THEARTOFCHRIST — Issue 25: Endorphin
The Joy That Meets Pain From Within
How Christ brings about life, and how He supplies it more abundantly.

Anchor: The Joy Set Before Him

The herald announces the order of it first, because the order is the whole lesson. Christ, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2, paraphrase). The joy is named before the endurance. The joy is not the prize handed out after the pain is over. The joy is set before Him while the cross is still ahead, and He endures in the strength of a joy that is already His. The pain is not escaped. The pain is met, and met from within, by a joy that was given before the suffering began.

The body knows a smaller version of this shape. Endorphins are the body's own relief — chemicals the brain releases in exertion, in laughter, in the aftermath of pain. They bind to the body's own receptors and dull the ache, lift the mood, steady the breath. A runner finds the second wind past the point where the legs wanted to quit. A man laughs hard and feels the day's weight loosen. The relief comes from within the body itself, in the middle of the effort, not from somewhere outside it, and not after the effort is safely past.

The world sells endorphins the other way round. The relief is read, and a program is built around it: chase the high. Run for the runner's high. Laugh on schedule. Eat for the lift. Seek the activity that releases the feeling, and the feeling becomes the proof that life is working. Pleasure becomes a reward to pursue, and pursuit becomes the discipline.

There is a grain of observation in it, and that is why it sells. A man does feel lighter after a hard run than after a day on the couch. A man does feel the weight lift when laughter breaks through a hard week. But the world's program turns an observation into a ladder, and a ladder into a master. Chase the high well, and you are becoming someone. Fail to find the high, and you are failing at yourself. The feeling becomes a dashboard to monitor, and every flat day becomes a verdict.

That is where pleasure turns cruel. The man whose high has faded reads his flatness as proof that he has not chased hard enough, and the proof drives him to chase harder. The man whose high is strong reads his lifted mood as proof of his discipline, and the proof curdles into pride. A high chased as life always fades, and the fading always demands a stronger dose: a longer run, a sharper joke, a richer food. The pursuit never rests, because the relief it chases was never meant to carry the weight of a life.

Apart from Christ, pleasure is a master, and a master always ends in one of two places: pride in the high kept, or despair at the high lost. The man is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase), and so even his relief becomes a place where he is cut off from life — the lightness wanted, the lightness always somewhere else, the verdict waiting underneath.

Scripture bears witness to a different answer. The connectors reveal the movement: the relief is real, the created relief cannot hold it, and the faded high is the shape of the creature waiting for its Keeper.

God gave the nations rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:17, paraphrase). The gladness is named as a gift, and the Giver is named before the gift. The psalm names the same order in its fullest form: in His presence is fullness of joy, and at His right hand are pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11, paraphrase). The pleasures are not chased. They are located. They sit at a right hand, in a presence, and the man finds them by being where the presence is.

Paul names the same shape in suffering itself. He writes that we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Rom 5:3-4, paraphrase). The rejoicing is placed in the suffering, not after it as a prize for surviving it, because the suffering is already held inside a hope that does not disappoint. And when Paul pleaded for his thorn to be taken away, the answer was not removal but sufficiency: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12:9, paraphrase). The thorn stayed. The grace met it from within.

In Christ, the relief is given, then felt.

The man hears that he is held before he chases a high, and the hearing itself is the gift — God gives hearing, and God gives growth. The joy is not a level for securing lightness. It is a Person received, and the Person reorders what the man's body does with its days. The joy set before Christ was not a feeling He manufactured to endure the cross. It was the life already His, and He endured in that joy rather than for a joy still to be earned. So too the man in Christ: the relief is not earned by the run, the laugh, the effort. It is received in a life already given, and the run and the laugh become places where the received life shows itself in the body.

Relief Reaches the Day

Every topic in this workshop relates to physical life, and endorphins are bodily through and through — the run, the laughter, the ache, the lightness after effort that does not demand to be repeated at a higher dose.

The world's program counts the relief: the miles run, the laughs scheduled, the highs scored. Apart from Christ, the count is the verdict: the man who is alienated from the life of God (Eph 4:18, paraphrase) treats even his lightness as a work to perform, and so his relief becomes another place where he is cut off from life.

In Christ, the relief is a relief already held and already being given. The run taken because the body was made to move, not because the mood must be earned. The laughter received as a gift in the middle of a hard week, not chased as proof that the week is going well. The ache carried without the ache becoming a judge, because the grace that meets weakness is sufficient in the weakness itself. The body does what a held creature does: lightening in a shape given to it, not earning a shape withheld from it. The lightness does not make the man acceptable before God. It receives a life already given in Christ.

This receiving also reaches the neighbor. A man who is held does not need the neighbor to supply his high, and so he can turn toward the neighbor without demanding. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:22-23, paraphrase) — not a list of levels to raise, but fruit borne where the Spirit is at work. The laughter that does not use the neighbor as a stage, the patience that holds when the day is flat — these are not performances of pleasure. They are relief in bodily form, the held man sparing his neighbor what he can spare him, because Christ first met his pain from within.

That is life, supplied more abundantly (John 10:10, paraphrase): a man whose relief is no longer a high to chase, whose lightness is no longer his verdict, whose effort and laughter and ache are a joy Christ has held, received in Christ, and turned toward the neighbor, in Christ.