Bible Studies

JESUS WAS THE GREATEST PARADOX

by GLENN PEASE
02/07/22
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Jesus was a paradoxical person. How could He not be when He was both God and man? He was the most unique being that has ever been, and the result is we see Him exhibiting opposite characteristics at the same time. He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief as He went through the experience of Gethsemane and Calvary. It was literally hell he went through as He bore the sins of the world and endured the agony of separation from the Father. And yet at the same time we read in Heb. 12:2, “…who for the joy set before him endured the cross….” No one but the Son of God could experience both heaven and hell at the same time, for no one but the Son of God was also the Son of Man. Jesus was a person with two natures so that He could experience the greatest sorrow and the greatest joy simultaneously.

Because we have a problem in grasping the dual nature of Jesus we tend to focus on one aspect of Him and neglect its opposite. This is especially true when it comes to the matter of sorrow and joy. Historically the focus has been on the sorrow of Jesus because the cross is so central to Christian theology. Artists through the centuries have portrayed Jesus in a state of agony as He sweats drops of blood in Gethsemane, or when crowned with the ugly thorns that pierce His forehead, or when carrying the cross with His weak and bleeding body due to a severe whipping, or when He hangs God-forsaken upon the cruel cross. All of this is a true picture of the price Jesus paid for our redemption, but the truth of it has been so overwhelming that it has blinded our minds to the other side of the experience of the God-Man. This brings us to our text in Heb. 1:9 where we get an insight into the paradox of the Man of Sorrows being also the Man of Joy.

This text goes beyond saying that Jesus was a man of joy to saying that He was the most joyous person to ever live. He was the happiest man alive, even as a man of sorrows. Listen to this text: “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." It was by means of the oil of joy that Jesus was set above His companions. In other words, His joy was the greatest, and there is none who can compare with Him when it comes to joy. Jesus is only hours away from the cross, but we hear Him saying to His disciples in John 15:11, as He is teaching them to love Him and to love one another, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” Jesus was heading to Gethsemane and Calvary, and all that led Him to be the man of sorrows, but it was with complete joy. He was the greatest of paradoxes. He was the happiest sad man in history. What He had he wanted to pass on to His disciples, and so He prays in John 17:13, “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.” You do not get any greater joy than the joy of Jesus.

This verse starts off with the paradox of Jesus being a person of great love and great hate. Again, we tend to focus on the love of Jesus and forget that He was also a great hater. We forget that if you really love righteousness you must hate its opposite, which is wickedness. Opposites have to coexist in all of us, for you cannot be truly loving if you do not hate what is unloving. Hate of evil is a part of love for the good. If you love peace, you will hate violence. If you love generosity, you will hate greediness. If you love loyalty, you will hate betrayal. If you love truth you will hate falsehood. You can go through every virtue and see that you cannot truly love any of them without a hate for their opposites. Love cannot be complete without hate of what is not love, or what hinders and destroys love. The more we love Christ and what He loves, the more we will hate what He hates. It is a paradox but a fact that hate is a part of love. Not understanding this leads to a superficial understanding of the statement that God is love. Yes He is, and that is why He is a God of judgment on all that is not loving. Complete love hates evil and demands judgment on it.

Every positive virtue is paradoxical because it has to contain within it the hatred of what is opposed to it. Love without hate is incomplete, and that makes love a paradox. Jesus was the greatest paradox because He was perfect love, and that means He had to have a perfect hatred for what was the enemy of love. The joy of Jesus was also paradoxical in that joy cannot be complete without sorrow. If you are joyful over what is good, then you have to be sad over that which is not good, or over sin. Sin made Jesus the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, but joy over the sacrifice that made salvation from sin possible for mankind made Jesus the greatest person of joy to ever live. We are all paradoxical in combining opposites in our nature, but Jesus combined them to the highest degree, and so He is the greatest paradox. In this message we want to focus on the paradox that the man of sorrows was the most joyful man who ever lived.

Jesus is more joyful than the angels, for they do rejoice over every sinner who repents, but Jesus has a greater joy, for He is the one who made their repentance possible by His sacrifice for them. The angels sing for joy over the marvels of God’s creation, but Jesus is filled with joy because He was the agent of creation and the agent of salvation. He is the King of joy and gladness, for all that is beauteous, glorious, and wondrous in both the physical and spiritual universe is the work of His hands. God anointed Him with the oil of joy above His companions. Christ means the anointed one, and so He is the Christ of Joy, or Jesus of Joy. He is the greatest of joyous persons. There is no greater joy than the joy of Jesus. No matter how joyful the angels are over sinners who repent they cannot match the joy of Jesus. Jesus is always happier over what is righteous and good than any other can ever be. The Hebrew word for joy in Ps. 45:7, which is quoted here, can be translated gladness, rejoicing and mirth. The Greek word used here for joy means leaping with gladness. It is an overflowing joy that can be called hilarity.

Jesus is anointed with the oil of hilarious joy. The angels are joyous creatures, but they cannot match Jesus, for He is set above these companions. Some commentators feel the companions are Christians, and this does fit too, but since the whole context is about Jesus being superior to angels, it is best to see them as the companions referred to here. It does fit his human companions, however, for when the 72 that Jesus sent out to go to every town to prepare the way for Him came back with joy it says in Luke 10:21, “At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” The disciples were joyful, but Jesus was absolutely filled with joy, for he saw what none other could see. Jesus says in 10:18, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Jesus had the greatest joy because He knew more of what God was doing in history, and how the kingdom of God was coming in greater power. The greater our knowledge of what God is doing the greater our joy in being a part of it, and Jesus was fully aware of what God was doing.

