THE JOY OF THE SON
[p. 93] THE JOY OF THE SON
In venturing to suggest the consideration of the joy of the Son one is conscious of very limited capacity, and this creates a great sense of dependence. But there is something peculiarly attractive in the subject itself, and especially when we see how the Lord’s words to His own, and even His words to the Father, were uttered for the purpose of making His joy known to us so that it might be in us. This applies particularly to what fell from His lips after the Supper, as recorded in John 13 - John 17. No doubt the company amongst whom He was represented the assembly, and what the Lord said in their midst He said as having the assembly in view, so that we see here the kind of spiritual impressions which would accompany the presence of the Lord in the assembly. An honoured servant of the Lord used habitually to read these chapters before being found with his brethren “in assembly”.
When we see that the Lord’s intent in what He said was that His joy might be in the saints of the assembly it gives a distinctive character to all His utterances, and concentrates all the varied rays of divine light which shine in those utterances in one bright focus. They are all to make known to us the joy of the Son, and to put it in us — that is, in those who compose the assembly. One wonders whether we have quite seen it all as centring in this?
This stands in very intimate relation to our knowledge of the Father. These chapters bring out clearly that the joy of the Son is to take a place with the Father outside the world in which His own can have a place with Him. It is the joy of His love to have our companionship in that place. He “came to earth to make it known, that we might share His joys”. The true blessedness of our place with the Father is wonderfully enhanced as we see it to be the joy of the Son to go and prepare it for us. All is looked at in John 14: 2, 3, as the Son’s doing — the place prepared, the coming again, the reception to Himself, the being with Him — all is done by the Son, and He would have us to know that His joy consists in having brought it about. There would be no Father’s house without the Son, and no revelation of God as Father without the Son. The Son’s joy will be to have His own in the place in the Father’s house which He has Himself prepared, and to which [p. 94] He Himself will receive them. If it is the Son’s joy to do it all how great the Father’s joy in it all! Everything in His house speaks to Him of the One whom He loves, and into whose hand He has given all things. In all this there will be full joy for the Father and the Son.
Then He speaks (John 14:6-11) of the Father having been seen in Him. This, too, was His joy. He was in the Father, drawing all from Him, and He would have us to believe Him that this was so, but if not to believe Him for the works’ sake themselves. This would lead us to consider the works done by Jesus — particularly in this gospel — as the Father’s works. The Father would bring in fulness of joy where it had to be admitted that there was no wine, chapter 2. The Father would answer a heart in sorrow by relieving it of its distress, chapter 4. The Father would relieve man of all his weakness, chapter 5, and satisfy his hunger, chapter 6, and give him sight, chapter 9, and bring him out of death’s domain, chapter 11. The conditions here brought out what the Father was in a way it could not be known in heaven. All that was the Son’s joy. We learn the Father here in Jesus. We must not look at the varied conditions which He met in His blessed pathway here merely as the result of man’s sin — though that they surely were — but as opportunities for the Son to have joy in expressing the Father. His purposes of love were not seen in the works, but in giving men a part and place with the Son in the Father’s house. But His revelation in grace as the Father was seen in Jesus here, so that the gospels stand alone in a peculiar glory which will never be seen in the same way again. There were three-and-a-half years during which the Father was seen in Jesus, and did works which brought out His blessed nature and character in presence of all the evil conditions here. The Father was seen by mortal eyes. The immense character of the revelation may be gathered from the fact that, if all the things Jesus did had been written one by one, John supposed that not even the world itself would contain the books written. My impression is that it is all written in heaven in the hearts of those who saw the works done. We have only a very small part recorded of what Jesus did as having the Father abiding in Him to do the works, but not a bit of the mighty volume will be lost, and all went to make up the joy of the Son.
His doing whatsoever we shall ask in His name that the Father may be glorified in the Son (John 14: 13, 14) is [p. 95] another element in His joy. It is part of His joy that His obedient lovers should have the Comforter. Then He has joy in coming to His saints so that they are not left orphans during the time of His absence from the world, and He has joy in manifesting Himself to faithful hearts. Then in chapter 15 His joy lies in the fact that He becomes the Source of fruit for the Father. The vine being used in this connection suggests that the fruit which the Father delights in is the joy of His saints; this is the new wine which cheers God and man (Judges 9: 13). This would be confirmed by the Lord’s words, “that my joy may be in you, and your joy be full”. As this comes about I believe the Father’s portion is secured. Another element in the Lord’s joy is the delight He has in loving His own complacently. “As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you: abide in my love”, John 15: 9. This is clearly a complacent love, for it is as the Father has loved Him. It is therefore conditional; it was so even in His case. “If ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love”, verse 10. He has a peculiar joy in His saints as those who keep His commandments: obedient lovers are the only ones who afford Him this joy, or who really abide in His love. Nothing ought to affect our hearts more than to think we can minister to His joy, and, in so doing, have His joy in us. He looks that we shall be powerfully affected by the thought of His joy, and that it shall be in us as a mighty influence, bringing about that our joy is full. It must be admitted that very few saints know what it is habitually to have their joy full. Our feebleness in service and testimony largely results from our lack of this. All believers have Some joy, but God’s thought is that our joy should be full, and that it should be consequent on the joy of the Son being in us.
