The Fullness of Joy

The living God is a God of laughter. Laughter is the sound or expression of joy. Laughter is what happens when happiness overflows from within. Is it surprising then that God is a Father, Son, and Spirit who are abundant in laughter? Remember, in the presence of the living God there is fullness of joy.[1] The Hebrew word for fullness means “abundance” and “to the full.” The Hebrew word for joy means “mirth, gladness, gaiety, happiness, pleasure, glee in a festival.”

So then, the Father, Son, and Spirit live in the fullness of joy. What then happens when God expresses Himself? What is the sound of joy? Laughter! Meister Eckhart was a Christian that gazed into the mystery of the Trinity. He discovered the divine fullness of joy and once said, “In the heart of the Trinity the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us.”[2][3]

In the Beginning was Laughter

Okay, so that’s a great quote from someone from Church History but what about the Scriptures? Where else in the Bible do we see God laughing? Come with me to a glorious passage in Proverbs 8. In this chapter we meet Wisdom, and she describes what it was like to be with God in the beginning at the creation of the world. Wisdom can be identified as both the Holy Spirit (Spirit of Wisdom and Revelation)[4] and the Person of Christ, the Son (Christ the Wisdom of God).[5]

First, an important side-note: In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified as a woman. Elsewhere in Scripture God identifies as a Mother: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.”[6] Jesus spoke over Jerusalem, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a (mother) hen gathers her brood under her wings.”[7] The Hebrew and Greek word for the Holy Spirit is often in the feminine noun. The Spirit is described as the Helper just as the woman Eve was created as a helper for Adam. The Scriptures were written in a male-dominated culture and so God definitely focused on His male attributes (Father, Son, etc.) but male and female are both images of God.[8] It is important in our culture, where male and female equality has become more of the norm[9] to recognize femininity in God.

Let’s get back to the laughter. In Proverbs 8, Wisdom tells us what her and God were doing in the beginning at the creation of the world: “When He marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside Him, like a master craftsman (or little child); and I was daily His delight, rejoicing before Him always, rejoicing in His inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”[10] So here we see Wisdom (the Spirit and Christ) with God creating all things. This completely lines up with the rest of Scripture: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God.”[11] “All things have been created through Him (Christ) and for Him.”[12]

In Proverbs 8 we see the Spirit and Christ as the delight of God, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world (universe) and delighting in humans (us!). Here’s the thing: the Hebrew word for rejoicing really means something else. “Rejoicing” is a conservative translation. The Hebrew word “sachaq” actually means “to laugh” and “to play.”

The Living Bible translates it more accurately than most translations: “I was there when He made the blueprint for the earth and oceans. I was always at His side like a little child. I was His constant delight, laughing and playing in His presence. And how happy I was with what He created – His wide world and all His family of mankind!”[13] Now that’s more like it! Let’s give a big round of applause to the translators of the Living Bible for having the guts to translate that passage correctly!

So there you have it, clear biblical revelation of the Father, Son, and Spirit laughing and playing as They created the universe. The picture portrayed is of the Father delighting and rejoicing in the Spirit and the Son as They laugh and play before Him. In Their laughter and play They are spontaneously creating the earth, the oceans, the hills, the waters, men, women, zebras, elephant, giraffes, monkeys, air, water, pineapples, bumblebees and everything in between.

So then, it is true that the world was birthed out of the laughter of God. The Trinity, in Their fullness of joy, overflowed in laughter and… well, here we are. It is this kind of over-the-top joy and laughter that is God’s strength.[14] It’s this Almighty and All-Powerful Laughter that contained the force to create all things.

