Paul didn’t choose joy in Christ because he couldn’t find joy anywhere else. He had tasted and enjoyed the glory of success and popularity — the Hebrew of Hebrews, the Pharisee of Pharisees, the most zealous, the most blameless, the most recognized (Philippians 3:5–6). When he chose to follow Jesus, he surrendered the kind of life others would die for — and he surrendered that life for more happiness, not less.

If you only experience joy on your best days, you have not yet tasted the best joy. We tend to think of joy as a light and fleeting feeling that comes and goes as life allows. But the best joy is strong enough for the realities of life — all of life.

We also tend to think of joy as optional, as icing on the cake of following Christ. Some Christians get to be happy, we think, wishing we were one of the handful who do. Yet the apostle Paul says, plainly and unapologetically,

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. (Philippians 4:4)

Oh, that always — all at once so awe-inspiring, and so haunting. Awe-inspiring because that means always must be possible. What news! In Christ, we never have to be without genuine happiness. And yet also so haunting because of how often we lose our sense of joy — the joy that God, throughout the Scriptures, commands of his people.

Why would Paul repeat himself? “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” He knew how hard such always-joy would often be. He wrote these words, as he often did, from prison (Philippians 1:13). Yet even in the loneliness and uncertainty of captivity, he had found real felicity. He could say always because he had suffered so much, and rejoiced even in those dark, lonely, and painful places.

Never settle for a god who cannot satisfy you in a prison cell. If you only enjoy God when life seems good, follow Paul’s joy with me through Philippians to something more precious than gold, even much fine gold, something sweeter than honey — and anything else you might enjoy in this life.

Better Even Than Life

If our joy is rooted in how well life seems to be going, our joy will falter and fade when trials come. More often than we want to admit, our joy is rooted in our feeling secure, comfortable, successful, liked — and so real joy, the always-joy Paul writes about, can feel foreign and distant.

When his enemies preached Christ out of envy and rivalry, wanting to wound Paul and undermine his ministry (Philippians 1:15–17), he welled up not with anger, bitterness, or resentment, but with joy. “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice” (Philippians 1:18). It takes more than human courage to rejoice when you’re mistreated, especially when you’re in prison where you can’t defend yourself.

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