Then the Lord would have us to regard His wonderful words to the Father in chapter 17 as an utterance of joy, having for its object that His joy may be fulfilled in us. “And these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in them”, verse 13. One would not think of attempting to compass all that constitutes the joy of the Son as referred to here, but we may note some of its deep springs.
In the first place He asks to be glorified that He may glorify the Father. He speaks from the standpoint of having glorified the Father on the earth, and completed the work which the [p. 96] Father gave Him to do. He had brought to completion what could be done on earth, but He had before Him a continuous glorifying of the Father which required that the Father should glorify Him in order that He should bring it about. It is now as glorified that He gives effect to every thought of divine love, and thus glorifies the Father. The Father has given Him authority over all flesh in view of full blessing being brought in for men. The divine position at the present time is that the Son has rights in grace over all flesh. The bearing of Jesus being glorified is as wide for blessing as was the bearing of Adam’s sin. The Father can be known in full blessing in spite of sin and death having come in. Looking at things as they are publicly here we might think that sin, or death, or Satan had authority over all flesh, but it is the Son who has it, and He is exercising it in giving life eternal to all that the Father has given Him. A sovereign act of the Father is needed to secure to the Son a company to whom He gives life eternal. This is the Son’s joy, too, as we may see in Luke 10: 21: “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth, that thou hast hid these things from wise and prudent, and has revealed them to babes”.
The Father is glorified as men are brought into the knowledge of Himself in the infinite grace which can set aside the power of sin and death, and bring in life eternal. At the very beginning God thought of something superior to a life of innocence amidst the good of the garden of Eden, for He put the tree of life in the midst of the garden. But the fulfilment of what was promised, if we may so say, in the tree of life awaited the coming of Jesus Christ as the Father’s sent One. Then the Father was glorified on the earth in respect of all that had come in, so that He might be known in the supremacy of His grace, not only atonement to cover sin, but all done to disclose the Father. Eternal life and sonship for men are two great thoughts of divine love, and it is the joy of the Son to secure them. They have been brought into manifestation in Christ, but were not available for men in their full blessedness until He was glorified, because neither could be the portion of men without the Spirit.
It is the joy of the Son to be glorified as Man along with the Father with the glory which He had along with the Father before the world was, John 17: 5. That glory was not new to Him, for He had it before the world was, but it was new that [p. 97] He should have it as Man. It was the Father’s prerogative to confer it upon Him as One who had become flesh, but who was now going to the Father. It was to add its ineffable lustre to Him as Man; it was now to be brought into conjunction with all that He had accomplished on behalf of the Father, and with all that He would accomplish as the Father’s glorified One. That glory is now His in the mediatorial position, as having had it accorded to Him by the Father, and it is a deeply essential element of His joy.
As regards the men given Him out of the world by the Father it was His joy to have manifested to them the Father’s name. Manifesting refers to what He set before their eyes in His own blessed Person; the Father’s name was objectively presented to them in its fulness of grace in the Son, for it had been given to Him for revelation, verse 11. Manifesting would refer to what they saw. He said, “The Father who abides in me, he does the works”, chapter 14: 10. What a manifestation there was in them! But making known the Father’s name would refer, I think, to what they heard. He communicated to them the words which the Father had given Him (verse 8); as a result of those spiritual communications they kept the Father’s word, and knew that all things that the Father had given Him were of the Father. They had received the communications, and knew truly that He came out from the Father, and they had believed that the Father sent Him.
The “men” saw in Jesus One who was in relationship with God as His Father, and they had a sense that the Father’s love rested upon Him. The last verse of the chapter shows that the making known of the Father’s name brings the love with which He loved the Son into those to whom it is made known, and they are to have such a glory that the world will know that the Father has loved them as He loved Christ.
It is clear that keeping the Father’s word, and knowing as in verses 7 and 8, conveys the thought of great spiritual intelligence. I believe in saying these things the Lord is anticipating the Spirit’s day, and the result of the Spirit’s formation. The “men” were, in His eye, representatively, the assembly — all that should believe through their word being linked up with them in the Lord’s mind and heart. Had He been thinking of them as not having the Spirit, there would surely have been [p. 98] some reference to the Spirit in the prayer.