Rejoice with those who rejoice (Rom 12:15).
For some of us, this command may be more difficult than the one that precedes it (“Bless those who persecute you”) and the one that immediately follows (“weep with those who weep”).
What do you do when someone else gets what you think you deserve? How do you rejoice when others are experiencing the fulfillment of the same God-given desires that you have, while you are left without those blessings?
These are crucial questions that we must ask if we are going to truly rejoice with those who rejoice.
But we must go deeper than the command itself. We simply do not have the innate spiritual resources to genuinely rejoice with those who rejoice. The power to obey this command comes from another source. Specifically, the fruit of rejoicing with those who rejoice grows from the root of Spirit-enabled contentment. The question then becomes: “How can I be content?”
Step #1: Believing the Gospel
The first step to contentment is to know both our unworthiness (Rom 3:10-19) and the glorious grace of God (Rom 3:21-26; 4:5; 5:1). We can’t forget that the command to rejoice with those who rejoice comes after Paul’s lengthy and detailed exposition of the gospel.
We deserve hell for our sins, yet through the cross of Christ, God freely forgives us and grants us eternal life through faith, apart from our works. Any good or pleasant thing we experience in this life is a gift of pure, undeserved grace. Understanding the depth of our sin, the justice of God, and the wonder of the gospel is essential for walking in contentment.
Step #2: Linking Contentment to the Presence of God
Secondly, we must link contentment to the person of God himself. Hebrews 13:5 says it this way:
Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not fear; what can man do to me?”
The author of Hebrews ties our contentment directly to the promise that God will never leave us. Isn’t that amazing? The author assumes that God’s presence itself is enough to sustain us through difficulty and keep us from discontentment. Why? Because in order to be content with what we presently have, we must possess a greater and more enduring treasure.
The author of Hebrews tells us that it is God himself who is our greatest treasure. While we may lose something valuable in this life, we will never lose God. This is the immovable bedrock upon which we can build a life of contentment.
But how does this work in the life of the Christian? How can you be content in this life when, in fact, you are not experiencing the fulfillment of good, wholesome desires?
For many years, my wife and I were unable to conceive children. Yet, we were in a church where the average family had at least three or more children, and every other week (it seemed), another young mom was pregnant with her third or fourth child.
We knew the command to rejoice with those who rejoice. We also knew the heartbreak of not being able to conceive. The only way we could be content is if we were certain we had the most precious possession in the universe—Jesus Christ—and he would never leave us. We grieved, but God also enabled us to celebrate the new births and enjoy our friends’ kids.
This is where we must get beyond clichés in the Christian life. In order to be content, we have to be able to see (with faith) into the future and believe that we do actually possess Christ, and with Christ, everything else (Rom 8:32). We must believe that all our good desires will be ultimately satisfied in ways unimaginable in a future not long from now.
Step #3: Praying for God to Satisfy Us
Thirdly, prayer is vital in the pursuit of contentment. Psalm 90:14 provides a model for how we might ask God to help us be content:
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
A prayer for satisfaction in God is a prayer for contentment that comes from God himself, spiritually nourishing us with his steadfast love. But notice what that satisfaction leads to: rejoicing and gladness, all of our days. In other words, the ability to rejoice with those who rejoice comes directly from being satisfied in God and his steadfast love.
Also, when we are satisfied with God and his steadfast love, we are enabled to see more clearly that God is good and wise in the way he deals with us. Are you confident in the truth that God is good and that he always deals well with you?
If you’re in Christ, God only does good to you. It may not always feel or look like he is doing good to us. Indeed, we might be tempted to interpret our difficult circumstances and suffering as evidence that he is treating us poorly.
But when we look at our lives through the lens of Scripture, we learn that God acts only in love toward his children and is working every circumstance together for our ultimate blessing (Rom 8:28-32). Even the painful discipline we experience in this life flows from a heart of love (Heb 12:3ff). There’s no caveat to that statement: everything you experience—pleasant or painful—is a movement of God’s love toward you in your life.
Step #4: Rooting Our Joy in Heaven
Finally, our hearts will remain content in Christ when we are overjoyed that we are going to heaven. When Jesus’ disciples returned from a brief evangelistic mission, they rejoiced over the spiritual authority Jesus had entrusted to them. Jesus, however, refastened their joy to a better, more sure foundation: their salvation.
The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven (Luke 10:17-20).
Rather than fixing their joy on the authority they wielded, Jesus instructed his disciples to root their joy in the glorious reality that they would not be condemned when they died—they would experience everlasting life with Christ in heaven. Spiritual authority, ministry effectiveness, and opportunities for earthly leadership can come and go. Heaven is forever. Contentment grows in a heart that anticipates the joys of heaven more than it revels in privileges on earth.
Conclusion
When we find it difficult to rejoice with those who rejoice, it is likely that we are not walking in one or more of the truths listed above. We may not be remembering the truths of our unworthiness and God’s amazing grace in the gospel. We may not be treasuring God’s presence. It could be that we are not asking to be satisfied in God himself, or that we are starting to root our joy in temporal realities instead of unchanging ones. This neglect leads to a lack of contentment, which disables us from truly rejoicing with those who rejoice.
But by God’s grace, we can weave these truths into our minds and hearts and begin to experience the freedom and delight of rejoicing with those who rejoice. There are few things more pleasant in the Christian life than celebrating with a fellow brother or sister with zero envy, jealousy, or bitterness.
May God grant us to walk in contentment that we might rejoice with those who rejoice.
