Day 201: John 1:14–18

Indeed, we have all received grace after grace from His fullness (v. 16).

John 1:16 introduces a key concept that will carry us through this vital part of our journey. I encourage you to memorize it! If you will receive what this verse is saying to you, your entire life experience with Jesus will be transformed.

The original word for “blessing” is charis, often translated “grace.” This explains the King James rendering: “And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.” Charis is “that which causes joy, pleasure, gratification, favor, acceptance . . . a benefit . . . the absolutely free expression of the loving kindness of God to men finding its only motive in the bounty and benevolence of the Giver; unearned and unmerited favor.”42

Based on John 1:14 and 1:16, then—and this definition—I believe we can accurately draw the following conclusions:

1. Jesus is full of grace and truth. He’s the One and Only.

2. All of us get to receive from His fullness! Not just John the apostle. Not just John the Baptist. Jesus is full and overflowing with everything any of us who believes could possibly need or desire, and we get to receive from it!

3. These grace gifts flowing from Christ’s fullness are not only beneficial, but they are expressions of God’s favor that cause joy and pleasure!

It’s high time I made a blatant confession. I am a Christian hedonist. Have been for years even before I knew what the term meant. I wish I had better words for it, but let me just say it like it is: Jesus makes me happy! He thrills me! He nearly takes my breath away with His beauty. As seriously as I know how to tell you, I am at times so overwhelmed by His love for me, my face blushes with intensity, and my heart races with holy anticipation. Jesus is the uncontested delight of my life.

I never intended for this to happen. I didn’t even know it was possible. It all started with an in-depth study of His Word in my late twenties and then surged oddly enough with a near emotional and mental collapse in my early thirties. At the end of myself I came to the beginning of an intensity of relationship with an invisible Savior. No one had ever told me such a relationship existed. Now I spend my life telling anyone who will listen.

I thought I was just weird. I knew so many believers who wore Christ like a sacrifice that I thought I missed something somewhere. Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of believers in the world make huge sacrifices in the name of Jesus Christ, but I’m not sure American believers can relate . . . and we can be a little nauseating when we try.

By far the biggest sacrifices I’ve ever made were times I chose to pursue myself and my own will over Jesus and His. I’d be a liar to tell you Jesus has been some big sacrifice for me. He is the unspeakable joy and love of my life. In crude terms, I think He’s a blast.

While still in the closet, I began stumbling on other Christian hedonists. Perhaps Augustine is the most blatant historical example. Of his conversion in 386, Augustine wrote, “How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose! . . . You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure.”43 My heart leaps as I read words that I, too, have lived!

Jonathan Edwards was another. In 1755 he wrote, “God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those who see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it.”44

C. S. Lewis was also a fine Christian hedonist. He wrote:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.45

Beloved, I don’t care who you are or how long you’ve known Jesus, I am convinced we have hardly scratched the surface. So much more of Him exists! So much more He’s willing to give us! Show us! Tell us! Oh, that we would spend our life in furious pursuit!