God's Motive: Love

Excerpt from John Piper sermon:  God Is Most Glorified in Us When We're Most Satisfied in Him


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1. What I said in the second message created a problem.

I asked, Why did God create the world? And I answered: God created this world for the praise of the glory of his grace displayed supremely in the death of Jesus. The problem is that, at the heart of that answer is God’s self-promotion. God created the world for his own praise. For his own glory.

Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt, the early C. S. Lewis, Eric Reece, Michael Prowse all walk away from such a God. They stumble over God’s self-promotion.

• Oprah walked away from orthodox Christianity when she was about 27 because of the biblical teaching that God is Jealous — he demands that he and no one else get our highest allegiance and affection. It didn’t sound loving to her.
• Brad Pitt turned away from his boyhood faith, he says, because God says, “You have to say that I'm the best. . . . It seemed to be about ego.”
• C. S. Lewis, before he became a Christian, complained that God’s demand to be praised sounded like “a vain woman who wants compliments.”
• Erik Reece, the writer of An American Gospel, rejected the Jesus of the Gospels because only an egomaniac would demand that we love him for than we love our parents and children.
• And Michael Prowse, the columnist for the London Financial times, turned away because only “tyrants, puffed up with pride, crave adulation.”

So people see this as a problem — that God created the world for his own praise. They think such self-exaltation would be immoral and loveless. That may be how you feel.

2. Christian Hedonism is the biblical solution to this problem.

Christian Hedonism says, God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. That’s the shortest summary of the what we mean by Christian Hedonism. If that is true, then there is no conflict between your greatest exhilaration and God’s greatest glorification.

In fact, not only is there no conflict between your happiness and God’s glory, but his glory shines in your happiness, when your happiness is in him. And since God is the source of greatest happiness, and since he is the greatest treasure in the world, and since his glory is the most satisfying gift he could possibly give us, therefore it is the kindest, most loving thing he could possibly do — to reveal himself, and magnify himself and vindicate himself for our everlasting enjoyment. “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act, because he is exalting for us what alone can satisfy us fully and forever. If we exalt ourselves, we are not loving, because we distract people from the one Person who can make them happy forever, God. But if God exalts himself, he draws attention to the one Person who can make us happy forever, himself. He is not an egomaniac. He is an infinitely glorious, all-satisfying God, offering us everlasting and supreme joy in himself.

That’s the solution to our problem.

• No Oprah, if God were not jealous for all your affections, he would be indifferent to your final misery.
• No Brad Pitt, if God didn’t demand that you see him as the best, he wouldn’t care about your supreme happiness.
• No Mr. Lewis, God is not vain in demanding your praise. This is his highest virtue, and your highest joy.
• No, Erik Reece, if Jesus didn’t lay claim on greater love than your children do, he be selling your heart to what cannot satisfy forever.
• No, Michael Prowse, God does not crave your adulation, he offers it as your greatest pleasure.

God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. God’s design to pursue his own glory turns out to be love. And our duty to pursue God’s glory turns out to be a quest for joy. That's the solution to the problem of God's self-exaltation.

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