What Makes God Happiest? Having fun with His Signature Pleasure

I used to be questioning if I had found a brand new world.

Dwelling from school after my freshman 12 months, I used to be pondering what makes God pleased. That spring I had learn Wanting God and had my soul turned the wrong way up for good. The e book uncovered how duty-oriented my strategy towards God had been, and within the publicity, God’s Spirit opened the floodgates to thrill in him, on the rock-solid basis of the glory of God — since God is most glorified in us after we are most glad in him.

After just a few weeks of catching my breath, now I dared to take up what gave the impression to be the sequel, known as The Pleasures of God (however discovered it extra just like the prequel). To that time, I had hardly thought deeply about human happiness. Now I discovered myself captivated by a theme I had not beforehand thought-about: what makes God pleased. And I used to be discovering that few issues fulfill a human soul like meditating on the satisfactions of God.

Now, it’s one factor to ask, What makes God pleased? It’s one other to say, What makes him happiest?

Search by way of Scripture for the pleasures of God, and also you’ll discover many stable joys. He delights in his created world, and in all he does, and in his personal renown. He delights in his folks and in selecting them and in doing them good. He additionally delights of their prayers, and of their private obedience and of their public acts of justice.

However lay these many divine delights aspect by aspect, and ask, What does God take pleasure in most? What makes him happiest? What’s his signature pleasure? One clear reply emerges.

Floor Zero for God’s Pleasure

For starters, he’s a God who was and is infinitely pleased aside from his creation. His created world, and its historical past, is just not the reason for his infinite bliss however its overflow.

At one degree, the reply to our query of what makes him happiest is solely, Himself. God is just not an idolater; he has no larger pleasure than God. He’s supreme being — infinitely highest in worth, glory, magnificence, and blessedness (that’s, happiness). And earlier than anything existed by way of his inventive thoughts and fingers, he was absolutely glad in himself. We rightly affirm, in easy phrases, that God’s best happiness is God himself.

But Scripture unfolds much more. God is just not just one however three. So, at one other degree, the reply to our query is, His Son. The everlasting Son is floor zero for God’s pleasure, his at the start pleasure. No factor and nobody makes the divine Father pleased like his divine Son. This Son — eternally begotten, completely reflecting all divine excellencies, the complete panorama of the Father’s perfections — has absolutely happy and delighted his Father from all eternity. And he additionally entered into historical past to “add to,” because it have been, his Father’s already infinite delight.

Enjoyment of His Everlasting Son

Earlier than monitoring God’s enjoyment of his Son in time and house, think about God’s at the start delight within the everlasting Son. Jesus’s baptism, on the outset of his ministry, is a shocking introduction to the world of the Father’s best pleasure. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all use the language of enjoyment and delight (Greek eudokeō, “to be properly happy, to take delight”), as in Matthew 3:17:

Behold, a voice from heaven stated, “That is my beloved Son, with whom I’m properly happy.” (additionally Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22)

At this level, little doubt, the Father is well-pleased with the human lifetime of his divine Son, however right here on the inauguration of Jesus’s public ministry, we see again by way of three a long time of sinless humanity, to countless ages of divine perfection. The voice sounds from heaven, echoing the timeless Knowledge personified in Proverbs 8, traces the church has lengthy related to her Lord:

When he established the heavens, I used to be there; . . .
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
     then I used to be beside him, like a grasp workman,
and I used to be each day his delight. (Proverbs 8:27–30)

There has by no means been a time when the Son was not, nor when the Son was not his Father’s delight. “God’s pleasure in his Son,” writes John Piper, “is the pleasure he has within the breathtaking panorama of his personal perfections mirrored again to him within the countenance of Christ” (The Pleasures of God, 174). And lengthy earlier than the Son got here because the long-anticipated Messiah, and lengthy earlier than there have been even earthly days, the Son was each day his Father’s nice pleasure.

The truth is, it was this very delight — Father in his Son, and Son in his Father — that spilled over within the creation of the world and historical past, with the Father, overflowing with pleasure in his Son, appointing him inheritor of all issues, and creating the world to present it to him (Hebrews 1:2).

Enjoyment of His Incarnate Son

The Father’s everlasting enjoyment of his Son led not solely to the present of creation but in addition to its glory. That’s, the world and its historical past glorify the Son as each rightful proprietor and rescuing hero. The Father despatched his Son into the created world to be its Lord and Savior. And it happy him to do that: “In [Jesus] all of the fullness of God was happy to dwell, and thru him to reconcile to himself all issues” (Colossians 1:19–20).

Having sounded the Father’s pleasure at Jesus’s baptism, Matthew additionally mentions God’s enjoyment of his “servant” as Jesus goes about his ministry of instructing and therapeutic.

Many adopted [Jesus], and he healed all of them. . . . This was to satisfy what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, my servant whom I’ve chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is properly happy.” (Matthew 12:15–18)

Now the reference to Isaiah is express. Jesus is also the long-awaited “servant” of Isaiah 42, the one “in whom [God’s] soul delights” (Isaiah 42:1–4). In absolutely human flesh and blood, and anointed with the fullness of God’s Spirit, the Son’s human life and ministry make his Father smile with delight. And Jesus is aware of it, and himself delights in it. He says in John 8:29,

He who despatched me is with me. He has not left me alone, for I all the time do the issues which are pleasing to him.

Few joys rival the delight of a son in understanding that he pleases his father. And this Father is God. Such a life as Christ’s is final freedom: delighting to do what delights God.

