The Meaning of the Journey
There are numerous traditions that surround the dawning of the New Year. For example, there is the southern belief that eating black-eyed peas, seasoned with pork, will bring good luck in the year ahead. Another more familiar tradition rests simply in the greeting often spoken and heard: “Happy New Year!” Although the Bible does not explicitly contain the greeting, “Happy New Year,” it does contain various statements appropriate to a new year. One of these is the desire manifested in the statement of the elder to the beloved Gaius when he wrote, “Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).
The word pray (euchomia) in the preceding text can be rendered wish (KJV). Wish would be its force in secular expression. However, John’s words to Gaius convey more than some kind of traditional, conventional good wishes. His good wishes for Gaius found expression in fervent, sincere prayer for him. A truly happy new year does not, from the Christian perspective, depend on mere wishes. It involves, among other things, fervent and persistent prayer. Jesus said, “. . . Men always ought to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).
John’s prayer for Gaius was that he “may prosper in all things and be in health.” Prosper literally means “to be led along a good road;” to make a good and safe voyage to the journey’s end (Hiebert 324)The use here is metaphorical. John is not thinking of Gaius making a literal journey. He is wanting things to go well with him (RSV; NIV). Specifically, he prays that he (Gaius) will “be in health.” Prosperity and physical health are great blessings. However, we “do not know what will happen tomorrow” (James 4:14). We may pray these blessings for ourselves, and others, but such prayer should be under girded with the attitude of “if the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that” (James 4:15).
As good and desirable as physical health and prosperity are, there is something greater and prior. John prayed that Gaius would have health and prosperity in proportion to how his soul prospered. We should subordinate the material to the spiritual. The Lord implies such in the following powerfully penetrating words:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26, NKJV)
In the context of the true biblical worldview, ultimate prosperity entails the “good, and safe voyage” of the soul to the journey’s end. The immediate context of the above words of Jesus includes the fact that “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things . . . be killed, and be raised the third day” (Matthew 16:21). Hearing such, Peter actually took Jesus aside and rebuked the Lord! “Far be it from You, Lord, this shall not happen to You!” (Matthew 16:22). And Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me. . . . [Y]ou are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” (Matthew 16:23).
I am reminded of the closing words of Whittaker Chambers from his Foreword, written in the form of a letter to his children, in the 1952 book, Witness, which George Will called “one of the dozen or so indispensable books of the [20th] century.” Chambers wrote:
My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha—the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman, and child on earth, you will be wise. (21-22)
As another year in the journey ends, and a new year dawns, the journey continues. In the shadow of His cross, He who would bear my sins in His own body (cf. 1 Peter 2:24), prayed prior to being nailed to that cross: “O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). It was not possible. “Jesus . . . for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). That is the meaning of the journey. In conjunction with His resurrection, ascension, glorification, and coronation, it results in victory! That is ultimate prosperity.
History is His story. It is the gospel of Christ. The angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings [gospel] of great joy which will be to all people” (Luke 2:10). That is the message for a happy new year and far beyond—a Happy eternity!
Charles C. Pugh III
Executive Director
Works Cited:
Chambers, Whittaker. Witness: 50th Anniversary Edition. 1952. Washington: Regnery, 1980.
Hiebert, D. Edmond. The Epistles of John. Greenville: Bob Jones UP, 1991.