Our God is in the heavens;
he does whatever he pleases.
There has been a wonderful alteration in my mind,
in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty.... The doctrine
has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet.
Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.
The climax of God's happiness
is the delight he takes
in the echoes of his excellence
in the praises of his people.
John Piper
Chapter 1
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| Foundation for Christian Hedonism |
The ultimate ground of Christian Hedonism is the fact that God is uppermost in his own affections:
The chief end of God is to glorify God
and enjoy himself forever.
The reason this may sound strange is that we are more accustomed to think about our duty than God's design. And when we do ask about God's design we are too prone to describe it with ourselves at the center of God's affections. We may say, for example, his design is to redeem the world. Or to save sinners. Or to restore creation. Or the like.
But God's saving designs are penultimate, not ultimate. Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God's ultimate goal. These he performs for the sake of something greater: namely, the enjoyment he has in glorifying himself. The bedrock foundation of Christian Hedonism is not God's allegiance to us, but to himself.
If God were not infinitely devoted to the preservation, display, and enjoyment of his own glory, we could have no hope of finding happiness in him. But if he does in fact employ all his sovereign power and infinite wisdom to maximize the enjoyment of his own glory, then we have a foundation on which to stand and rejoice.
I know this is perplexing at first glance. So I will try to take it apart a piece at a time, and then put it back together at the end of the chapter.
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| God's Sovereignty: The Foundation of His Happiness and Ours |
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God has the right and power and wisdom to do |
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whatever makes him happy. |
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None of his purposes can be frustrated. |
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Therefore, he is never deficient or needy. |
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He is never gloomy or discouraged. |
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He is always full and overflowingly energetic |
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for the sake of his people |
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| who seek their happiness in him. |
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"Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases" ( Psalm 115:3). The implication of this text is that God has the right and power to do whatever makes him happy. That is what it means to say God is sovereign.
Think about it for a moment: If God is sovereign and can do any thing he pleases, then none of his purposes can be frustrated.
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The LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nought; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the thoughts of his heart to all generations. ( Psalm 33:10-11 ) |
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And if none of his purposes can be frustrated, then he must be the happiest of all beings. This infinite, divine happiness is the fountain from which the Christian Hedonist drinks and longs to drink more deeply.
Can you imagine what it would be like if the God who ruled the world were not happy? What if God were given to grumbling and pouting and depression like some Jack-and-the-beanstalk giant in the sky? What if God were frustrated and despondent and gloomy and dismal and discontented and dejected? Could we join David and say, "O God, thou art my God, I seek thee; my soul thirsts for thee; my flesh faints for thee, as in a dry and weary land where no water is" ( Psalm 63:1)?
I don't think so. We would all relate to God like little children who have a frustrated, gloomy, dismal, discontented father. They can't enjoy him. They can only try not to bother him, and maybe try to work for him to earn some little favor.
Therefore if God is not a happy God, Christian Hedonism has no foundation. For the aim of the Christian Hedonist is to be happy in God-to delight in God, to cherish and enjoy his fellowship and favor. But children cannot enjoy the fellowship of their father if he is unhappy. Therefore the foundation of Christian Hedonism is the happiness of God.
But the foundation of the happiness of God is the sovereignty of God: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases." If God were not sovereign-if the world he made were out of control, frustrating his design again and again-God would not be happy.
Just as our joy is based on the promise that God is strong enough and wise enough to make all things work together for our good, so God's joy is based on that same sovereign control: He makes all things work together for his glory.
If so much hangs on God's sovereignty we should make sure the biblical basis for it is secure.
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| The Biblical Basis of God's Sovereign Happiness 1
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God says, |
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"My counsel will stand and I will accomplish all my purpose." |
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Therefore Job says, |
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"No purpose of yours can be thwarted." |
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His purposes encompass all things, including sin. |
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Thus the crucifixion of Christ was the will of God, |
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even though it was the greatest sin ever committed. |
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"The lot is cast in the lap, |
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but every decision is from the Lord." 2
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The sheer fact that God is God implies that his purposes cannot be thwarted-so says the prophet Isaiah:
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I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is none like me declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, "My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose." ( Isaiah 46:9-10) |
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The purposes of God cannot be frustrated; there is none like God. If a purpose of God came to nought it would imply that there is a power greater than God's. It would imply that someone could stay his hand when he designs to do a thing. But "none can stay his hand"-as Nebuchadnezzar says:
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His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing; and he does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What are you doing?" ( Daniel 4:34-35) |
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| His Sovereignty Covers Calamities |
This was also Job's final confession after God had spoken to him out of the whirlwind: "I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted" ( Job 42:2). "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases."