Let me be clear with something else: The laughter and play of God was not a one-time event that simply created the world in the beginning. It’s not as if God laughed and played when creating the world and then lost excitement and is now bored or indifferent. Look at this unbelievable quote from the great Christian author G.K. Chesterton about God’s continual creation of the world: “Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

The Father, Son, and Spirit are still creating the world every day. They are still laughing and playing as They sustain all things.[15] The breath in your lungs, your heartbeat, your dog running around; all of these things are sustained and created by the continual joy of the Lord. This is biblical and can be found clearly in Psalm 104. It’s a Psalm about all the details of the ongoing creation. The waves of the sea, the chirping of the birds, and the deer drinking water; the Psalmist describes all of these things and attributes them to the work of God. And then he says something remarkable: “The Lord rejoices in His works.”[16] He provides a picture of the living God who is rejoicing as He causes all of creation to move and animate. With the fullness of joy and laughter, God is continually enjoying all the things that He does. This of course includes all things. He sustains every single detail of life in this universe and He rejoices and laughs in it all.

His Laughter in Redemption

Not only that, but it’s this Laughter that overflows into Kindness towards humanity and empowers God to be patient and forgive humanity.[17] It is this very Joy that chose to “not count their trespasses against them.”[18] It was out of this Divine Pleasure that God chose to freely forgive humanity and make her holy and blameless before Him in love.[19] The abundance of God’s joy was the reason He was so generous in taking away the sins of the world through the Lamb.

God’s laughter has always stayed true. “For I the Lord do not change.”[20] In spite of humanity’s sin and their evil plots against God, He has never stopped laughing. “Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain… (but) He who sits in the heavens laughs.”[21] It comes back to this simple truth: when humans sin; God proves greater and unmoved in His glory, love, and grace. In a million ways God has always proven to be greater than the evil of this world. Romans 5 explains this simple principle clearly: “For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!”[22]

Despite all of human suffering, God has always remained in the abundance of joy and laughter in the Trinity. It’s His incredible happiness that empowered Him to stoop down and show compassion, to take on the sin of the world, and to overcome death. As a matter of fact, Peter quoted Psalm 16 and applied it to Jesus and His death and resurrection. He made it clear that it was Jesus who said to the Father, “For You will not abandon My soul to Hades, or let Your Holy One experience corruption. You have made known to Me the ways of life; You will make Me full of gladness with Your Presence.”[23]

How incredible is that? It’s that same fullness of joy and laughter that raised Jesus from the dead and raised the world to new life in Him.[24] And it’s that same good pleasure that will continue to gather up all things in Christ[25] until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord[26] and all things are made new.[27]

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[1] Psalm 16:11

[2] Obviously the Trinity is eternal and no Person in God was ever “birthed” but you get Meister’s point

[3] Interestingly enough, Eckhart Tolle, one of the biggest leaders of the New Age Movement and author of The New Earth and The Power of Now renamed himself after Meister Eckhart after experiencing a spiritual transformation. A huge part of the New Age movement just might be riding off the fumes of the revelation of a Happy God. May Jesus guide them into all Truth.

[4] Ephesians 1:17

[5] 1 Corinthians 1:24

[6] Isaiah 66:13

[7] Matthew 23:37

[8] Genesis 1:27

[9] The equality of male and female is very Biblical; see Galatians 3:28 – “there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

[10] Proverbs 8:30-31

[11] John 1:1

[12] Colossians 1:16

[13] Proverbs 8:30-31

[14] The Joy of the Lord is His strength, too! (Nehemiah 8:10)

[15] Colossians 1:17

[16] Psalm 104:31; some translations say “May the Lord rejoice in His works.” John Piper does a good job of explaining in his book The Pleasures of God that the Psalmist is making a declaration that God does rejoice in His works; he isn’t merely requesting that God rejoice in His works.

[17] The Greek word for God’s grace (kindness) comes from the root word for “joy.” More on this at a later time.

[18] 2 Corinthians 5:20

[19] Ephesians 1:4-5

[20] Malachi 3:6

[21] Psalm 2:1,4

[22] Romans 5:15

[23] Acts 2:27-28

[24] Ephesians 2:5-6; Hosea 6:2

[25] Ephesians 1:10-11

[26] Habakkuk 2:14

[27] Revelation 21:5