In the light of this truth we need to get a more complete picture of the human life of our Lord. He was a man of sorrows in the final week of His life because of the horrible treatment He had to suffer at the hands of sinful people, but this one week of His life should not be the way we see Jesus for all of His life. The facts will not support that He was anything less than a very happy person. If he was filled with joy even as He faced the cross, how much more when He was going about preaching the truth that changed lives before His very eyes every day. And how could he be anything but filled with joy as He watches the happy faces of families as they saw their loved ones being healed from hopeless situation. Tell me, if you dare, that Jesus did not rejoice with those who rejoiced, as well as weep with those who weeped. Most all of His ministry Jesus lived in the midst of people who were praising God for His loving and compassionate heart that met their needs as no other could. Jesus was not merely happy, He was the happiest of all men, for He loved righteousness and hated wickedness, and He was seeing righteousness win over evil power every day.

God’s greatest pleasure is in doing good. He loves people and He loves to do what is good for people in time and eternity. God is good oriented by His very nature, which is good. In Jer. 32:41 God says about His people, “I will rejoice in doing them good….” In Zeph. 3:17 we read, “The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” God is a happy God who loves to sing and rejoice over his people. Jesus, as God in the flesh, had the same nature, and there is no way He could feed the hungry, heal the sick, and raise the dead and not feel great joy in doing so. Only once do we read of Jesus and His disciples singing a hymn just before they left the upper room to go to Gethsemane, but there is no doubt that after many a day of ministering to happy delighted people they had served, they sat around the camp fire at night and sang songs of joy. Jesus had to be the happiest man on earth during those years of ministry.

Peter Marshall in his famous “Christianity Can Be Fun” sermon said something we need to hear: “God is a God of laughter as well as of prayer….a God of singing, as well as of tears. God is at home in the play of His children. He loves to hear us laugh. We do not honor God by our long faces…our austerity.” We serve a God of joy and a Savior who is the most joyful being in the universe, and He wants us to have His joy in us completely. How in the world has anyone gotten the idea that there is anything sacred or holy in being solemn? There is a place for solemnity, for even the happiest man alive wept at the tomb of Lazarus, but this is the exception, and not the pattern of daily life. Eccles. 3:4 says, “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh.” It is mighty poor theology to think that more time should be spent weeping than laughing. Jesus spent most of His days in rejoicing with a complete joy, as He was filled with the Spirit, who is the author and giver of joy. The joy of Jesus was not based on circumstances, but was a part of His very being, as it was of God’s being, and the Spirit’s being.

Erma Bombeck once wrote about her experience of being in church when a small boy turned around in the pew and smiled at the people behind him. The mother slapped the child and said, “Stop that grinning! You’re in church!” Erma said, “I wanted to grab this child and tell him about my God; The happy God. The smiling God.” It is unfortunate that so many people have a misconception about God and Jesus when it comes to their joyfulness. The point of the book of Hebrews is that Jesus is the greatest and best of everything. If angels are great, Jesus is greater. If Moses is great, Jesus is greater. If Aaron is great, Jesus is greater. The point of this verse is, if anyone is happy and joyous, Jesus is more joyous and the greatest that can be when it comes to being happy with eternal joy. There is no being in the universe more joyful than Jesus.

When you look at what Jesus saw as God’s plan for His life you can see why He would be so happy. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus in reading in the synagogue from Isa. 61:1-3, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is one me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.”

Jesus said this was being fulfilled by Him that very moment. Jesus came to reverse the effects of the fall and restore man to fellowship with God and to a life filled with the blessings of God. One of His goals was to pass on His own anointing with the oil of joy. He wanted His people to be people who are anointed with the oil of gladness where mourning and despair are out of place except on rare situations. For some strange reason some Christians want to remain prisoners of darkness and negativity, and resist the joy of the Lord, which is their strength. The more I focused on the joy or Jesus the more I was compelled to try and convey His joy in going to the cross in poetry. The whole purpose of the plan of salvation to bring many to glory with Jesus was being fulfilled by His act of sacrifice. It was the saddest and the gladdest event ever, and I have tried to say it in this poem:

Joyful is the Lord of glory-
Son of God and Son of Man.
There’s no more glorious story
Since the creation began.

He was full of joy and laughter,
As He walked this earthly road.
There will never be one after
Who could with joy bear His load.

For the joy that was before Him
He went to the cross to die.
He would never let that joy dim
In spite of His fearful cry:

“Why, my God, have you forsaken
Me in this most awful time?
Cruelly my life they’ve taken.
It’s mankind’s most gruesome crime.

Father, they know not what they do,
So I pray you forgive all.
I soon now will be home with you,
As I break through death’s dark wall.

It’s the thought of this victory
Over Satan and all foes
That makes me finish this story
In spite of trials and woes.

My joy never could be complete
If I returned home alone.
I want billions of sinner’s feet
Marching past me on my throne.

For this joy I came down to earth
To give my life for mankind.
It’s my goal to give a new birth
To all who saving faith find.

My sacrifice could save all men
If they would just call on me.
My greatest joy of all is then,
Billions in eternity.

For this joy I lay my life down.
For this joy I intercede.
For this joy I gave up my crown,
So that my plan could succeed.

There’s no greater sorrow than mine
That men in such bondage be.
There’s no greater joy that is mine-
My shed blood will set them free.”

And so we see how it is that Jesus could be a man of sorrows and a man of joy at the same time. It was the saddest time in history when men could be so blind to love that they crucified the Lord of love. It was also the gladdest time in history because that Lord of love was willing to give His life so that even the worst of men could become children of God by faith in Him. Jesus saw this end result of the cross and that is why He could face the cross with a joy that made Him the most joyous person in the universe.