Natural Joy vs. Spiritual Joy (Rewritten)

In our previous post, we worked to clarify the difference between love and joy — a distinction that isn’t obvious at first, but is quite real and important. To deepen that discussion, it helps to introduce another meaningful distinction: the difference between natural joy and spiritual joy.

Just as spiritual joy should not be confused with love, neither should natural joy. In both cases, love and joy are genuinely distinct experiences. But beyond that shared distinction, there is another important point: spiritual (or gracious) joy differs from natural joy in several key ways. Exploring those differences will help shed more light on the nature of true spiritual experience.

Inward Crucifixion and Inward Consolations

Those, who are the subjects of inward crucifixion, do not seek, and do not value inward consolations in themselves considered. “It is written,” says the Savior, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Consolation is the attendant of religion, but it is not religion itself. Religion, in its highest sense, implies an entire union with the will of God. The true food of our souls is God’s commandment, which is only another name for God’s will. A desire of any thing, and complacency in any thing, which does not place God’s will first, is infidelity to God’s claims. Holy joy is not a thing, which comes by volition; but by a necessary law. If our hearts are right with God, such joy will always come in its appropriate place; not because it is called or willed, but because it cannot help coming. It is a thing which flows from holiness as from its natural fountain. The truly crucified man, therefore, is right in seeking the fountain first. Holiness is something which must be desired and sought for itself; something, which must stand, independently of its pleasant results, first in the mind’s eye, first in the heart’s affections.

— from The Life of Faith, Part 2, Chapter 12.