As we read through the New Testament, we encounter a unique connection between the Holy Spirit and joy. I’ll give you a few examples. Luke tells us how at one point Jesus “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21) and Paul tells us how the Thessalonian Christians had “received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7). In Romans, Paul instructs us that “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17).

I call this connection unique (and worthy of further reflection) because the New Testament pairs joy with the Holy Spirit in a way it doesn’t with other affections. For instance, we don’t read of people experiencing the “sorrow of (or in) the Holy Spirit” or the “anger of (or in) the Holy Spirit,” even though it’s clear the Spirit can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30) and angered (Romans 1:18).

So, why does the New Testament uniquely tie joy to the Holy Spirit? To explore this question, we’ll briefly look at who (and what) the Holy Spirit is, what it means for us to experience this Spirit-empowered joy, and what difference it makes in the Christian life.

Spirit of Joy

Two qualifications before I delve in further. First, the few words I’m about to share on the nature of the Holy Spirit are, I believe, foundationally helpful to understanding the joy that the Holy Spirit produces in us. I don’t have space here, however, to offer a full treatment of that complex reality, so if you’d like to explore this further, this sermon by John Piper and this article by Scott Swain are good places to start.

Second, it’s helpful to keep in mind that while Scripture describes the Holy Spirit as a divine person distinct from the Father and the Son (John 15:26), it also describes him as the Spirit of the Father (Matthew 10:20) and the Spirit of the Son (1 Peter 1:11). In one place, Paul refers to the Spirit in all three Trinitarian ways in the space of three verses (Romans 8:9–11). As we talk about the joy of the Holy Spirit, we need to remember the oneness of God.

Now, let’s probe deeper into the nature of the Trinity as it relates to joy. Citing New Testament texts such as 1 John 4:16 — “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” — theologians at least as far back as Augustine have understood the Holy Spirit to be the living, personified love flowing between the Father and the Son (John 17:26). John Piper says it this way — and note the connection between the love of God and the joy of God:

God the Holy Spirit is the divine person who “originates” (eternally!) from the Father and the Son in their loving each other. And this love is not a “merciful” love as if they needed pity. It is an admiring, delighting, exulting love. It is Joy. The Holy Spirit is God’s Joy in God. To be sure, he is so full of all that the Father and Son are, that he is a divine person in his own right. But that means he is more, not less, than the Joy of God. (“Can We Explain the Trinity?”)

Piper goes on to say, “This means that Joy is at the heart of reality. God is Love, means most deeply, God is Joy in God.” If an essential dimension of the Spirit’s nature is that he is “God’s Joy in God” personified, that helps us understand what makes the joy he produces in us a distinctive joy.

God’s Joy in Us

When we experience the joy of the Holy Spirit, we taste the joy that is at the core of ultimate reality. For when we are born again by the Spirit (John 3:6–7), we receive the astounding, incredible, empowering, priceless gift of the Holy Spirit who resides in us, just as Jesus promised:

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. (John 14:16–17)

And when the Holy Spirit dwells in us, the Father and the Son dwell in us — and we in them (John 17:20–21):

If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (John 14:23)

Given all that Jesus says about the Spirit in John 14–16, we know that the Spirit factored significantly in what he meant when he said,

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:11)

“When we experience the joy of the Holy Spirit, we taste the joy that is at the core of ultimate reality.”

For the only way we can abide in the Son (John 15:4–5), the only way the Son and the Father can abide in us (John 14:23), the only way the Son’s words can truly abide in us (John 15:7), and the only way the Son’s joy in the Father and the Father’s joy in the Son can abide in us is by the Helper, the Holy Spirit, dwelling in us.

This is why Jesus said our experience of the Holy Spirit would be like having “rivers of living water” within us (John 7:38–39). The Spirit is the indwelling wellspring of joy in God that we experience as we “live by faith in the Son of God” (Galatians 2:20).

Joy of Believing

This brings us to the unique experience of joy that a Christian experiences by the power of the Holy Spirit in this age. We see it all over the New Testament, but Paul captures it beautifully in Romans 15:13:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Paul describes the ground of this Spirit-empowered, joy-producing hope in Romans 5:

Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. . . . And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1–2, 5)

And Peter describes the ineffable joy produced by the love we experience for the now-unseen Jesus, in whom we believe because of his Spirit-revealed word:

Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. (1 Peter 1:8–9)

This is how the New Testament typically describes the joy we receive from the Holy Spirit: hope in the glory of God’s grace, received by faith, fills us with deep joy in the Spirit.

