More of “The Pleasures of God” in creation

I finished reading chapter three of The Pleasures of God this morning while sitting in a familiar place, and the chapter is called “The Pleasure of God in His Creation.”  It’s all good, but here are some really good portions.  The italics are Piper’s emphasis, not mine.

The message of creation is this: there is a great God of glory and power and generosity behind all this awesome universe; you belong to him; he is patient with you in sustaining your rebellious life; turn and bank your hope on him and delight yourself in him, not his handiwork. Day pours forth the “speech” of that message to all that will listen in the day, speaking with blindingly bright sun and blue sky and clouds and untold shapes and colors of all things visible.  Night pours forth the “knowledge” of the same message to all who will listen at night, speaking with great dark voids and summer moons and countless stars and strange sounds and cool breezes and northern lights.  Day and night are saying one thing: God is glorious!  God is glorious!  God is glorious!

This is the most basic reason that God delights in his creation.  In creation he sees the reflection of his own glory.  This is why he is not an idolater when he has pleasure in the work of his hands.

A few pages further in he writes this about the parts of creation that we as humans aren’t even aware of yet:

This is what moves the psalmist in Psalm 148:7, “Praise the LORD you sea monsters and all deeps!”  He doesn’t even know what is in all the deeps of the sea!  So the praise of the deeps is not merely what they can testify to man.  Creation praises God by simply being what it was created to be in all its incredible variety.  And since most of the creation is beyond the awareness of mankind (in the reaches of space, and in the heights of mountains and at the bottom of the sea) it wasn’t created merely to serve purposes that have to do with us.  It was created for the enjoyment of God.

Adding fuel to the fire or giving clarity in understanding – you decide

The first chapter of The Pleasures of God is titled “The Pleasure of God in His Son,” and in the final pages of that chapter Piper wrote these paragraphs which, I think, shed some helpful light on what I wrote yesterday.  If you’d like to read the first three chapters of The Pleasures of God for yourself you can find them in a PDF by clicking here.

We may conclude that the pleasure of God in his Son is pleasure in himself.  Since the Son is the image of God and the radiance of God and the form of God, equal with God, and indeed is God, therefore God’s delight in the Son is delight in himself.  The original, the primal, the deepest, the foundational joy of God is the joy he has in his own perfections as he sees them reflected in the glory of his Son.  Paul speaks of “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).  From all eternity God had beheld the panorama of his own perfections in the face of his Son.  All that he is he sees reflected fully and perfectly in the countenance of his Son.  And in this he rejoices with infinite joy.

At first this sounds like vanity.  It would be vanity if we humans found our deepest joy by looking in the mirror.  We would be vain and conceited and smug and selfish if we were like God in this regard.  But why?  Aren’t we supposed to imitate God (Matthew 5:48; Ephesians 5:1)?  Yes, in some ways.  But not in every way.  This was the first deceit of Satan in the Garden of Eden: He tempted Adam and Eve to try to be like God in a way that God never intended them to be like him—namely, in self-reliance.  Only God should be self-reliant.  All the rest of us should be God-reliant.  In the same way, we were created for something infinitely better and nobler and greater and deeper than self-contemplation.  We were created for the contemplation and enjoyment of God!  Anything less than this would be idolatry toward him and disappointment for us.  God is the most glorious of all beings.  Not to love him and delight in him is a great loss to us and insults him.

But the same is true for God.  How shall God not insult what is infinitely beautiful and glorious?  How shall God not commit idolatry?  There is only one possible answer: God must love and delight in his own beauty and perfection above all things.  For us to do this in front of the mirror is the essence of vanity; for God to do it in front of his Son is the essence of righteousness.

Is not the essence of righteousness to place supreme value on what is supremely valuable, with all the just actions that follow?  And isn’t the opposite of righteousness to set our highest affections on things of little or no worth, with all the unjust actions that follow?   Thus the righteousness of God is the infinite zeal and joy and pleasure that he has in what is supremely valuable, namely, his own perfection and worth.  And if he were ever to act contrary to this eternal passion for his own perfections he would be unrighteous, he would be an idolater.

Them’s fightin’ words!

Education and sanctification can be frustratingly slow at times.  I’m certainly not trying to say that I’ve “arrived” or that I no longer have any learning to do — far from it.  But there are certain truths that if the (global) church as a whole would grasp and accept them for what they are we would all be better off and that much further ahead in advancing God’s kingdom.

One truth in particular can get people really riled up.  I know because I’ve seen it first-hand and have experienced being pretty close to the center of the resulting firestorm.  What is it?  It’s this: the gospel is primarily about God, not people.  It’s the truth that what was foremost on Jesus’ mind as he went to the cross was the glory of God, not the people who he was dying to save. It’s the truth that, “above all,” he was not thinking about you or me, but about [pleasing and obeying his Father, God.]

John Piper puts it like this in the introduction to his book The Pleasures of God: