The happy major chord is made up of three notes, a first, a third and a fifth, but it’s the second of the three notes that give it its distinctive cheerful sound. Take away the third and the chord becomes ambiguous, neither happy nor sad, it can go either way. But add the sunny third and the chord brightens to the smiling major.
But the minor chord is different. Play a minor chord and the room darkens a little. The words “sad”, “serious” or even “dark” immediately come to mind. Browns and blacks and sorrowful tears fill our imagination. What makes the change? The second note of the triad, the third. In minor chords it’s down a half-step. Just this slightly lower tone changes the entire color. Is this mournful perception learned, or is there something innately sad in the minor chord? I believe it’s intrinsic to the chord itself. Here’s why:
Somewhere in eternity past the Holy Trinity, overflowing with glorious love and delight, created all things. From this happy triad of Father, Son and Holy Spirit all things came into being, and they were good. At creation Job tells us that “stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7) The Great Three in One is the very origin of joy and happiness.
But soon after this happy beginning the very ones who were made in His image fell from that good and blissful state. The dark strains of sin and sorrow were first heard that day. Luke’s genealogy calls Adam, “God’s son,” but unlike the bright and glorious second Person of the Trinity, this image bearer was sadly shifted downward. And so began the long and mournful history of mankind.
Each of us knows the effects of the fall in our own lives. We’ve felt the pain of betrayal or the weight of our own guilty conscience. We may know the happy chords of joy, but the sense that all is not right, that something is “off” plagues us still; we feel the minor chord. We can relate to Elton John’s “Sad Songs”, when he sings:
“And it’s times like these when we all need to hear the radio
`Cause from the lips of some old singer
We can share the troubles we already know”
That same loving Creator who flung into existence the glory all around us , and Who also saw the brokenness of His creation, and especially of those made in His image, moved with compassion to redeem and restore. But how would he do it?
The true Son of God would “come down”, or as Hebrews 2:9 puts it, He was made “a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, the He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone.” From the joy of His eternal place with the Father and Spirit, the Second Person of the Trinity would shift Himself downward, entering the brokenness of our tearful world. The only way to save us from our “minor” existence, was to leave his “major” existence and become the “man of sorrows” (Isa. 53:3). No one has experienced suffering like the Son of God. No one has felt the pain of this troubled world like Him.
But His joy was not consumed by the darkness of this world, but rather, He consumed the sorrow. He drank the full cup of God’s wrath in our place that we might take the cup of His salvation, and one day share a world where every tear is dried and every pain is healed, and sorrow is no more.
So every time you hear the sad minor chord, let it remind you of the Man of Sorrows. Just as all sorrow has echoed from our first father, Adam, so all joy will flow from the last Adam, Jesus Christ, the Man of Sorrows, Who was “made a little lower than the angles”, and is now exalted as the King of Glory.
