Happiness is a gift for our sanctification. How could happiness have an effect on making us holy? Although I remember a Charles Schultz book, a Scottie, and a Schnauzer fondly, a warm puppy isn’t quite what’s meant in this context. In fact, warm puppies are more likely to test our sanctification while we’re housebreaking them, and teaching them to come when called.

Webster’s definitions aren’t all obvious clues either. Prosperity, physical well-being, and a pleasurable experience describes much of our lives, but we know perfectly well that we behave in unholy ways despite such circumstances.

Happiness is a gift for our sanctification.

Solomon wrote it clearly: “To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge, and happiness….” Here is a signpost pointing us toward why: “To the man who pleases him….” Of course, thanks to the Ten Commandments, we’ve discovered we can’t do that at all, much less on our own.
The last six commandments, which deal with how we treat one another, expose Satan’s tactic of breaking our communion with God by introducing discontent with one another, with our circumstances, and with our identity. “Did God really say…? You’ll be like God, knowing good and evil.”
Thanks be to God. Jesus’ obedience and death satisfied those commandments for us, and smashed the devil’s power of death over us.

Happiness is a gift for our sanctification.

I believe part of the second definition Webster’s provides is a key. That part is the word contentment. Contentment affects our attitude, reducing the discontent and comparison which fuel behaviors ruled against in the last six commandments.

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