected Christ as their Saviour, they haven’t rejected anything that
they have come to learn through the Word, but they show up in church once a
week or once a month, or once every three or four months; doctrine isn’t a
priority. That is not positive volition. Positive volition is an enthusiastic
passion to learn doctrine, to realise that if we are not getting it every day
life isn’t going to be right. It is a hunger and a thirst. As
the psalmist said: “My soul thirsts for thee.” That is what positive
volition is. Negative volition is not simply being antagonistic to the Word, it is just not making it the highest priority in life.
Negative volition keeps us from being able to properly handle the details of
life, the adversities of life, and avoid stress that destroys the soul.
John says: “Beloved, I
pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your
soul prospers.
We have seen that joy is
not to be based on circumstances, happiness is not to
be based on people, on emotion. So what is going on here when John says, “I was
very glad and [rejoiced greatly] when brethren came”? Didn’t he have joy
already? Sure he did.
The doctrine of happiness as a
problem-solving device
The words for happiness. chara
[xara], which
means joy, delight or happiness. This is the word found most of the time
in the New Testament for joy. It can refer just to an emotional exuberance or
to that inner stability and tranquillity that is provided uniquely through God
the Holy Spirit. The second word that is used for joy is agalliasis [a)galliasij] which
has a more exuberant concept and is usually translated “exaltation,” “exuberant
joy,” or “gladness.” This is someone who is excited. Then the third word that
is used in the New Testament is euphrosune
[e)ufrosumh], the eu prefix always
means something well, something good, something positive, and this word has to
do with a state of mind, so it is talking about a very pleasing or pleasant
state of mind. It is usually translated like the other two, either joy or
gladness. These are the main words used, and then there is a fourth word found,
macharios [maxarioj] which means blessed or happy. The concept of
blessing is really much broader than happiness and the word “blessing” in both
the Hebrew and the Greek is a term that is somewhat abstract and difficult for
us to get our mental fingers around. Probably the one word that comes close is
to communicating it best is the concept of happiness. There are many passages
in the Word which convey the idea that “Blessed is the man who meditates on the
Word of God day and night,” emphasising the fact that ultimate blessing comes
from the Word of God. Happiness itself is the opposite of sorrow or sadness. At
least that is how we usually think of it.
We
want to set up a juxtaposition where we are either happy or are in a state of
sorrow, but this is superficial thinking. So often Christians think, “I became
a Christian and I thought I was going to be happy because the Lord was going to
give me happiness and joy, and ever since I got saved you wouldn’t believe the
things that I’ve had to go through.” That is a problem with a superficial
gospel that is presented and it is also a problem with a superficial
understanding of biblical joy and happiness. To bring this out we need to look
at the Greek words for sorrow, the first being lupe
[luph] which means grief, sorrow, sadness or heaviness of
soul. It is used in Romans 9:1, 2 where Paul is writing to the Romans. NASB
“I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with
me in the Holy Spirit,
Three
categories of happiness
The
first is simply emotional happiness. It is not the kind of happiness that is
the fruit of the Spirit which Jesus Christ bequeathed to us. It is nothing more
than emotional happiness and is Satan’s counterfeit to genuine happiness
designed to confuse and distract people from the genuine stability that is
promised us as the real joy produced by the Holy Spirit. Emotional happiness is
always transient and fleeting, it is driven by circumstances and by our own
biorhythms. This kind of happiness can never produce stability, tranquillity or
contentment and it is a terrible barometer of how we are doing in life. The
myth that Satan tries to promote is that people’s possessions and pleasant
circumstances can make us happy. Satan’s propaganda is that the details of life—money,
success, pleasure, social life, public approbation, fame or material
things—make us happy. While these things can provide a legitimate level of
enjoyment and pleasure and we might have a lot of exuberance over these things
and get quite excited about the stimulation they bring it is not the happiness
that is the happiness provided by God the Holy Spirit. We always have to
remember that if we are dependent on any person or set of circumstances for
happiness then we become a slave to that person, that emotion, or that set of
circumstances. If we think that things have to be a certain way in order to be
happy, then what we are saying is that those who control those circumstances
control our happiness. What Scripture teaches is that happiness is a product of
God the Holy Spirit as a result of our volition, it is based on a state of mind
that is controlled by doctrine and orientation to grace and to doctrine which
produces orientation to reality. Happiness that we have from the Lord is
happiness despite our circumstances, not based on our circumstances.