“Few issues fulfill a human soul like meditating on the satisfactions of God.”

Additionally, the transfiguration underscores the Father’s enjoyment of his incarnate Son. On the mountain with Peter, James, and John, Jesus is transfigured earlier than them: “His face shone just like the solar, and his garments turned white as gentle” (Matthew 17:2). Moses and Elijah seem and are speaking with him. Then the voice of God’s enjoyment of his Son once more rings out, clarifying who’s Lord of, not peer to, Israel’s best prophets:

That is my beloved Son, with whom I’m properly happy; hearken to him. (Matthew 17:5)

Peter himself would write in his second epistle of being eyewitness to this majesty. His telling additionally facilities on the Father’s declaration of pleasure in his Son (2 Peter 1:17–18).

Enjoyment of His Crucified Son

Given this signature divine pleasure — the Father in his Son, infinite in greatness and depth for all eternity, and prolonged into the world within the incarnate lifetime of Christ — how jarring is it to rehearse the prophecy of Isaiah that “it was the desire of the Lord to crush him” (Isaiah 53:10)? And God’s keen right here is usually under-translated in our English. Twelve occasions in Isaiah and all through the Outdated Testomony, this Hebrew phrase (ḥā·p̄êṣ) is rendered “enjoyment of” or “benefit from.” The unnerving declare in Isaiah 53:10 is that the Father delighted to crush his Son.

How might this be so? How might the Father, whose signature pleasure is the life of his Son, not solely allow however enjoyment of the demise of his Son and the horrors of the cross? Elsewhere I’ve answered at larger size, however right here let’s seize just a few key features of this stunning and revealing delight.

For one, the Father doesn’t solely delight within the Son’s demise. He wills it, sure, and delights in it, sure, however he additionally appears in righteous anger on his Son’s mistreatment and homicide. That is historical past’s worst miscarriage of justice. No man ever deserved demise lower than the sinless Son of God. The cross is historical past’s best sin, a violent and horrendous affront by sinners on God himself. In a single sense, the Father certainly is righteously livid. But nonetheless, in all of it, he sees his Son’s religion and obedience, and he rejoices. Why?

MANY SAVED

Absolutely one pleasure he had in view was the rescue, and God-glorifying pleasure, of the “many” whom the Son saves (Isaiah 53:11–12). The cross is good information to the sinner who hears in it the invitation of God’s rescue from everlasting distress. At backside, the great the gospel provides to sinners is the final word good of getting God himself and sharing in God’s personal pleasure. Such a Father rescues his youngsters not reluctantly however gladly. He delights to save lots of his folks.

GLORY VINDICATED

Absolutely one other pleasure God had on the cross was his Son’s love for his Father and his glory. As Piper writes,

The depth of the Son’s struggling was the measure of his love for the Father’s glory. It was the Father’s righteous allegiance to his personal title that made recompense for sin vital. So when the Son willfully took the struggling of that recompense on himself, each footfall on the way in which to Calvary echoed by way of the universe with this message: The glory of God is of infinite worth! The glory of God is of infinite worth! (Pleasures of God, 176)

REDEMPTION ACHIEVED

So too, the Father delighted within the magnitude of his Son’s achievement on the cross. Make no mistake, the cross is an achievement — the only best achievement within the historical past of the world, and one whose full magnitude we’ve solely begun to know. We are going to have fun it without end in our praises. When God delights within the demise of his Son for sinners, he delights in his Son reaching the only best feat in historical past, making the worst Friday to be Good, making the horrible cross to be great.

Which leads, lastly, to the pleasure of the Son in being crushed.

SON SATISFIED

Jesus didn’t go to Golgotha towards his will. Actually, nearly all the things human in him recoiled from what lay forward, and but within the backyard, he regarded the horror and humiliation within the face, and regarded by way of it to the reward — and “for the enjoyment that was set earlier than him endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Even Isaiah foresaw this seven centuries earlier than: “Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be glad” (Isaiah 53:11). The Son himself delighted to see his folks saved, he delighted to see his Father honored, and, understanding his Father would elevate him, he delighted to have his Father reward his achievement with the seat in heaven at his proper hand.

So, the Father’s delight within the cross of his Son is just not aside from his Son’s personal enjoyment of it, neither is it aside from the understanding of his Son’s resurrection.

Our Enjoyment of Jesus

What distinction does God’s signature happiness make for us? I shut with simply two of the numerous.

First, what larger affirmation might there be for our personal signature delight than that of God himself? If the Son — everlasting, incarnate, crucified, glorified — is the at the start delight of his Father, why would we not practice our personal greatest ideas and longings on him? If Jesus is the main focus of God’s foremost delight, how might we dare deal with him as worthy of something lower than ours? And the way hopeful would possibly we be for actually discovering what our souls lengthy for as we take our cues from God himself?

Second, if the Father’s enjoyment of his Son undergirds and results in the extension of grace to sinners, then how safe would possibly we be on this gospel? God didn’t solely accomplish the gospel by way of his Son, however it happy him to take action. God delights within the gospel. It makes him pleased. The truth is, it’s an extension of his signature happiness. The pleased God is securely pleased about his Son dying (and rising) to save lots of us. How safe, then, can we be on this gospel!

Salvation in Christ is just not based mostly on a whim or accident. The gospel is just not a divine concession. It’s a divine delight. God designed it, ordained it, organized it, and it happy him to do it. And neither Devil nor sinful man can change that.