Scripture tells us that we must continually reorient ourselves toward God through not only meditating on his word…and through prayer—but also by thinking on and doing anything and everything that will point us to him (Philippians 4): by participating in the true and the good and the beautiful—not idolatrously, but gratefully—as a way of participating in Christ himself, from whom these things all flow.

Last time I looked at happiness—as scripture defines it. Biblical happiness is rather different to modern conceptions:

Firstly, it is neither merely pleasure nor gladness (which is passive or reactive, rather than active and intentional), though it may certainly include these things;

Secondly—more importantly—it does not begin with our feelings at all.

This seems almost like a contradiction in terms, but biblical happiness is first and foremost an act of faith. This means that it really can contradict how we feel in the moment: whereas our feelings are a natural response to circumstance—we feel bad in bad circumstances—biblical happiness is a supernatural response to circumstance—even in the worst situations, through the Spirit, we can set our hearts upon God’s favor, knowing that what is happening is working to our good. In this, we follow Jesus, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).

Biblical happiness begins with the end in mind. It looks upon a situation with the eyes of faith, to judge not by appearances, but with a right judgment—to know what its spiritual meaning is, and what, therefore, the true outcome will be.

So happiness—or blessedness, in many translations—is not just the end that we seek, of pleasure and gladness and fulfillment and joy, but also the beginning and way toward true pleasure and gladness and fulfillment and joy.

Think of the classic comment that even many pagans still know, made in Acts 20:35, that it is more blessed (much happier), to give than to receive. This defies our common experience—which is generally that it is more blessed to receive than to give. We are happier in the moment we get things than when we give them. But this saying, that it is more happy to give than to receive, emphasizes the forward-looking nature of present happiness in scripture.

This forward-looking element is also why, I think, most translations prefer the term blessed to happy. It is not just because it sounds more religious or pious necessarily, but because it does indeed emphasize the future-oriented or spiritually-focused aspect of biblical happiness. It emphasizes that the good state we enjoy is not primarily because of circumstance, and it is not primarily experienced right now; rather, it is primarily because of God’s favor, and it is primarily experienced in the future. That said, I do still prefer the word happy for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, it emphasizes a condition or emotion that is really fundamental to what all people desire in life. Our whole existence in some ways is grounded in the search for happiness, and that is because we are made to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Since this is such a foundational longing within the human heart, we ought to make it very plain when scripture speaks of it, rather than obscuring it behind religious terminology—“blessed.”

Most people do not think of happiness and blessedness as meaning the same thing. And in the modern day, when people are desperately casting about for happiness in all the wrong places, we especially should translate the scriptures in a way that clearly points them to the answers they are seeking.

Secondly, saying blessedness causes confusion with the separate word blessing. In Psalm 34, for instance, the word “bless” in verse 1 is barak (not to be confused with Barak, the judge, who is actually Baraq, which means lightning—a whole other matter):

I do bless Yahweh at all times
Continually his praise is in my mouth

But the word “happy” (generally translated “blessed”) in verse 8 is ashre:

Taste ye and see that Yahweh is good
O the happiness of the man who trusteth in him

Similarly, when Jesus blesses the bread and the wine, that is not the same word as when he says, “Happy are they that hear the word of God and keep it” (Lk 11:27–28). Blessing as something you do is literally to “say good,” or to speak goodness toward something. In Greek, eu-logeo—“good saying.” When Jesus blesses the bread and wine, this is what he is doing. It is the same when your pastor says the benediction at the end of the Lord’s service (you do have a benediction, don’t you?)—bene-dictus is a direct Latin translation from the Greek: “good speech.”

The point is, “bless” as an action is distinct from the idea of happiness as a thing, and we should therefore use distinct words for them if we can.

Prophetic Happiness

Be that as it may, I want to particularly focus on the forward-looking nature of biblical happiness. There is a kind of prophetic tone to how scripture speaks of happiness, where the end is spoken of with such certainty that it intrudes into the present. When Lady Wisdom speaks in Proverbs 8:32, she does not say, “Happy will be they that keep my ways.” She says, “Happy are they that keep my ways.”

