Robbed of joy? Or joy being made complete?
Anytime God writes that He will do something or that something will happen, you can be sure that nothing can stop that from happening if God had said it will happen. I meditate on all the "will" happenings to be God's promises that are certain and immovable since they are in the future tense. They mean that although they are not happening now, they will happen inevitably, which is as good as saying that they are happening. For example, although I am 28 years old now, I will be 29 years old soon enough, without a doubt, and therefore it would be safe to say that my being 29 is happening.
(Jesus confirms):
"So you also have sorrow now.
(No one needs sorrow to be felt or understood because it is here and we all have it.)
(Jesus promises):
But I will see you again.
(Our futures hold this in store for us. This is certain.)
(Jesus promises):
Your hearts will rejoice,
and no one will rob you of your joy.
(This is certain and happening despite what we see and feel right now.)
(Jesus promises):
In that day you will not ask Me anything.
(We will ask the Father directly!)
(Jesus promises):
“I assure you: Anything you ask the Father in My name, He will give you.
(So what does it mean to ask the Father something in the name of Jesus? It must mean that somehow we have the identity of being in Christ in order to ask the Father something directly instead of asking Jesus to ask for us! Somehow we are given whatever rights Jesus has in relation to the Father so that when we ask the Father it is as secure as when Jesus asks the Father, but it will be us asking and not Jesus. Jesus makes it clear that we will be asking the Father and that we will not need Jesus to ask for us, because after Christ took all our sins He gave us His righteousness. So that we have what Jesus has, which is relation to the Father, and if the Father loves His Son, then the Father loves us who have what the Son has. We have been given the relationship to the Father that Jesus has with the Father! When we ask the Father for anything in the name of Jesus, it is asking the Father with all the same relational connections that Jesus had with the Father but that we now have in our possession. We were given the name of Jesus, which is more than just a name, but the name is the relationship. Jesus is not just a name, but He is the son of God! If that is what His name means then that is what we have been given. I am given the name of Jesus which is to be given the relationship of God as my Father, so that now when I ask God for something, I am asking as a child and not as a person. Although I am still a person which means I was made by God in this way, I am a child in relationship to God. Just like an exclamation point is symbol in grammar it means to be excited or heightened when used in a sentence. We are persons in the world, but now our existence means we are loved by the Father. This is so strange and glorious. If we are loved by the Father then our Father is good because love is the best and highest valued relational connection any two persons can have! And if our Father is so good as to love us then He is worthy of all our praise and love in return! As John Piper has said, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.")
"Until now
you have asked for nothing in My name.
Ask and you will receive,
so that your joy may be complete.”
John 16:22-24
It says "until now" meaning before Christ we did not ask in His name because we did not have that direct relationship with God given to us. We could not be God's children because we were sinners. God and sin cannot be together. Relationally we were separated from God. Although God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere, the separation we had with Him was relational...not physical. We were strangers from God...enemies with Him because we carried the sin of humans in our core. We despised God because of who we were in relation to Him. When I go under water as just myself without an oxygen tank, eventually I will want out because I cannot breathe. I cannot exist underwater because I am not capable of remaining there without eventually dying. In the same way, we despised God before Christ took away our sins because we could not remain with God because of sin. Our sin made us hate God because it made us unable to live. We hated and we despised God because we could not stay alive in relation to Him because He is incompatible with sin. So we had only to live in the world, but because nothing exists outside of God...we had no other option but to die. It was only a matter of time. Even now we see that death in our physical bodies will happen in a matter of time regardless of one's will.
Until now, or before Christ, the world and all of humanity was in this place of God's mercy as God sent prophets and priests to speak to us and lead us toward repentance and life. But that was always only meant to be a temporary preparation for the grand rescue and cure for our sinful states! The whole book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are extensive to show the requirements that were necessary to be helped, but even all those sacrifices were not adequate to remove one's sins completely because we would sin again everyday! Those were just to show us our true condition. Our relationship with God, before Christ, was severed by us having sin in us. God in His great mysterious mercy and grace had bypassed some of that only because He had planned to send His Son to complete our salvation. Jesus became a human but He also became our sacrificial lamb offered for our sins, just like the sacrifices offered in the Old Testament, but God's Son had blood that was incomparably stronger than the blood of animals. His blood covered all of our sins.
So that His death meant our cure and our life. We could now exist with God relationally as children without sin.
"Ask and you will receive,
so that your joy may be complete.”
This last passage is sort of befuddling. Jesus says to now ask and I will receive, which I understand since I am now asking as a child of God who relates with God in the same way that Jesus does. And if there is no sin in that relationship then nothing I ask for will be asked in or with sin, but everything I ask for will be good for me. However, I still ask for things I have not received at the time I wanted them. But God does not say here that we will know the time we will be given these requests. He simply says that we are to ask and that we will receive. No mention of time is given, only that it is certain we will have all that we ask the Father in the name of Jesus given to us by His blood. So I see that most of my complaining or discontent has much to do with God's timing. Yet I know not what will happen to me 3 minutes, let alone 3 years, from now...but God does. If God sees all of my years and all of my days then He must be good to see to it that all my requests arrive in a manner most timely for my good.
"So that your joy may be complete."
Ask God because it is in asking our Father that we begin to be reminded that He is in truth our Father now. It is in truth that we have been given life eternal with our Father who is God whereas before we were only waiting to die. Ask God for anything because He is your Father, and begin to gain the joy of having come from sin and death into a new trajectory of going to live eternally as a beloved child of God!
I can ask because He will.
Don't be afraid to ask nor disappointed when it does not come at the time you expected, because God cannot lie nor can He be cruel to those that He loves. He will do what He has promised to do, because He cannot lie, and He will give us what we ask in His time because our complete joy is His aim. God never misses the target...He controls the wind and the objects and everything we see as out of our control.
But we are to ask.
We are to ask God directly in Jesus's name.
You and I can now talk to God as our good, good Father.
I will talk to Him now!
Because I can now, thanks to Jesus who made the way for me.
Jmegrey
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