The joy of the Trinity is the perfect fellowship of the three Persons in mutual love and enjoyment. Adam was created to share that joy as God’s creature, but lost it through the fall. How, then, can this joy be restored? David answers, ‘You have made known to me the path of life’. The path that leads to the life of everlasting joy begins in this world: at the cross where Christ secured salvation and guaranteed future grace with all its joys through the blood of the everlasting covenant.

The very first John Piper book I read was Future Grace. Its title is taken from Peter’s exhortation, ‘Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed’ (1Pe 1.13). It provides the important reminder that no matter how great our experience of grace may be in this present age, it will take on a whole new dimension in the age to come.

This well sums up thread of teaching we have been exploring over recent weeks under the operating title, The Joy of our Salvation. However rich and deep our joys on earth may be, they are nothing compared to our future experience in heaven. As Paul says, ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him’ (1Co 2.9). This is vitally important to our hope as Christians – not merely for our comfort in salvation; but also for our witness to the world.

David expresses this truth in Psalm 16, a song he wrote possibly while on the run from Saul. His train of thought traces the joy of his salvation through to its ultimate destination in the world to come. The older King James Version captures it poetically: ‘…in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore’ (Ps 16.11).

To appreciate the full weight of what David means by this, we need to set these words in their wider context. Then several things become clear about ‘future grace’ and the joy bound up with it.

An Extension of our Present Hope

The hope and joy God promises for the future is not unconnected to our new life as God’s people in this present. This was true for David, but every child of God needs to remember it. Too many Christians have a ‘hope’ for the future that bears no resemblance to the present and therefore can seem ethereal and detached from reality.

Following through what David says, his words about hope for the future is grounded in his experience of God in the present.

He begins with a prayer: ‘Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge’ (16.1). His declaration of trust underpins his request for safety. He spells this out further: ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing’ and ‘the saints’ are ‘the glorious ones in whom is all [his] delight’ (16.2-3). He goes on to reaffirm his confidence in God who has proved himself trustworthy in every circumstance as the God of covenant faithfulness (16.5-6).  This spills over into a declaration of praise and commitment to God (16.7-8). But it is David’s summation in the next verse that is so telling: ‘Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure’ (16.9). His hope for the future is firmly rooted in the present. Indeed, this hope is not merely ‘spiritual’ rest; it is both real and physical. Our bodies are every bit as much a part of ‘us’ as are our spirits.

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