This raises the question whether the evil and calamitous events in the world are also part of God's sovereign design. Jeremiah looks over the carnage of Jerusalem after its destruction and cries,
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My eyes are spent with weeping; my soul is in tumult; my heart is poured out in grief because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because infants and babes faint in the streets of the city. ( Lamentations 2:11) |
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But when he looked to God he could not deny the truth: |
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Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and evil come? ( Lamentations 3:37-38) |
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| "Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord and not evil?" |
If God reigns as sovereign over the world, then the evil of the world is not outside his design. "Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?" ( Amos 3:6)
This was the reverent saying of God's servant Job when he was afflicted with boils: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job 2:10). He said this even though the text says plainly that "Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD, and afflicted Job with loathsome sores" (Job 2:7). Was Job wrong to attribute to God what came from Satan? No, because the writer tells us immediately after Job's words, "In all this Job did not sin with his lips" ( Job 2:10).
The evil Satan causes is only by the permission of God. Therefore Job is not wrong to see it as ultimately from the hand of God. It would be unbiblical and irreverent to attribute to Satan (or to sinful man) the power to frustrate the designs of God.
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| Who Planned The Murder Of Christ? |
The clearest example that even moral evil fits into the designs of God is the crucifixion of Christ. Who would deny that the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act?
Yet in Acts 2:23, Peter says, "This, Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men." The betrayal was sin, but it was part of God's ordained plan. Sin did not thwart his plan or stay his hand.
Or who would say that Herod's contempt (Luke 23:11) or Pilate's spineless expediency (Luke 23:24) or the Jews' "Crucify! Crucify him!" (Luke 23:21) or the Gentile soldiers' mockery (Luke 23:36)- who would say that these were not sin? Yet Luke in Acts 4:27-28 records the prayer of the saints:
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Truly in this city there were gathered together against thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel to do whatever thy hand and thy plan had predestined to take place. |
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People lift their hand to rebel against the Most High only to find that their rebellion is unwitting service in the wonderful designs of God. Even sin cannot frustrate the purposes of the Almighty. He himself does not commit sin, but he has decreed that there be acts which are sin-for the acts of Pilate and Herod were predestined by God's plan.
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| God Turns It Wherever He Will. |
Similarly, when we come to the end of the New Testament and to the end of history in the Revelation of John, we find God in complete control of all the evil kings who wage war. In Revelation 17, John speaks of a harlot sitting on a beast with ten horns. The harlot is Rome, drunk with the blood of the saints; the beast is the antichrist and the ten horns are ten kings "who give over their power and authority to the beast . . . [and] make war on the Lamb."
But are these evil kings outside God's control? Are they frustrating God's designs? Far from it. They are unwittingly doing his bidding. "For God has put it in their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled" (Revelation 17:17). No one on earth can escape the sovereign control of God: "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will" (Proverbs 21:1; cf. Ezra 6:22).
The evil intentions of men cannot frustrate the decrees of God. This is the point of the story of Joseph's fall and rise in Egypt. His brothers sold him into slavery. Potiphar's wife slandered him into the dungeon. Pharaoh's butler forgot him in prison for two years. Where was God in all this sin and misery? Joseph answers in Genesis 50:20. He says to his guilty brothers, "As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today."
The hardened disobedience of men's hearts leads not to the frustration of God's plans, but to their fruition.
Consider the hardness of heart in Romans 11:25-26. "Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: A hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved. "Who is governing the coming and going of this hardness of heart so that it has a particular limit and then gives way at the appointed time to the certain salvation of "all Israel"?
Or consider the disobedience in Romans 11:31. Paul speaks to his Gentile readers about Israel's disobedience in rejecting their Messiah: "So they [Israel] have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they also may receive mercy." When Paul says Israel was disobedient in order that Gentiles might get the benefits of the gospel, whose purpose does he have in mind?
