...It just sounds like something Christians tell you to shut you up when you ask the hard questions. And it may well be.
"Because it pleased Him, that's why."
But even so, "we have a superlative wealth of meaning in that statement," as Spurgeon would say.
"While we were sinners (there had to be sin) Christ died (there had to be death) for us."
It sounds so evil at first glance...it's a lot to bite off and swallow at one time... but if you really think about it, it is the only way we can really reconcile all the questions we wrestle with about why there is evil and suffering in the world - about why God, in His omniscience, planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden where He knew Adam and Eve would give in to temptation - about how we then can come to terms with the inescapable implications of believing in the absolute sovereignty of God.
The cross is ultimately what brought God the most pleasure. But for the cross to happen, there had to be sin and suffering and death. It is the backdrop in which His love is made most manifest. This may sound selfish at first glance, but the fact is, if God was not steadfastly committed to His own pleasure, we could not be loved by Him.
He must be full of Himself, so to speak, because God is the only One big enough and strong enough and perfect enough and holy enough and good enough to satisfy. The only alternative to God being full of Himself is Him having some sort of necessity, some sort of deficiency or void in Himself.
When I first read this in his book Desiring God, (though worded a little differently and a lot more clearly,) I couldn't really get a good handle on what John Piper meant. This morning, however, it made complete sense...though I have yet to be able to give these thoughts any kind of definitive shape.
When I first read this in his book Desiring God, (though worded a little differently and a lot more clearly,) I couldn't really get a good handle on what John Piper meant. This morning, however, it made complete sense...though I have yet to be able to give these thoughts any kind of definitive shape.
God cannot require anything from anyone or anything. He absolutely has to be thoroughly satisfied in and of Himself and in want for nothing or He would not be free to love us...and His glory is what pleases Him most.
It makes more sense when you use us an example - what it happens to us and our relationships with one another when we do not pursue our own satisfaction with resolve - and that means to be satisfied alone with the insurmountable pleasures of God, as only they can satisfy.
There can be no unmet desires in God - He absolutely must pursue and accomplish every single desire He has. If not, He would be like us who, out of a necessity of soul, use people and things selfishly to fill the voids in ourselves instead of having a treasury to draw from to freely give to others out of.
As I was able to explain to Mitchel this morning, it's not that God doesn't want you to seek pleasure,,, it's that God wants you to seek the maximum Pleasure - an Infinite Pleasure - God Himself - Who reaches down to the very depths of the soul, floods out every void, satisfies every hunger, and quenches every thirst. (And as I have reflected on it more throughout the duration of the day, I had a more realistic inkling of the many, many corners of my soul that are currently not filled with God.)
It makes more sense when you use us an example - what it happens to us and our relationships with one another when we do not pursue our own satisfaction with resolve - and that means to be satisfied alone with the insurmountable pleasures of God, as only they can satisfy.
There can be no unmet desires in God - He absolutely must pursue and accomplish every single desire He has. If not, He would be like us who, out of a necessity of soul, use people and things selfishly to fill the voids in ourselves instead of having a treasury to draw from to freely give to others out of.
As I was able to explain to Mitchel this morning, it's not that God doesn't want you to seek pleasure,,, it's that God wants you to seek the maximum Pleasure - an Infinite Pleasure - God Himself - Who reaches down to the very depths of the soul, floods out every void, satisfies every hunger, and quenches every thirst. (And as I have reflected on it more throughout the duration of the day, I had a more realistic inkling of the many, many corners of my soul that are currently not filled with God.)
This is what it means to love: Being so full of God that instead of you, in your necessity, *using* other people to fill those voids, you can't help but freely lavish love on others out of the abundance of the overflow.
That is why the first commandment is to love the Lord with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. When we have done that - when every single nook and cranny of our souls are filled with God, - we are free and filled to love our neighbours as ourselves...and this is the fulfillment of the entire law. Garth pointed out to me before how this is the the picture the cross portrays and the purpose for which Jesus came: to reconcile us to God and to fulfill the law. When we have things settled vertically, things on the horizontal level automatically work themselves out and the law is fulfilled.
It is the reason why the primary commandments of God are to worship only the One True God and to make for ourselves no idols.
Now, God being God, is He to love another more than Himself, putting another before His own pleasure? Just imagine if God made for Himself an idol to bow down to and didn't always have that unswerving commitment to His own glory, and by extension, pleasure. Since He is the only One able to fulfill and satisfy, seeking our glory instead of His own, He would turn up empty and lacking.
You could probably come up with a thousand reasons why that would totally suck for us that I could not, but I know He would get frustrated at times. He would probably have wiped us out long, long ago since we constantly disappoint Him by failing to see Him rightly in all His splendor. So He would get bitter and angry with us and react out of that anger since we are not fulfilling Him. He would not love us, He would use us to fill Himself. He would not be able to lavish on us out of the abundance in His storehouse because He would be lacking Himself.
He would be an idolater, and therefore He would become just like the created things He had a higher commitment to - empty and vain. (Psa 115;12 Sam 12:21)
(I was asking myself before, "how could He use us for His glory - are we nothing but pawns to Him?" but really, He wasn't. He doesn't need us at all. He was fulfilling the purposes of His glory regardless of and in spite of us - and that turns out to be good news for us. Because He is self-seeking, He is free to love us freely.)
Come to think of it, He wouldn't be God at all. He would be a weak pushover - shaped in the image of man...and I can't fall down in worship and awe over anything like unto a mere man.
For the glory of God, the Son becomes one of us, living among the evil, being tempted, experiencing all the effects of sin more deeply and much more profoundly than we ever could. In all of this, the Son seeks to please the Father above all else and therefore He is infinitely filled. God the Father, in turn, is most pleased by Him since it is in the death and resurrection of God the Son in flesh, Jesus Christ, that the Father would reveal Himself fully - exalt HImself - and therefore in Who all fullness would be found by us.
This is how God is most glorified.
There had to be sin. There had to be suffering. There had to be death. For His glory that translates into our good. But the key is that we are secondary to His glory.
Those things that are really, really hard right now really are "achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." This, not only because God, in His infinite wisdom, works our sin and suffering together for our good, but because all bad things themselves only exist in the first place because it pleased Him to do so...and He was that determined to please Himself.
It turns out in our favour - what guarantees our pleasure and joy in Him - that God is so committed to His own pleasure that He would go so far as to achieve the purposes of His pleasure regardless of whether or not those purpose would lead us down a road through sin and death and suffering and pain.(Which He would suffer most from.) "Our light and momentary troubles" entered the world in keeping with the purpose of His ultimate pleasure. (He did not just plan for it; it was His idea to begin with.)
And it's not that we know Him better this way that counts. It's not about us. It's that He reveals Who He is best this way - He is committed to His own glory. There is a world of difference between the two.
When Beth was first diagnosed with cancer and He seemed to have just burst out of the little box I unconsciously had tried to package Him neatly into, and as He "set Himself apart as Lord in my heart," I was surprised to hear God's voice in it, asking, "did you forget that I am God and not you - that man lives for me and not me for man?"
I needed to undergo a whole paradigm shift. I needed to accept and rejoice in the fact that God is not committed primarily to me or to us, but Himself. (And I still do.) Any other way and we will never have any hope in Him at all.
For the glory of God, the Son becomes one of us, living among the evil, being tempted, experiencing all the effects of sin more deeply and much more profoundly than we ever could. In all of this, the Son seeks to please the Father above all else and therefore He is infinitely filled. God the Father, in turn, is most pleased by Him since it is in the death and resurrection of God the Son in flesh, Jesus Christ, that the Father would reveal Himself fully - exalt HImself - and therefore in Who all fullness would be found by us.
This is how God is most glorified.
There had to be sin. There had to be suffering. There had to be death. For His glory that translates into our good. But the key is that we are secondary to His glory.
Those things that are really, really hard right now really are "achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." This, not only because God, in His infinite wisdom, works our sin and suffering together for our good, but because all bad things themselves only exist in the first place because it pleased Him to do so...and He was that determined to please Himself.
It turns out in our favour - what guarantees our pleasure and joy in Him - that God is so committed to His own pleasure that He would go so far as to achieve the purposes of His pleasure regardless of whether or not those purpose would lead us down a road through sin and death and suffering and pain.(Which He would suffer most from.) "Our light and momentary troubles" entered the world in keeping with the purpose of His ultimate pleasure. (He did not just plan for it; it was His idea to begin with.)
It is the backdrop in which His love is made most manifest.
And it's not that we know Him better this way that counts. It's not about us. It's that He reveals Who He is best this way - He is committed to His own glory. There is a world of difference between the two.
When Beth was first diagnosed with cancer and He seemed to have just burst out of the little box I unconsciously had tried to package Him neatly into, and as He "set Himself apart as Lord in my heart," I was surprised to hear God's voice in it, asking, "did you forget that I am God and not you - that man lives for me and not me for man?"
I needed to undergo a whole paradigm shift. I needed to accept and rejoice in the fact that God is not committed primarily to me or to us, but Himself. (And I still do.) Any other way and we will never have any hope in Him at all.
John Piper is right. If you would not do it the same way, I too am sure glad that you are not God....and given the way I arrogantly talk and accuse Him every time I struggle with Him when I know nothing, I too am glad that I am not God and that He is merciful.
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