Pursuing Joy
6 min read
8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)
John 20:8-9
The “other disciple” is John, who wrote the Gospel. It was normal for authors to refer to themselves anonymously in the third person in the ancient days. But in verse 8, it’s not clear as to what John “believed,” because verse 9 tells us that they (meaning, all of them) did not understand that Jesus had to be resurrected. So probably he was saying that he believe Mary’s testimony that the body was no longer there, and that’s all.
After traveling and living and ministering with Jesus for three years, after all that they had witnessed Him do and heard Him say, they still could not understand that Jesus had to be resurrected from the grave.
But we have to be comfortable with not fully understanding everything. We have to be comfortable with the mystery that is yet to be revealed.
On the other hand, I must be absolutely sure about the historical, literal fact of Jesus’s resurrection from the grave. There can be no Christianity without the resurrection.
I must also be absolutely confident in the future historical fact of Jesus’s return. But that is in the future, and so there is much greater mystery surrounding Jesus’s second coming than the first.
In an odd kind of way, Christians ought to be obsessed with the second coming of Christ without being obsessed with exactly when that is going to happen. How that plays out for us is to live our lives for Christ and His future and not for ourselves and our future.
That does not mean that we should not pursue education and career and family and home and even leisure. What it means is that the reality of Jesus coming back is the main thing that determines our values and our priorities.
Sooner or later, we discover that all the things that we pursue based on the values and priorities of the world are ultimately empty and meaningless (Ecclesiastes!). Hopefully we all come to that realization. Because if we do not, then we really have completely fallen for Satan’s great lie. And in that case, whatever “joy” that we can feel is found in pursuing those meaningless things.
But when the veil is removed and the meaninglessness of all those worldly pursuits is revealed, then it becomes possible for our joy to be found in pursuing and following Christ and Christ alone. That’s what God wants for us, because that’s what’s best for us.
For the Christian, the shifting of where our joy comes from becomes the source of our greatest struggles, because that seismic shift involves reorienting our lives around pursuing Christ instead of pursuing the things of the world—even the good things of the world. In fact, Tim Keller and others have observed that it is the pursuit of the good things of this world that can actually prevent us from pursuing the best thing, which is Christ.
If the joy of pursuing Christ does not seem worth the struggle of reorienting our lives, we will abandon that pursuit of finding joy in Christ and Christ alone.
It’s exactly like exercise. If the joy of pursuing health does not seem worth the struggle, we will abandon the joy of pursuing good health.
And not that we shouldn’t pursue good health. We should. But learning to find joy in the pursuit of Christ is infinitely more important and significant. And that is the case for everything that we value and prioritize in this world.
Father, You have given us a way that is good for us. And yet I so easily stray and go my own way. Make the reality of the return of our Lord be so real to me that finding joy in pursuing Him is the most natural instinct in the world for me. In Jesus’s name. Amen.