It could only be God's. For Israel certainly did not conceive of their disobedience as a way of blessing the Gentiles or winning mercy for themselves in such a roundabout fashion! Is not then the point of Romans 11:31 that God rules over the disobedience of Israel and turns it precisely to the purposes he has planned?
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| There Is No Such Thing As Mere Coincidence. |
God's sovereignty over men's affairs is not compromised even by the reality of sin and evil in the world. It is not limited to the good acts of men or the pleasant events of nature. The wind belongs to God whether it comforts or whether it kills.
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For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatever the LORD pleases he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps. He it is who makes the clouds rise at the end of the earth, who makes lightnings for the rain and brings forth the wind from his storehouses. ( Psalm 135:5-7) |
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In the end one must finally come to see that if there is a God in heaven, there is no such thing as mere coincidence, not even in the smallest affairs of life: "The lot is cast into the lap, but the decision is wholly from the Lord" (Proverbs 16:33). Not one sparrow "will fall to the ground without your Father's will" ( Matthew 10:29).
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| The Struggle and Solution of Jonathan Edwards |
Many of us have gone through a period of deep struggle with the doctrine of God's sovereignty. If we take our doctrines into our hearts where they belong, they can cause upheavals of emotion and sleepless nights. This is far better than toying with academic ideas that never touch real life. The possibility at least exists that out of the upheavals will come a new era of calm and confidence.
It has happened for many of us the way it did for Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was a pastor and a profound theologian in New England in the early 1700s. He was a leader in the first Great Awakening. His major works still challenge great minds of our day. His extraordinary combination of logic and love make him a deeply moving writer. Again and again when I am dry and weak, I pull down my collection of Edwards' Works and stir myself up with one of his sermons.
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He recounts the struggle he had with the doctrine of God's sovereignty: |
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From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty.... It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God.... |
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But never could I give an account, how, or by what means, I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's Spirit in it; but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections. |
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And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, in respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against it, in the most absolute sense.... I have often since had not only a conviction but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often appeared exceeding pleasant, bright, and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so. 3
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It is not surprising, then, that Jonathan Edwards struggled earnestly and deeply with a problem that stands before us now. How can we affirm the happiness of God on the basis of his sovereignty when much of what God permits in the world is contrary to his own commands in Scripture?
How can we say God is happy when there is so much sin and misery in the world?
Edwards did not claim to exhaust the mystery here. But he does help us find a possible way of avoiding outright contradiction while being faithful to the Scriptures. Putting it in my own words, he said that the infinite complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens.
When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the LORD God" ( Ezekiel 18:32).
But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic in all its parts-good and evil-brings him delight. 4
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| "It was the will of the Lord to bruise him." |
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God willed the crucifixion of his Son. |
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The sin and pain |
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he abhorred |
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(through the narrow lens). |
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The sin-covering, death-conquering obedience |
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he delighted in |
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(through the wide lens). |
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So it is with all pain and sin: |
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Grievous in itself, it does not thwart his plans, |
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or diminish his deepest delight. |
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For example, the death of Christ was the will and work of God the Father. Isaiah writes, "We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God.... It was the will of the Lord to bruise him; he has put him to grief." Yet surely, as God the Father saw the agony of his beloved Son and the wickedness that brought him to the cross, he did not delight in those things in themselves (viewed through the narrow lens) . Sin in itself, and the suffering of the innocent, are abhorrent to God.
Nevertheless, according to Hebrews 2:10, God the Father thought it was fitting to perfect the Pioneer of our salvation through suffering. God willed what he abhorred. He abhorred it in the narrow-lens view, but not in the wide-angle view of eternity. When the universality of things was considered, the death of the Son of God was seen by the Father as a magnificent way to demonstrate his righteousness (Romans 3:25-26) and bring his people to glory (Hebrews 2:10) and keep the angels praising forever and ever ( Revelation 5:9-13).
Therefore when I say the sovereignty of God is the foundation of his happiness, I do not ignore or minimize the anger and grief God can express against evil. But neither do I infer from this wrath and sorrow that God is a frustrated God who cannot keep his creation under control. He has designed from all eternity, and is infallibly forming with every event, a magnificent mosaic of redemptive history. 5 The contemplation of this mosaic (with both its dark and bright tiles) fills his heart with joy.