He was watching the Father, by the power of his Spirit, reveal the gospel of the kingdom to “little children,” and fill them with hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them as they believed in it, that moved Jesus to “rejoice in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21). It was hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them that filled Gentile disciples “with joy and with the Holy Spirit” as they believed the gospel (Acts 13:52). And it was hope in the glory of God’s grace toward them that filled the Thessalonians “with the joy of the Holy Spirit” as they believed the gospel message, even though they received it “in much affliction” (1 Thessalonians 1:6–7).

Joy to Pursue

We all know from personal experience and observation that Christians are not always filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the New Testament repeatedly draws our attention to specific instances when believers experienced this joy shows that the early Christians didn’t always experience it either.

“This Joy of God is an eternal joy — it will outlast death and only increase in us forever.”

But Paul said that “joy in the Holy Spirit” is a crucial dimension of the kingdom of God (Romans 14:17). It is something we are to pursue. For Joy is at the heart of reality, and if the Spirit dwells in us, we have the one who is ultimate Joy dwelling within us. So, to experience the joy of the Holy Spirit is to experience the joy of “life indeed” (1 Timothy 6:19 NASB).

Not only that, but it is to experience indomitable joy. For this Spirit-empowered joy can’t be destroyed by persecution (Colossians 1:24), suffering (Romans 5:3–4), various trials (1 Peter 1:6–7), sorrow (2 Corinthians 6:10), or a sentence of death (Philippians 1:21). In fact, it is the hope of this joy set before us that helps us, like Jesus, endure all manner of adversity, suffering, and death (Hebrews 12:2). And that is because this Joy of God is an eternal joy — it will outlast death and only increase in us forever (Psalm 16:11; Mark 10:21). Indeed, it is the hope of this eternal joy set before us, which we lay hold of by faith, that makes us “more than conquerors” over any would-be obstacle to the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:35–39).

And so, “May the God of hope fill [us] with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit [we] may abound in hope.”

Orthodoxy comprises a range of autonomous churches, the Russian and Greek being the most prominent. During the first millennium of the church, the Latin West and the predominantly Greek-speaking East drifted apart linguistically, culturally, and theologically. Rome’s claims to universal jurisdiction and its acceptance of the filioque clause led to severed relations in 1054. Many countries in the East, overrun by the Muslims, had limited freedom. Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, while in the twentieth century, Orthodoxy in Russia and Eastern Europe endured under Communist rule, suffering intense persecution.

Orthodoxy is emphatically not to be identified with Rome. Ecclesiastically, it has no unified hierarchy, no pope, no magisterium. It lacks the barrage of dogmas of the Roman Church. Its doctrinal basis, such as it is, is the seven ecumenical councils, referring principally to the Trinity and Christology, the vast majority of which Protestants embrace. While at the popular level some Marian dogmas are accepted, they are not accorded official status. Nor is there a requirement for converts from Protestantism to renounce justification by faith alone. Particularly distinctive is its dominantly visual worship; icons fill its churches. Its ancient liturgy, rooted in the fourth century, is central to its theology and life.

If Orthodoxy differs so significantly from Catholicism, how closely does it resemble Protestantism? A brief overview of Orthodoxy reveals several points of alignment, some significant misunderstandings, and a few major disagreements with Protestantism.

Learning from Orthodoxy

First, Protestants can learn from many positive elements in Orthodoxy.

The Orthodox liturgy, for starters, is full of Trinitarian prayers, hymns, and doxologies. The Trinity is a vital part of their belief and worship. This finds biblical precedent as Paul describes our relationship with God in Trinitarian terms: “Through [Christ] we . . . have access by one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).

Another positive element in Orthodoxy is their teaching on union with Christ and God. Crucial to Orthodox theology is deification, in which humans are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and transformed by divine grace. Orthodox theology has maintained a focus on the union of the three persons in God, the union of deity and humanity in Christ, the union of Christ and the church, and the union of the Holy Spirit and the saints. In some forms, Orthodoxy’s focus on deification enters the realm of mysticism. But in other strands, exemplified by the Alexandrians, Athanasius (295–373), and Cyril (378–444), it is the equivalent of regeneration, adoption, sanctification, and glorification viewed as one seamless process.

In addition, unlike the Western church, the Orthodox Church has enjoyed freedom from concerns raised by the Enlightenment. Due to its historical and cultural isolation, Orthodoxy has experienced no Middle Ages, no Renaissance, no Reformation, and no Enlightenment. Until recently, it was not preoccupied with critical attacks of unbelief, which in the West have sometimes bred a detached, academic approach to theology divorced from the life of the church. This is evident in Orthodoxy’s firm belief in the return of Christ and heaven and hell, topics often sidelined in the West due to possible embarrassment.

Finally, the Orthodox Church keeps together theology and piety. Asceticism and monasticism have had a contemplative character. The knowledge of God is received and cultivated in prayer and meditation in battle against the forces of darkness. Since the Enlightenment, Western theology has centered in academic institutions unconnected to the church. Orthodoxy has profoundly integrated liturgy, piety, and doctrine.

Points of Alignment

Beyond these positive elements in Orthodoxy from which Protestants can learn, there are many areas of agreement between Protestantism and Orthodoxy.

The ecumenical councils’ declarations on the Trinity and Christ show the extensive agreement between Orthodoxy and classic Protestantism, despite disagreement on the filioque.

With different emphases, the Orthodox and evangelical Protestants agree on the authority of the Bible, sin and the fall (although the Orthodox do not accept the Augustinian doctrine of original sin), Christ’s death and resurrection (although the atonement is regarded more as conquest of death than as payment for the penalty of the broken law), the Holy Spirit, the return of Christ, the final judgment, and heaven and hell.

Although the Reformation controversies passed the East by, occasionally Orthodox fathers talk of salvation and of faith as gifts of God’s grace, while the Orthodox liturgy repeatedly calls on the Lord for mercy to us as sinners, as does the famous Jesus prayer. At root, justification has not been an issue and so has not provoked discussion. Similarly, there are echoes in the West of deification — in Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and some Puritans — for, understood in the way Athanasius and Cyril did, deification is no more incompatible with justification by faith than are sanctification and glorification.

Additionally, the Orthodox doctrine of the church stresses its unity, the parity of bishops and of all church members, underlying its opposition to Rome. This is a model close to Anglicanism.

Significant Misunderstandings

Historically, however, Protestant and Orthodox believers have often misunderstood one another.

To start, Protestants tend to misunderstand the Eastern understanding of icons. Nicea II (AD 787) emphatically denied that icons are worshiped. Following John of Damascus (675–749), the council distinguished between honor (proskunēsis) given to saints and icons, and worship (latreia) owed to the indivisible Trinity alone. Icons are seen as windows to the spiritual realm, indicating the presence in the church’s worship on earth of the saints in heaven. Moreover, the idea of image (eikon) is prominent in the Bible. The whole creation reveals the glory of God (Psalm 19:1–6; Romans 1:18–20). Reformed theology, in general revelation, views the whole world as an icon.

No problem exists with intercession among saints as such, for we all pray for and with living saints; we have prayer meetings. However, the Bible does not encourage us to pray to departed saints, for there are no grounds to suppose that they hear us. Rather, Scripture directs our hope to Christ, his return, and the resurrection (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18).

On Scripture and tradition (the teaching of the church), both sides appeal to both sources. There is an overwhelming biblical emphasis in Orthodox liturgy, while the Reformation had a high view of the teaching of the church. The issue is not the Bible versus tradition, but rather which has the decisive voice. For evangelicalism, the Bible is unequivocally the word of God (2 Timothy 3:16), while all human councils may err.

From the Orthodox side, many confuse the Protestant doctrine of predestination with Islamic fatalism. The Bible teaches both the absolute sovereignty of God and the full responsibility of man, God’s decrees not undermining the free actions of secondary causes. As such, the Orthodox idea that the doctrine of predestination short-circuits the human will, and is effectively monothelite, is misplaced.

Many Orthodox polemicists also accuse evangelicals of ignoring the church’s part in Scripture. However, the classic Protestant confessions attest that the church is integral to the process of salvation, the Christian faith being found in the Bible and taught by the church. Both Scripture and the church are originated by the Holy Spirit. Church and covenant are integral to Reformed theology. Orthodoxy often confuses classic Protestantism with today’s freewheeling individualists.

Major Disagreements

Beyond these points of alignment and misunderstanding, significant differences do exist.

