Joy comes from a relationship with and an understanding of the character of God.

It has been said that the message of Scripture is about fellowship with God. In this passage we find some reasons for this. The apostle John first reminds us that Jesus is real and that what we believe about Jesus matters because it leads to a rich fellowship with the church and with God.

The pathway to joy was well expressed in the words of one of the church ‘fathers’ who said something like … ‘Our hearts are restless until they find rest in God’. Darkness and light can’t exist in the same space. Sin is within us and we need to face up to it. Unrepentant sin robs us of our joy. We need to confess our sins.

The basis of joy comes from the character of God when we see how He has dealt with us in Christ, our ‘Advocate’. He pleads for believers with an infallible argument, His atoning blood, so that the pronouncement on us in the court of heaven is: ‘not guilty’, ‘not guilty’, ‘not guilty’.