A
second category is what might be called human good happiness. The reason for
saying that is because unbelievers can have a measure of stability,
tranquillity and happiness in life. It doesn’t come from the Holy Spirit so
therefore it can only come from the sin nature—not personal sin, so it must be
human good. Human good happiness is derived from simply compliance with the
laws of divine establishment, with good morality and ethics. Someone with a strong
work ethic is going to be successful. That is going to bring a certain measure
of stability and tranquillity in life. This is a result of someone who has a
certain level of personal honour and integrity. It is not something that is
produced by God the Holy Spirit but is produced through orientation to
establishment principles. But human good happiness is still the temporal
happiness of the unbeliever. It is not permanent, it comes and it goes. It is
still a restricted and temporary happiness, a product of the flesh and is
vulnerable to environment and negative circumstances.
The
third category of happiness is related to God, to who God is and alignment with
His plan for our life. This is the happiness that is produced by God the Holy
Spirit—inner happiness or spiritual happiness, spiritual stability. It involves
contentment, tranquillity and stability. It derives from God who produces it as
part of the fruit of the Spirit. This happiness was modelled for us in the
humanity of Jesus Christ during the incarnation. What do we know about this
kind of happiness? It is a state of the soul, it is a mental attitude that is
not an emotion, not pleading; it is a result of positive volition toward
doctrine and thinking in terms of God’s plan for history and our life and is
not based on thinking about something we don’t have, ought to have, or
something someone can do for us. It is not people faith. So many people think
they have to have so many friends or social life to be happy. That is why there
are so many churches that major on a social life. Happiness comes from
thinking, from learning and applying Bible doctrine.
Unhappy people try to find
happiness through control of their environment in some way. If our happiness
isn’t based on a mental attitude then our happiness is going to have to come
from our environment somewhere or from the circumstances around us. So what we
try to do then in order to be happy is to control the people and the
circumstances and situations around us. People like this try to control their family,
friends and loved ones in a number of different ways. One way is by arousing in
them a guilt complex or guilt reaction for their behaviour. Another is through
arousing pity. A third way is by manipulating and manoeuvring behind the scenes
to make sure that everyone acts and behaves the way they want them to and says
what they want them to say when they want to say it. But that is a pseudo happiness and doesn’t have any kind of stability at
all.
The kind of happiness that
God provides is a problem-solving device. It helps us handle adversity,
situations and circumstances. It protects us from becoming disillusioned in
three areas. Sometimes we can become disillusioned regarding the circumstances
of life. We don’t have the money, the job, the resources, the friends that we
think we ought to have. Philippians
Sometimes we become
disillusioned with other people around us, and other believers, and so Hebrews
12:2 applies: NASB “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and
perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising
the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Happiness,
therefore, is related first to finding a right relationship with God and begins
only with salvation. This is why the psalmist said in his confession in Psalm
51:12 NASB “Restore to me the joy of Your
salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit.” We can’t have real joy if we
are not in right relationship to God. Then this expands through our learning of
Bible doctrine. In Nehemiah 8 Nehemiah and the priests stood up all day and
read from the Scriptures. The people stood up with them all day long, and
afterwards this was their response: “All the people went away to eat, to drink,
to send portions and to celebrate a great festival, because they understood the
words which had been made known to them.” From the learning of the Word they
then rejoiced and had a tremendous celebration. Therefore we have to understand
that true happiness is found only through grace. Grace orientation is crucial
to happiness. Psalm 31:7 NASB “I will rejoice and be glad in Your lovingkindness [grace in
action], Because You have seen my affliction; You have known the troubles of my
soul.”