Jesus' Creative Joy

When thinking about Jesus' relationship to the Church we do not often think of his 'creative joy' in creating, sustaining, and loving a church. His relationship to us should also be reflected in our relationship with the Church and with the outside world. The Church is also to be a place of creative joy where we live joyful Christian lives.

The joy of Jesus is the joy that arises from the sense of a finished work. It is a creative joy, like the joy of the artist. It produces a sense of unexausted power for fresh creation. This joy in the heart of Jesus is both the joy of victory , and the sense of having brought His Church into being. It is an inspiring thought that Jesus calls his followers into that joy. The Christian life is not some shallow, insipid, following of a traditional pattern. It is a life characterized by unexausted and inexaustable power for fresh creation. (New International Commentary on the New Testament, John, p.598.)

Who Then Can Be Saved?

Jesus told his disciples that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. The disciples cried out, "who then can be saved?" The response is no one! No man can work to earn his salvation. But the sweet blood of Jesus Christ is more efficacious than all the work that a man can do. Thomas Watson, in his Treatise on the Holy Eucharist, comments:

If we had offered up millions of holocausts and sacrifices, if we had wept rivers of tears, this could never have appeased an angry Deity. Only Christ's blood ingratiates us into God's favor and makes Him look upon us with a smiling aspect. When Christ died, the veil of the temple was rent. This was not without a mystery, to show that through Christ's blood the veil of our sins is rent which interposed between God and us.