We will continue with how important it is to know that God loves Himself as His real object of love in all things. We have heard that God loves people and so their suffering is used for good. That makes little to no sense if God does not love Himself in Christ primarily. If God does not love all for the sake of Christ, then there is no true love in a person’s suffering. If God’s love is to the person in a direct manner and is for the person him or herself, then His love does not come through Christ and is not primarily for Christ. Our suffering, then, would not make sense because we think that love would prevent suffering and in a human sense it does. But instead God loves us for the sake of Christ and His love is such that what is best for us is to be conformed to Christ from the heart. God will also use suffering to bring to the top the remnants of our humanism and self-centeredness. When we suffer it is so “natural” to focus on ourselves first and expect God to remove the pain. But the purpose of the pain is conformity to Christ in our inward person. God’s love is for Christ and so all He does is to make people like Christ. But since conformity to Christ is best, what He is doing is true and real love to the suffering believer as well.
It is only when the fog that is brought upon our minds and hearts by humanism and man-centeredness begins to be burned off by the brightness of God’s love for the Son that we can begin to understand these things in their proper relationships. The man-centered view of love is that if God is love then He must love me and if He loves me then these bad things will not happen to me. In one sense the logic itself is flawless, but the premises that the argument or position is based on are heavily flawed. The argument is based on a wrong idea of what love is and a wrong idea of what it means for God to be love. We can see, then, that this is a very practical teaching as well. Many people have left the idea of God and have become professing atheists when they were diagnosed with a serious illness or see an illness in one they loved. Others have stopped believing in a personal God when they had a serious accident. They are told that God has a purpose in the illness or accident and that He is working all things for good and they are to believe that. However, if one does not have a true conception of love or of God as love, then those words are as empty as their former belief. Though it is biblical and true that God works all things for good, we need to understand that in a different way than is commonly set out. The good that is mentioned to these people is not what is spiritually true and does not refer to God’s true love, which is Christ and His love for human beings as seen in conforming them spiritually to Christ. If we tell people who love themselves and think that because God is love He must love them and that means that He must do what they want, then we are simply fueling their self-love and misconception when we tell them biblical things as if all is focused on them. It is nothing but man-centeredness and fuels people’s inordinate self-love and focus on themselves. They need to understand things from God’s view.
When hard things happen to us, we must know that God loves Himself as triune and is focused on the expression of His glory. He is not focused on my physical welfare and His love is not to be judged by how things go with me physically. The glory of God is the primary issue in the entire universe and it is primary in the affections and loves of God. To become a believer a person must be turned from the love of and focus on self to the love of and focus on God. The Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Our very holiness consists in love for God and in being holy as He is holy. If God is truly holy, then, He will do nothing but what will produce holiness in people. If God is truly love, then His love for Himself will not allow for Him to do anything but what produces love for Himself in those He loves. All that God does, therefore, must be working love for Himself in people or He would not be holy and He would not be doing what is best for those He loves.
Suffering makes no sense in a humanistic and man-centered world. It makes no sense in a very religious world or a very Christianized world either if it is presented in a man-centered way. It makes no sense in a Reformed way of looking at the world either if these things are presented in a man-centered way and even of a man-centered God. We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with humanism and man-centeredness and even worse a man-centered God. When we do this, even within the realms of Reformed theology, we have a different God than the biblical One. We have also changed the very heart of Reformed theology into something that is man-centered. When people are suffering, the easiest thing to do is to say something to make them feel better. While it is harder, it is true love for God and them to tell them about the true God. We are encouraged to be nice and to be gracious, but those things can be nothing but lies about God and about other people. The God who loves is the One who sends suffering to conform people to Christ. Those He lives in must speak the truth about God and human beings because only in that will true conformity to Christ take place. Being nice and gracious can be true hate in disguise since it may be from nothing but man-centeredness and a man-centered view of God. True love is all about God.
God Loves... Himself 
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