First, the East tends to downplay preaching. Largely due to the impact of Islam, and despite Orthodoxy’s heritage of superlative preaching (Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen, among others), their liturgy is more visual. Sermons are part of the liturgy, but the focus is more on the icons and the symbolic movements of the clergy.

Next, the relationship between Scripture and tradition differs. For Orthodoxy, tradition is a living dynamic movement — the Bible existing within it, not apart from it. This was the position of the church of the first two centuries, with the Bible and tradition effectively indistinguishable. Later developments in the West placed tradition over Scripture (medieval Rome), or pitted Scripture against tradition (the anabaptists, some evangelicals), or put Scripture over tradition without rejecting it (the Reformation, the Reformed churches). For Orthodoxy, Scripture is not the supreme authority.

A third distinction is found in what’s called the Palamite doctrine of the Trinity. Gregory Palamas’s distinction between the unknowable essence (being) of God and his energies has driven a wedge between God in himself and God as he has revealed himself, threatening our knowledge of God with profound agnosticism. It introduces into God a division, not a distinction. The Christian life easily becomes mystical contemplation.

Along with Rome, the East venerates Mary and the saints. Orthodoxy considers it possible, legitimate, and desirable to pray to departed saints. But there is no biblical evidence that this is possible.

Finally and most crucially, Orthodoxy has what we might call soteriological synergism. The East has a vigorous doctrine of free will and an implacable opposition to the Protestant teaching on predestination and the sovereignty of God’s grace in salvation. This puts Orthodoxy further away from the Reformation than is Rome.

How Far Away Is the East?

Compared with Rome, how far away from Protestantism is Orthodoxy?

Orthodoxy is closer to classic Protestantism than is Rome in a number of ways. Both were forced into separation, and both oppose the claims of the papacy. The structure of the Orthodox churches is closer to Anglicanism than Catholicism. Orthodoxy does not have the same accumulation of authoritative dogmas as Rome. Its stress on the Bible opens up a large commonality of approach.

In other ways, Orthodoxy is further removed from Protestantism than is Rome. Protestantism, with Rome, is part of the Latin church, shares the same history, and addresses the same questions. Its faith is centered in Christ; the East’s is more focused on the Holy Spirit, along with a more mystical theology and practice. As Kallistos Ware puts it, Rome and Protestantism share the same questions, but supply different answers; with Orthodoxy the questions are different.

Over three hundred years ago, Blaise Pascal observed, “All of the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber” (Pensées, 39). Pascal attributes this inability to our love of endless amusement, which distracts us from our doubts, worries, and discontent. And so, for most people, “The pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible” (40). Now, even if Pascal overplayed his hand, the point he makes echoes the value that Scripture places on silence.

Isaiah records one of God’s invitations to be quiet: “Thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength’” (Isaiah 30:15). God invites his people to be quiet and connects that quietness to strength, rest, and finding our home in him. On the other hand, Isaiah warns, “The wicked are like the tossing sea; for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up mire and dirt” (Isaiah 57:20). The wicked rage like an ocean in a storm, unable to be still.

Therefore, those who want to avoid the unhappiness that Pascal describes and pursue the stable satisfaction that God promises learn to practice the habit of quiet.

Quiet Soul, Quiet Mouth

What is quietness, according to God? First, biblical quietness is not simply a lack of noise. External silence is often part of the habit of quiet, but true quietness goes much deeper. Biblical quietness refers primarily to a quiet demeanor or quiet heart — a restful silence of soul — because often a noisy mouth is the overflow of a noisy heart.

Thus, Proverbs says the wise man both restrains his words and quiets his soul (Proverbs 17:27; 29:11), his outward silence matching his inward peace. But the fool is loud and restless, a lover of noise (Proverbs 7:11; 9:13). Moreover, because we are body-soul creatures, what we do externally affects us internally and vice versa. So, the habit of quiet involves cultivating inner quietness by creating rhythms of outer quietness.

Second, biblical quietness does not negate the need to speak. Scripture places a high premium on well-timed words (Proverbs 25:11). There is a time to be zealous. There is a time to speak with unction and conviction. There is a time to herald from the mountaintops. There is a time to declare, “Thus says the Lord!” And there is “a time to keep silence” (Ecclesiastes 3:7).

Our Default Volume: Loud

The need for quiet is not new to the modern age. Man’s default volume has always been loud. Four hundred years before Jesus, Plato lamented that most people live “a distracted existence” led in circles by the songs and sounds of society (The Republic, 164). And earlier still, David expressed the need for silence by saying, “I have calmed and quieted my soul . . . like a weaned child is my soul within me” (Psalm 131:2).