And if our Father's heart is full of deep and unshakable happiness, we may be sure that when we seek our happiness in him we will not find him "out of sorts" when we come. We will not find a frustrated, gloomy, irritable Father who wants to be left alone, but instead a Father whose heart is so full of joy it spills over onto all those (Christian Hedonists) who are thirsty.
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| God's Happiness Is in Himself |
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God employs his sovereignty to display |
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the great object of his delight, |
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his glory, |
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the beauty of his manifold perfections. |
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He does all that he does to magnify the worth of his glory. |
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He would be unrighteous if he valued anything more |
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than what is supremely valuable, |
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namely, himself. |
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I began this chapter by saying the ultimate ground of Christian Hedonism is the fact that God is uppermost in his own affections:
The chief end of God is to glorify God
and enjoy himself forever.
What we have seen so far is that God is absolutely sovereign over the world and that he can therefore do anything he pleases, and is therefore not a frustrated God, but a deeply happy God, rejoicing in all his works ( Psalm 104:31), when he considers them in relation to redemptive history.
What we have not yet seen is how this unshakable happiness of God is indeed a happiness in himself. We have seen that God has the sovereign power to do whatever he pleases, but we have not yet seen specifically what it is that pleases him. Why is it that contemplating the mosaic of redemptive history delights the heart of God? Is this not idolatry-for God to delight in something other than himself?
So now we must ask: What does make God happy? What is it about redemptive history that delights the heart of God? The way to answer this question is to survey what God pursues in all his works. If we could discover what one thing God pursues in everything he does, we would know what he delights in most. We would know what was uppermost in his affections.
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| God Delights in His Glory |
In Appendix 1, I present a brief survey of the high points of redemptive history in order to discover God's ultimate goal in all he does. If what follows seems out of sync with Scripture, I urge you to examine the supporting evidence of that appendix .
My conclusion there is that God's own glory is uppermost in his own affections. In everything he does, his purpose is to preserve and display that glory. To say his glory is uppermost in his own affections means that he puts a greater value an it than on anything else. He delights in his glory above all things.
Glory is not easy to define. It is like beauty. How would you define beauty? Some things we have to point at rather than define. But let me try. God's glory is the beauty of his manifold perfections. It can refer to the bright and awesome radiance that sometimes breaks forth in visible manifestations. Or it can refer to the infinite moral excellence of his character. In either case it signifies a reality of infinite greatness and worth. C. S. Lewis helps us with his own effort to point at It:
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Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the "fear" of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags. 6
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God's ultimate goal therefore is to preserve and display his infinite and awesome greatness and worth, that is, his glory.
God has many other goals in what he does. But none of them is more ultimate than this. They are all subordinate. God's overwhelming passion is to exalt the value of his glory. To that end he seeks to display it, to oppose those who belittle it, and to vindicate it from all contempt. It is clearly the uppermost reality in his affections. He loves his glory infinitely.
This is the same as saying: He loves himself infinitely. Or: He himself is uppermost in his own affections. A moment's reflection reveals the inexorable justice of this fact. God would be unrighteous (just as we would) if he valued anything more than what is supremely valuable. But he himself is supremely valuable. If he did not take infinite delight in the worth of his own glory he would be unrighteous. For it is right to take delight in a person in proportion to the excellence of that person's glory.
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| God Delights in the Glory of His Son |
Another moment's reflection reminds us that this is exactly what we affirm when we affirm the eternal divinity of God's Son. We stand at the foothills of mystery in all these things. But the Scriptures have given us some glimpses of the heights. They teach us that the Son of God is himself God: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (John 1:1). "In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" ( Colossians 2:9).
Therefore when the Father beheld the Son from all eternity, he was beholding the exact representation of himself. As Hebrews 1:3 says, the Son "reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature." And 2 Corinthians 4:4 speaks of "the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God."
From these texts we learn that through all eternity God the Father has beheld the image of his own glory perfectly represented in the person of his Son. Therefore one of the best ways to think about God's infinite enjoyment of his own glory is to think of it as the delight he has in his Son who is the perfect reflection of that glory (see John 17:24-26).
