Jonathan Edwards, Resolution 1:
“Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God’s glory and to my own good, profit, and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now or never so many myriads of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty, and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficulties I meet with, how ever so many and how ever so great.”
The last time we looked at doing that which is most to the glory of God and the fact that Edwards thought that it was the glory of God that was to his own good, profit, and pleasure. Admittedly this seems absurd to the vast majority of people in the world today, perhaps even within Christendom. But the truth seems to reside with the minority of opinion much of the time when it has to do with the meaty things of Holy Writ. How can it be that the glory of God is what is best for each person? How can it be that it is the glory of God that is to our own good, profit, and pleasure?
We must think through this issue rather carefully. First, let us consider the person that is worldly and is given to sensual pleasures. This person appears happy to the world he lives around and loves all the fleshly pleasures the world has to offer. But is he looking at the long or short term effects of the way he lives? Sin always brings misery either in this life or the life to come and most of the time in both. The effects of sin on his body and on his way of looking at things will bring him misery. The effect of sin on the soul is to harden his heart and to make him ripe for the Day of Judgment. All of his actions are doing nothing but treasuring up wrath for the day of wrath. While we can see that the long and short term effects of sin show that sin is not what is for his good and profit, but what of pleasure? Can the glory of God give Him more pleasure than sin? While that is not the most accurate way to put the question, it sets out the issue rather clearly.
To deal with that question will require us to draw back and look at a few other issues. First, can there be any lasting pleasure without love? If so, Scripture teaches that the only ones that love are those that love God (I John 4:7-10). All those that love are born of God and love God, but those that do not love God are not born of Him. We can now look at the issue of true joy. Joy and love go together and are when they are found in truth. Trreally not found apart from each other ue joy is the work of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22) in working His fruit in the heart of people. So imagine the man that is given over to sin. Admittedly his sin gives some physical pleasure, but is it a deep inward pleasure or one only of the senses? Can his sin give him the river of pleasure that God alone can give? Can his sin give him the true inward delight that sharing in the joy and love of God can? I daresay that there is no pleasure greater than the exquisite pleasure that the Creator can give to the soul that He loves in holiness and truth. Even without taking eternal torment for sin and eternal pleasure in Christ into account, the believer should have much true joy.
We can also meditate on the guilt that sin brings to the soul and also the misery that accompanies much sin. God has made the conscience in such a way that there is misery of the conscience when sin is first committed and then the misery that comes from a hardened conscience and heart. Sin also brings diminishing results in that it takes more and more sin to keep the lover of pleasure going. As this happens the sin does not bring the pleasure that it once did and the pursuit itself brings misery. Without question, then, if we take the simple teaching of Scripture the person that lives for the glory of God will have more true pleasure in this life and in eternity as well. It is very true that a person that is living for the glory of God will have more to live for and more true pleasure than the one that is given over to a life of sensuality.
The case can also be made that as a person goes deeper into sin that person is really going deeper and deeper into selfishness. A selfish person will grow and grow in misery. A selfish person is always looking out for himself and as he gets deeper and deeper into that practice, he grows more and more into a life that is centered on self and excludes all things that are not for self. The selfish person is seen as selfish by others and they do not want to be used by him. This leads to more and more misery and selfishness. Sin leads to nothing but misery even when the person presents an outward facade of happiness. True happiness is found by a person committed to the glory of God and the good of others because those two things go together and cannot be separated. When a person has his greatest pleasure in God, even hard times and trials can increase joy since those things are for His glory too.
God Loves... Himself 
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