“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 17:22
This great depression prescription has three parts to it.
1) The first part speaks about the painful condition of a broken spirit.
The spirit within man is the animating[1] part of man. When the spirit departs life comes to an end. Broken means stricken, crushed, or defeated in Hebrew (Ps. 106:19). The broken spirit is contrasted in Prov. 18:14 with the spirit that gives the power to endure physical sickness.[2] The bones in Hebrew refer to our strength being lost; the marrow dries up and the life is weakened. It is a form of early death because the animating spirit in man is depressed and defeated. All forms of depression in our human spirit, with any accompanying weakening of our physical frame, are painful. It hurts the spirit and the body.
God has much to teach us about our physical and spiritual constitution. This is biblical psychology, a division of the doctrine of anthropology. Man is created in the image of God and that image is reflected in man’s body and spirit. But the spirit as the animating part of man gives movement and strength to our lives. When this spirit is adversely affected, the body is weakened. Waltke says that “This verse asserts the psychosomatic effects of 17:21….grief and joy are matters of life and death”[3] – “He who sires a fool does so to his own sorrow, and the father of a fool has no joy” (17:21). This is a reminder that life’s troubles and our sinful actions do take our joy away and cause countless troubles in spirit and body.
2) The second part of 17:22 refers to the healing agent which is a joyful heart.
It should not surprise us that the top prescription medication for maladies of the spirit is joy that fills the heart.
Joy transforms our facial expressions (Prov. 15:13). Joy stays with us and is contagious (Prov. 15:15). It can be fostered and fed by the good words of others (Prov. 12:25),[4] and in the timely, well-thought-out responses of others (Prov. 15:23). This is a needed reminder to us that we can do much to help the joy of others.
These are some of the main verses in Proverbs about the healing medicine of joy. But joy is a theme found throughout the Bible and calls for our careful study. I encourage you to do a concordance study sometime on joy, joyful, rejoice, etc., in the Bible. If it is the most effective medicine, then we should be ingesting that medicine regularly.
Psalms of joy are a specific genre in the songbook of Israel and the church.[5] They are happy songs of the people of God. Even Psalms of lament have happy endings! Psalms of joy teach us that we are to sing hymns of joy (Eph. 5:18-20, Col. 3:16-17). Singing Psalms and songs of the Christian faith both express and enrich our joy. Sing with your mind (1 Cor. 14:15); it will increase your joy!
Joy is given to us through the Gospel. Only sinners saved by grace have true, lasting, effectual, overcoming, eternal, joy (Lk. 2:10, Lk. 10:20, Mt. 13:44, Lk. 6:23, Acts 13:52, 1 Th. 1:6, 1 Jn. 1:4, etc.).
3) The third part of 17:22 is the healing process.
This is indicated by the form of the Hebrew grammar. The joyful heart causes healing.[6] We take medicine for fast relief. The Bible and Christian doctrine, however, present the healing of man’s spirit (and all consequent benefit to his body) as a progressive work of grace.
If I am sad, I want to be happy immediately, and sometimes a good word will do that (12:25). But deep-seated joy that overcomes all maladies of the spirit comes through the exercise of the means of God’s grace which are: repentance and faith in Christ for salvation; daily Bible study, meditation, and prayer; confession of sin and humility in the presence of God; living in the fear of God and acquiring wisdom; being properly attached to a local church; attendance on the preaching and ordinances of the church; Christian fellowship; Christian service and hospitality; loving the brethren and all people with Gospel love.
Keep up these disciplines; your joy will increase; your depression and discouragement will decrease.
-Pastor Reuther
See Depression Medication Part I
Notes:
[1] Animation – the quality of being lively, energetic, vigorous, spirited, necessary for living.
[2] See the earlier article on “Sickness & Spiritual Depression” ~ Prov. 18:14.
[3] Bruce K. Waltke, The Book of Proverbs 15-31 (NICOT – Eerdmans 2005), 60.
[4] See the earlier article on 12:25 entitled “Anxiety & Spiritual Depression.”
[5] See Mark D. Futato, Joy Comes in the Morning (Phillipsburg, NJ, P & R, 2004).
[6] Hebrew hiphil form of the verb.
This article has been reposted with permission from http://cbclumberton.com/2013/04/25/depression-medication-ii-proverbs-1722/.