When Christ entered the world, God the Father said, "This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3 :17) . As God the Father contemplates the image of his own glory in the person of his Son, he is infinitely happy. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights" ( Isaiah 42:1 ).
Within the triune Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), God has been uppermost in his own affections for all eternity. This belongs to his very nature, for he has begotten and loved the Son from all eternity. Therefore God has been supremely and eternally happy in the fellowship of the Trinity. 9
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| God Delights in the Glory of His Work |
In creation God "went public" 10 with the glory that reverberates joyfully between the Father and the Son! There is something about the fullness of God's joy that inclines it to overflow. There is an expansive quality to his joy. It wants to share itself. The impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection which creation could supply. "It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to over flow." 11
God loves to behold his glory reflected in his works. So the eternal happiness of the triune God spilled over in the work of creation and redemption. And since this original happiness was God's delight in his own glory, therefore the happiness that he has in all his works of creation and redemption is nothing other than a delight in his own glory. This is why God has done all things, from creation to consummation, for the preservation and display of his glory. All his works are simply the spillover of his infinite exuberance for his own excellence.
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| Is God for Us or for Himself? |
But now the question arises: If God is so utterly enamored of his own glory, how can he be a God of love? If he unwaveringly does all things for his own sake, how then can we have any hope that he will do anything for our sake? Does not the apostle say, "Love seeks not its own" ( 1 Corinthians 13: 5) ?
Now we begin to see how the issue of God's happiness can make or break the philosophy of Christian Hedonism. If God were so self-centered that he had no inclination to love his -creatures, then Christian Hedonism would be dead. Christian Hedonism depends on the open arms of God. It depends on the readiness of God to accept and save and satisfy the heart of all who seek their joy in him. But if God is on an ego trip and out of reach, then it is in vain that we pursue our happiness in him.
Is God for us or for himself? Precisely in answering this question we will discover the great foundation for Christian Hedonism.
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| Is He Vain Or Loving To Command Our Praise? |
The Bible is replete with commands to praise God. God commands it because this is the ultimate goal of all he does-"to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have believed" (2 Thessalonians 1:10). Three times in Ephesians 1 this great aim is proclaimed: God "predestined us in love to be his sons . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace!" ( 1:5-6); "We . . . have been predestined and appointed to live for the praise of his glory" (1:12); the Holy Spirit "is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory" ( 1:14).
All the different ways God has chosen to display his glory in creation and redemption seem to reach their culmination in the praises of his redeemed people. God governs the world with glory precisely that he might be admired, marveled at, exalted and praised. The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints.
But again and again I have found that people stumble over this truth. People do not like to hear that God is uppermost in his own affections, or that he does all things for his own glory, or that he exalts himself and seeks the praise of men.
Why? There are at least two reasons. One is that we just don't like people who are like that. The other is that the Bible teaches us not to be like that. Let's examine these objections and see if they can apply to God.
First, we just don't like people who seem to be enamored by their own intelligence or strength or skill or good looks or wealth. We don't like scholars who try to show off their specialized knowledge, or who recite for us all their recent publications. We don't like businessmen who talk about how shrewdly they have invested their money and how they stayed right on top of the market to get in low and out high. We don't like children to play one-upmanship (Mine's bigger! Mine's faster! Mine's prettier!). And unless we are one of them, we disapprove of men and women who dress not functionally and simply, but to attract attention with the latest style.
Why don't we like all that? I think at root it's because those people are inauthentic. They are what Ayn Rand calls "second-handers." They don't live from the joy that comes through achieving what they value for its own sake. Instead, they live secondhand from the compliments of others. They have one eye on their action and one on their audience. We simply do not admire second-handers. We admire people who are secure and composed enough that they don't need to shore up their weaknesses and compensate for their deficiencies by trying to get compliments.
It stands to reason, then, that any teaching that puts God in the category of a second-hander will be unacceptable to Christians. And for many the teaching that God seeks to show off his glory and get the praise of men does in fact put him in the category of a second-hander. But should it?