Distraction, from within and without, is not novel, but modernity has amped up the volume. We live in a society that often hates quiet, one in which the loudest hearts are awarded the largest platforms. We are besieged by the newest news, harried by busyness, drowning in noise, endlessly accompanied by devices of endless distraction. And even if much of the content we consume is good, it is always on. Too often, we know neither inner nor outer quiet.

Yet wise men have always celebrated silence. Some 150 years ago, Charles Spurgeon said, “Quietude, which some men cannot abide because it reveals their inward poverty, is as a palace of cedar to the wise, for along its hallowed courts the King in his beauty deigns to walk” (Lectures to My Students, 64). Indeed, the King did hallow those halls. King Jesus created rhythms of quiet during his time on earth. It was his custom to create space to be alone with his Father (Luke 22:39).

How will we hear birdsong, that symphony of the Father’s care for creation, if we are never quiet? How can we attend to God’s still, small voice whispering wisdom in his word if our hearts never stop murmuring? We have a great need for silence.

Call to the Deeps

Imagine life as an ocean. Waves constantly toss the surface of that sea and assault the shore — waves of sound, waves of worry, waves of work and entertainment, waves of deadlines and events, waves of stubborn children and sinful parents. Waves, waves, waves. And yet, peace is never far off. Even the mightiest waves that march across the face of the ocean cannot disturb the water 150 feet below the surface. Peace ever reigns in the deeps. And it is to those deeps God calls us through the habit of quiet.

Spurgeon enjoyed those depths. He knew from habitual experience the “pleasure of solitude” that Pascal speaks of. In one of his lectures to aspiring pastors, Spurgeon delivers this perennial advice:

I am persuaded that . . . most of us think too much of speech [and action], which after all is but the shell of thought. Quiet contemplation, still worship, unuttered rapture, these are mine when my best jewels are before me. Brethren, rob not your heart of the deep sea joys; miss not the far-down life, by for ever babbling among the broken shells and foaming surges of the shore. (Lectures to My Students, 64)

We are often blown and tossed by waves, beaten and battered by the pounding breakers of life, because we fail to dive below the surface with God. We rob our hearts of deep delights because we never stop babbling.

Yet for Spurgeon, the speech and action that we spend so much time thinking about flower from the leaf mold of a quiet heart. And the rewards of that quietness are unfathomable, in the fullest sense of that word — inexpressible rapture, awestruck worship, treasure to contemplate, the far-down life. Oh, and deep-sea joys! Surely this is enough to motivate Christian Hedonists to be still before the Lord. Indeed, God is magnified when we are silently satisfied in him.

Handful of Quietness

Seeing how high the stakes are, the question naturally arises, “How do I practice the discipline of silence?” How do we seize what Ecclesiastes calls “a handful of quietness” (Ecclesiastes 4:6)? Whole Christian traditions have been devoted to nurturing a life of calm contemplation. But I will simply offer two suggestions.

First, sometime this week, set aside fifteen minutes to create external quiet in order to cultivate internal quiet. Pascal’s advice to stay quietly in your own chamber is a good place to start, but inner rooms don’t have a monopoly on silence. I recommend taking a walk in the woods. Few places resonate more with God’s presence and songs of silent praise. Or get up early enough to watch the sunrise. Quiet abounds when most people sleep. Or if all else fails, don some noise-canceling headphones. Whatever you have to do, create spaces and rhythms of stillness.

Second, practice the discipline of silence on Sunday morning. This may sound paradoxical, but remember the primary goal is a still heart, not a lack of sound. How often do you sit in a worship service with a heart closer to Plato’s “distracted existence” than David’s weaned and quieted soul (Psalm 131:2)? Don’t miss the far-down life enjoyed in Christian community by harboring a babbling heart. Instead, let your worship overflow from satisfied silence before God (Isaiah 14:7). Sing loud from a quiet heart. As your pastor heralds the word of God, calm your soul and put away your phone. Don’t be distracted by lunch plans or tomorrow’s work or endless waves of worry. Be quiet to enjoy the deeps.

Perhaps Pascal did not overstate his case. We do forfeit much happiness when we refuse to practice the habit of quiet. After all, our Lord bids us, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). And when we do so, he will quiet us with his unfathomable love (Zephaniah 3:17).