At the beginning of Mark’s gospel, John the Baptist was calling people to prepare for the Messiah by confessing and repenting of their sin. Mourning and repenting was right to prepare for Jesus. But what did John say when Jesus came? ‘Behold! The lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. Preparing for Jesus by mourning over sin is right. But when Jesus takes that sin away and dwells with his people, mourning is no longer appropriate – the right response is rejoicing.

Baked into the covenant was a promise that God would fulfil its requirements himself. Jesus is God incarnate come to fulfil the covenantal requirements. Jesus deals with sin and removes the burden of old covenant law-keeping so that our response to Jesus may be to prepare for him by confessing our sin and repenting, and once we have repented, no longer responding with sadness and mourning but rejoicing.

This is why Paul commands the Philippians to ‘rejoice in the Lord always’. It’s why Paul can talk about rejoicing even in suffering. It’s why Paul can tell the Colossians to continually give thanks to God in their heart and to rejoice. Jesus has taken our sin away. Jesus is now forever with his people. Jesus has turned our need to mourn over sin into rejoicing over sin forgiven and full acceptance with God.

Thought we remain sinners, our new identity in Christ is no longer fundamentally hopeless sinner, but more essentially holy saints and righteous sons of God. Our fundamental posture as believers should be rejoicing in Christ not mourning over sin. This means Christians should be known as people of joy. We should be known as people who know how to have a good time and exude joy specifically because of our freedom in Christ.

Sadly, Christians aren’t always very good at joy. We easily get more caught up with pointing out what we shouldn’t do, and what others shouldn’t do, and even what we can do is often couched in miserable terms. It’s even worse if you’re British. We’re not a people known for our joie de vivre. I think it’s telling our best phrase for joy is French! Miserable Brits go to miserable churches that seem to like making life miserable. It’s not what Jesus wants for us!

The New Covenant is a covenant of joy. Our response to Jesus should be joy. Christians should exude joy. We should be people who enjoy Jesus and so enjoy life. The right response to Jesus, and the upending of the old covenant, is joy. If we don’t have much joy, something has gone wrong.