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The Pleasure of God in God

1 Timothy 1:11 11 according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.

In this text, Piper says that this is "the good news of the glory of the happy God." One thing that impacted me this morning in reading a chapter of Piper's from the book The Pleasures of God was the fact that "God is most glorified and happy in His Son."

The radiance of Christ's face shines first and foremost for the enjoyment of His Father. Furthermore, the Father delights in the Son's supremacy and servanthood.

Note this: God did NOT take a holy man up to deity. Rather, he clothed the fullness of deity with a virgin-born human nature, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, the God-Man, in whom "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily (Col 2:9). Mind boggling huh?

So the Son in whom the Father delights is the image of God and the radiance of the glory of God. He bears the very stamp of God's nature and is the very form of God. He is equal with God and, as John says, is God.

To not love God and to not delight in Him is a great loss to us and a great insult to God. Furthermore, 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.

So, there is only one fountain of lasting joy - the overflowing gladness of God in God. Without beginning and without ending, without source and without cause, without help or assistance, the spring is eternally self-replenishing. From this unceasing fountain of joy flow all grace and all joy in the universe.

SOURCE: Piper, John. The Pleasures of God. Multnomah, 2000.

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