One thing is certain: God is not weak and has no deficiencies. "All things are from him and through him and to him" (Romans 11:36). "He is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything" ( Acts 17:25). Everything that exists owes its existence to him, and no one can add anything to him which is not already flowing from him. Therefore God's zeal to seek his own glory and to be praised by men cannot be owing to his need to shore up some weakness or compensate for some deficiency. He may look, at first glance, like one of the second-handers, but he is not like them, and the superficial similarity must be explained another way.
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| "Love Seeks Not Its Own" -- Except In The Joy Of Others. |
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The rules of humility that belong to a creature |
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cannot apply in the same way to its Creator. |
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Ultimate self-denial would be idolatry in God. |
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By upholding his own glory |
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he upholds the groud of our joy. |
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And that is love. |
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The second reason people stumble over the teaching that God exalts his own glory and seeks to be praised by his people is that the Bible teaches us not to be like that. For example, the Bible says that "Love seeks not its own" ( 1 Corinthians 13:5). How can God be loving and yet be utterly devoted to "seeking his own" glory and praise and joy? How can God be for us if he is so utterly for himself?
The answer I propose is this: Because God is unique as an all-glorious, totally self-sufficient Being, he must be for himself if he is to be for us. The rules of humility that belong to a creature cannot apply in the same way to its Creator. If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry.
This would be no gain for us. For where can we go when our God has become unrighteous? Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable? Where shall we turn with our adoration when God himself has forsaken the claims of infinite worth and beauty?
No, we do not turn God's self-exaltation into love by demanding that God cease to be God. Instead we must come to see that God is love precisely because he relentlessly pursues the praises of his name in the hearts of his people.
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| Delight Is Incomplete Until It Is Expressed. |
Consider this question: In view of God's infinite power and wisdom and beauty, what would his love to a human being involve? Or to put it another way: What could God give us to enjoy that would prove him most loving? There is only one possible answer: himself! If he withholds himself from our contemplation and companionship, no matter what else he gives us, he is not loving.
Now we are on the brink of what for me was a life-changing discovery. What do we all do when we are given or shown something beautiful or excellent? We praise it! We praise new little babies: "Oh, look at that nice round head! And all that hair! And her hands, aren't they perfect!" We praise a lover after a long absence: "Your eyes are like a cloudless sky! Your hair like forest silk!" We praise a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth when we are down by three. We praise the October trees along the banks of the St. Croix.
But the great discovery for me, as I said, came when reading "A Word about Praise" in C. S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms. His recorded thoughts-born from wrestling with the idea that God not only wants our praise but commands it--bear looking at again, in fuller form:
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But the most obvious fact about praise-whether of God or any thing-strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise-lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game-praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least . . . |
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I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise what ever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: "Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?" The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value. |
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I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. 13
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There is the solution! We praise what we enjoy because the delight is incomplete until it is expressed in praise. If we were not allowed to speak of what we value, and celebrate what we love, and praise what we admire, our joy would not be full. So if God loves us enough to make our joy full, he must not only give us himself; he must also win from us the praise of our hearts-not because he needs to shore up some weakness in himself or compensate for some deficiency, but because he loves us and seeks the fullness of our joy that can be found only in knowing and praising him, the most magnificent of all Beings. If he is truly for us he must be for himself!
God is the one Being in all the universe for whom seeking his own praise is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue. When he does all things ``for the praise of his glory," he preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world which can satisfy our longings. God is for us! And the foundation of this love is that God has been, is now, and always will be, for himself.
God is absolutely sovereign. "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases!" (Psalm 115:3). Therefore he is not frustrated. He rejoices in all his works when he contemplates them as colors of the magnificent mosaic of redemptive history. He is an unshakably happy God.
His happiness is the delight he has in himself. Before creation he rejoiced in the image of his glory in the person of his Son. Then the joy of God "went public" in the works of creation and redemption. These works delight the heart of God because they reflect his glory. He does everything he does to preserve and display that glory, for in this his soul rejoices.
All the works of God culminate in the praises of his redeemed people. The climax of his happiness is the delight he takes in the echoes of his excellence in the praises of the saints. This praise is the consummation of our own joy in God. Therefore God's pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in him are the same pursuit. This is the great gospel! This is the foundation of Christian Hedonism.
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| Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, copyright © 1986, 1996. |
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