Yet we know as a simple matter of fact that keeping God’s ways is often not an immediate cause of happiness; it is often hard and painful, and the cause of much heartache. And we need only look to the life of Christ to confirm that this heartache is not just because of our own failure to keep God’s ways; it is not just our sin that causes it. It really is that keeping God’s ways often brings about immediate pain, even though its fruit is long-term happiness. The way of the gospel is short-term loss for long-term gain. Indeed it is much happier to give—to sacrifice, to give of oneself—than to receive.

And yet scripture does nonetheless speak repeatedly, insistently, of happiness as an immediate, present reality. Why?

I believe one reason is to emphasize the certainty of what we have to look forward to. But not only this—more practically, it also firmly refutes and reproves the natural ways in which we seek happiness.

After all, why is it that we do anything contrary to God’s will? Is it not because we expect it to bring some form of happiness?

Why does a man drink a whole bottle of whiskey? Because he thinks, “I am unhappy. If I am drunk, I will be happy”—or at least, “less unhappy;” at least for a while.

Why does a woman have an affair? Because she thinks, “Being with this new man makes me happier than being with my husband.” (Did you know that women now have more affairs than men? Female empowerment. Ain’t feminism grand.)

Why does a child steal a cookie? Because he thinks, “Eating a cookie will make me happy.”

Now, am I saying that the desire for happiness drives all sin? I am saying that all people are unhappy to some extent because of sin, and all people are therefore seeking happiness; and in the flesh, the only way they know to get it is the very way that will make them less happy still, and lead them to the ultimate, final, permanent unhappiness of hell. People are unhappy because of sin, and they seek happiness in sin—making them unhappier still.

God knows this, and so he says in his word, not, “If you do these things instead, you will be happy,” but something even stronger, in order to both greatly assure us, and oblige us; to compel our commitment: “If you do these things, you are happy.” And he says this not through the Spirit only, but by the Spirit speaking through men who can testify to their own experience of happiness—so we cannot later turn back and say, “But you said if we do this we are happy, and we are not happy, so you lied.” No, he doesn’t leave this option open, because David in Psalm 34, for example, is perfectly blunt about the matter:

Taste ye and see that Yahweh is good,
O the happiness of the man who trusteth in Him.
Fear Yahweh, ye his holy ones,
For there is no lack to those fearing him.
Young lions have lacked and been hungry,
And those seeking Yahweh lack not any good. (Ps 34:8–10)

What, they are always happy and never lack good? But if you refer back to the superscript of the psalm, you will find that David is writing about the time that he had to pretend to be mad in the court of Abimelech. Let me remind you of what happened.

Firstly, why was he there to begin with? Because the king, Saul, was trying to kill him—a fact that David had to uncover with much scheming and agony of suspense through Jonathan, while he himself hid away for fear of his life. Then, he had to flee to Nob, where he was so lacking and hungry that he had to eat the holy bread, the show-bread, from the tabernacle. And then we read:

And David arose, and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying, Saul hath slain his thousands, And David his ten thousands? And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid of Achish the king of Gath. And he changed his behavior before them, and feigned himself mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his spittle fall down upon his beard. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad; wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house? David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the cave of Adullam (1 Sa 21:10–22:1)

(Incidentally, we should not be troubled that Samuel calls him Achish here, but David calls him Abimelech in our psalm; people often have more than one name in scripture, and Abimelech is simply abi-melech: “my father is king.”)

Now I think it is safe to say that David did not feel very happy while he was fleeing for his life and lacking even bread to eat; and even less happy while he was humiliating himself among his enemies, pretending to be insane, scrabbling at the doors and drooling all over himself; and least happy of all when he was driven out of all human company and had to let the earth literally swallow him up as he lived in a dank hole in the ground. You don’t need to be a highly competent reader of scripture to figure all this out, and to know that when David therefore says, “O the happiness of the man who trusteth in him,” and, “those seeking Yahweh lack not any good,” he is not suggesting that trusting God instantly makes you feel happy; nor that it immediately fulfills every need you have. Rather, as he says in verse 19 of the psalm, this happiness and fullness, as it exists in the present moment, is a forward-looking act of faith toward the reality that will exist in the future:

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