Philippians 2:17–18 — But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. 18 You too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me.
Philippians 4:4 — Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!
1 Corinthians 12:26 — And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
Search through the New Testament for words like "joy", "joyful", "rejoice" etc and you will soon discover that this was a spontaneous feature of life in the Church. We often read of outbursts of joy among God's children, and the passage in 1 Corinthians above shows us that rejoicing took place in the body as a characteristic of true fellowship. The believers were filled with wonder at the Gospel through which they had been saved and they couldn't do anything but rejoice with "joy inexpressible and full of glory" (1 Peter 1:8).
We want to underline again that this joy is not something known and experienced in the world. It is not simply "happiness" but a deep stirring of the soul in delight over spiritual things - something hard to put into words, as Peter indicates above.
See again, that the Holy Spirit does not produce this fruit in God's children for them to hoard it away and never show it to others. In the passage from Philippians 2 above, Paul rejoices and shares his joy with the body. He wants them to rejoice and share their joy with him - and sharing these spiritual fruits and gifts for the good of the church is the very essence of fellowship, as we have seen.
Note from Philippians 4:4 that rejoicing is not optional for the believer - it is commanded. There is something very wrong with our Christianity if we find nothing in Christ, nothing in the Father and nothing in the Gospel that causes us to rejoice and to demonstrate that we possess this fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Spiritual joy is something that is wonderful to experience - whether we know it in our own souls or others in the body share their joy with us. It lifts our souls and tends to cause us to rejoice in turn. This is a great incentive to us to be present when the body meets, and to share our joy with our brothers and sisters in obedience to this command.
