We have not yet seen Jesus Christ in the body, and through the grace of God, this is a great blessing and glory for us. While that fact has led many into a ho-hum profession of the Christian faith, cruising along on autopilot, that is not how the Spirit intends to use the fact that we have not seen Jesus Christ. “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:” (1 Peter 1:8). God wants the fact that we have not seen Jesus with our eyes to be something that faith lifts up into unspeakable joy and fullness of glory.
Ineffable joy is therefore something that is part of normal Christian living. It should be part of the baseline. This is not an over-inflamed condition of uber-saints; these are words written to ordinary Christians such as yourselves. “Joy unspeakable and full of glory” is not a private reserve for mystics.
And this is what enables you, as you have gathered together in this way, coming to the Table of the Lord with that unspeakable joy, to then discern the body of the Lord Jesus in your brothers and sisters all around you. Just a few verses down, Peter says this: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever” (1 Pet. 1:22–23).
When there is an unfeigned love for the brethren, when we love one another from the heart fervently, this is the Spirit’s seal upon us. It means that our joy unspeakable is not a sham, not a front, not a super-spiritual substitute for actually loving other people.
You have not seen Jesus Christ—joy unspeakable, full of glory. You have seen Jesus Christ in your brothers and sisters—unfeigned love, fervent love.
So come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ.