Every person has done sinful things for which he was ashamed even prior to salvation (Romans 6:21). Some of those things are so wicked that the apostle Paul would not even mention what they were (Ephesians 5:12). The life of a Christian was never intended by God to be that way. According to verse 5 above, the Christian life is to be a life void of shame. This type of fulfilled life is only possible when hope is present for “hope maketh not ashamed.” Yet, every Christian must come to understand that hope is the outcome of a sometimes lengthy spiritual process. Here is the biblical sequence. If one properly endures tribulation, he learns to have patience. Patience, in turn, brings experience, and experience brings hope. All these things work together in the life of the believer to keep him from living a life of shame. There is truly no shame in a life lived with hope!
The Bible provides several sources of man’s joy, but each source can in some way be directly traced back to the Lord. In today's passage, Psalm 43:4 describes God as the psalmist's “exceeding joy.” According to Psalm 16:11, there is “fulness of joy” in God’s presence. While the Bible indicates that man’s soul can be joyful in the Lord (Psalm 35:9; Isaiah 61:10), it also associates joy directly to God’s strength (Psalm 21:1). Moreover, God’s word provides a source of joy for the saint (Jeremiah 15:16). In the New Testament, the book of Romans identifies God as the saint’s source of joy, but specifically, this joy comes “through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:11). Perhaps men lack the joy of the Lord because they disregard the Lord of their joy.
