Check out the new Convergence Church Network! 

Visit www.convergencechurchnetwork.com and join the mailing list.

Enjoying God Blog

2

Earlier this week I posted a blog article entitled, “God is Happiness.” I took this from something Charles Spurgeon had written in his exhortation to Christians to be filled with the very joy that fills the heart of God. The more I thought about Spurgeon’s observations, the more my mind was taken back to something John Piper wrote in his book, The Pleasures of God. It is deserving of our careful and thoughtful meditation. Continue reading . . . 

Earlier this week I posted a blog article entitled, “God is Happiness.” I took this from something Charles Spurgeon had written in his exhortation to Christians to be filled with the very joy that fills the heart of God. The more I thought about Spurgeon’s observations, the more my mind was taken back to something John Piper wrote in his book, The Pleasures of God. It is deserving of our careful and thoughtful meditation:

“There is a beautiful phrase in 1 Timothy 1:11 buried beneath the too-familiar surface of Bible buzzwords. Before we dig it up, it sounds like this: ‘The gospel of the glory of the blessed God.’ But after you dig it up, it sounds like this: ‘The good news of the glory of the happy God.’

A great part of God’s glory is his happiness. It was inconceivable to the apostle Paul that God could be denied infinite joy and still be all-glorious. To be infinitely glorious was to be infinitely happy. He used the phrase, ‘the glory of the happy God,’ because it is a glorious thing for God to be as happy as he is. God’s glory consists much in the fact that he is happy beyond our wildest imagination.

As the great eighteenth-century preacher, Jonathan Edwards, said, ‘Part of God’s fullness which he communicates, is his happiness. This happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself; so does also the creature’s happiness.’

And this is the gospel: ‘The gospel of the glory of the happy God.’ It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, ‘Enter into the joy of your master’ (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy – God’s joy – might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore the gospel is ‘the gospel of the glory of the happy God’” (The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God, 11-12).

2 Comments

Sam. I love when you quote Spurgeon and Piper.

I think that this is a good truth to hold on to. Nonetheless, this truth can feel invalid to some people if the complexity of God's emotions is not balanced with this - especially if we're tempted to see God blissfully happy as he watches us, our loved ones, or the world around us endure tremendous pain. I think you alluded to this in that previous article.
.
As I read this post, I thought of Piper's quote in "Does God Desire All To Be Saved" about God's complex emotions. In looking that up, I came across another reference Piper makes to "The Pleasures of God," pages 55-59, which is helpful for me:
.
"When I meet passages like this in the Bible, especially passages relating to the emotions of God, I am very slow to think that God cannot have these seemingly contradictory emotions — one expressed in Ezekiel 18:32 and the other expressed in Deuteronomy 28:63. Instead, my assumption is that there is a true way that God takes pleasure in the just destruction of the wicked. And there is a true sense in which he does not delight in the death of anyone. In other words, both are true. And our job is to discern, as much as we can, in what different ways or senses they may be true."
.
I appreciate that biblical permission to believe that God can, in some mysterious sense be sovereignly happy, and yet in the very same moment be grieving deeply alongside us -- Even as we who grieve can have a deeper river of joy that comes from hope.

Write a Comment

Comments for this post have been disabled.