The Christian’s Broken-Hearted Joy
As I’ve been contemplating the events this week commemorates, I’ve found a quote by Jonathan Edwards to be helpful: “The Christian’s joy, even when it is inexpressible and full of glory, is a humble, broken-hearted joy.
How complex true Christian experience is! As we gaze at the cross and consider the unimaginable suffering the Son of God endured for us, how can we not mourn over our deep sinfulness, which made this terrible moment necessary? Yet as we consider the love of God that Christ’s death reveals to us and, even more, as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection victory over Satan, sin, and death itself, the only reasonable response can be deep, overwhelming gladness.
Keeping together the two poles of this “broken-hearted joy” is difficult. We tend either to fixate on our sinfulness and lose sight of the joyful news of God’s grace, or we become so accustomed to the idea that God loves us that we begin to forget how unworthy of it we are. But if we don’t hold on to both truths, we can’t see either of them clearly: we are not able to acknowledge our sin if we do not know forgiveness, and we cannot see the extent of God’s love unless we see our unloveliness.
“Holy Week” (as it is sometimes called) gives us the opportunity to dwell at length on both of these, as we move through the darkness of Friday into the sheer brilliance of Sunday. Reflecting this movement is the aim of Trinity’s two church services. The tone of Good Friday will be rather somber, as we gratefully grieve over the death of our Savior. Then on Easter we will seek to enter together into the elated astonishment over Jesus’ decisive defeat of sin and death. Our prayer is that they will work together to draw us more deeply into that deep and real broken-hearted joy of Christian maturity.
