I believe all men have this in common: that they want to be happy. They do not all agree on what brings the greatest happiness, but they do all long to have it. And this longing is not bad. It is good. Evil consists in trying to find happiness in ways that displease and dishonor God. Goodness consists in finding happiness in ways that please and honor God. We can conceive of a world in which we might be called upon to do right at the expense of our ultimate happiness. But that is not the world in which we live. God has established this world in such a way that doing good through faith in Christ always leads to greater happiness eventually. We do not live in a world where we must choose between our eternal happiness and God’s glory! God has created this world and its moral laws in such a way that the more we choose to glorify God, the happier we will be.
Of course this does not mean that there is no discipline, no self-denial. “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34, 35). But it is clear from Jesus’ words that self-denial is a means to saving our lives. This means simply that we must stop seeking our happiness in one way and start seeking it in another. Therefore what sets Christians off from the world is not that we have given up on the universal quest for happiness, but that we now seek our happiness from a different source and in different ways. We have learned from Jesus, who “for the joy set before him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2), that the joy we seek may require that we choose to suffer for Christ’s sake. Yet we must never become self-pitying because “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). Nor can we ever become proud since we know that “suffering produces patience, and patience produces approvedness, and approvedness produces hope” (Romans 5:3, 4)—hope that God will restore our happiness one hundredfold (Mark 10:30). So you can’t boast in your sufferings since they are all bringing about our greater happiness in God.
So I take it to be a great and wonderful and liberating truth that God made us to be eternally happy. And I find great help in viewing the Bible as God’s guidebook to joy. We ought to view the Bible as a divine prescription for how to be cured of all unhappiness. The medicine it prescribes is not always sweet, but the cure it brings is infinite and eternal joy at God’s right hand (Psalm 16:11).