John 16:19–22 (ESV) Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him, so he said to them, "Is this what you are asking yourselves, what I meant by saying, 'A little while and you will not see me, and again a little while and you will see me'? 20 Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21 When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. 22 So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.
A vision of the resurrection life is the key to maintaining joy. Our values will often be at odds with the flow of thought in the rest of the world. Just being a pleasant and agreeable person will not solve every relational challenge. There are substantial convictional differences among those who worship Jesus, and those who do not. Disciples of the Lord Jesus, and there is no other kind of Christian, no other kind of actual believer, will be at odds with the spirit of the world. Every problem does not come down to a communication issue. Every problem does not boil down to a simple misunderstanding. Some conflicts are real and will not be resolved through negotiation.
There will be times when the world will rejoice, and God's people will weep. Jesus took great care to prepare his disciples for the difficulty that they were about to face, but the principle holds true throughout the time between then and the return of Jesus. "Truly, truly, I say to you," Jesus says. Applied for now and stated in the way we would talk he was saying, "make no mistake, don't think that you will not be at odds with the way many people in your life think. You will be sorrowful at the precise time that other people are rejoicing. But your sorrow will turn into joy."
There was a particular sense in which this was true for them in that moment. They were already sad. Jesus was telling them he was leaving. They had no capability of grasping what was coming, even though Jesus had told them. Likely if he had been less cryptic and spelled it out in more detail, it probably would not have mattered, no matter how many more words he used. They could not see it. They could not see beyond clinging to the moment they were in. The greatest catastrophe they could ever imagine was going to end up with a dramatically different outcome than what they were expecting.
For them, Jesus pointed forward to the moment of his resurrection to give them hope. For us, we look back to the moment of resurrection. God intends that we live with active real time faith in the resurrection that creates for us a baseline level of joy that cannot be taken away. They were dramatically relieved and joyful in the moment of the resurrection appearances that would come later. But surely there were days to come when they would struggle and would also need to look back to the resurrection just as we do. They faced a level of despair in those minutes just before Jesus was arrested without the resources that you and I have. But we know their story. We can see how that all ended. We know that the worst thing that ever happened became the greatest thing that ever took place.
And so he said to them and to us also, "you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you." The way that we can live in this reality of no one being able to take our joy from us or no circumstance being able to take our joy, is in us living in the resurrection reality of seeing the Lord Jesus. With the eyes of our heart, we follow the steps that they took. We live through these moments with them. We walk with them through their despair, and we experience the life-giving joy that they experienced. Jesus revealed himself and they had a radically altered perspective from that point on. That radically altered perspective is the secret to living a life where no one can take our joy from us. It's not that they won't try. It's that neither they nor our circumstances, will be incapable of doing so, regardless of what happens.
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