What can Soli Deo Gloria (to God alone be the glory) mean apart from the God who is focused on Himself and loves Himself with an infinite love within the Trinity? We know that Scripture commands human beings to love God with all of their beings by doing all to His glory (I Corinthians 10:31). We know that human beings are told that nothing they can do apart from love is of any true benefit (I Corinthians 13:1-8). We are also told that we are to be holy as He is holy and that we are to be like Christ. We are told in many places that God does what He does to glorify Himself and that He will not give His glory to another.
If God is not doing all to the glory of His name out of love for Himself, then He is commanding men to do as their Great Commandment that which He is not doing. He would also be commanding them to be unlike Himself and so their holiness would not be in being holy as He is holy. In the modern day we have this unhealthy and ungodly tension going on. There is a plethora of teachers within the professing Church that want to tell men to be God-centered in some way and yet they teach as if God is man-centered. Whether this is seen or not in the people, it certainly causes a terrible confusion at best. However, most likely what it does is put man at the center in reality even though he says he is putting God at the center in theory. We may use words that say we are doing it to the glory of God but our hearts are decidedly and “lovingly” (self-love) in the pursuit of self. We even have teachers within the professing Church that teach that we must love ourselves in order to love others. The Scripture, however, teaches that we must deny self in order to follow Christ and that we must love God to love others.
Let me mention but one name in this context. James Dobson is a very popular figure within modern Christendom. He is a psychologist whose organization brings in millions and millions of dollars each year. Yet his teaching is built upon the self-love model and certainly has the very appearance of being very man-centered. He speaks about God as if God is focused on man and his needs. He speaks of the believer being able to find self-worth because Christ has died for that person. It used to be that a true believer had confidence in his or her salvation because of a God that was great enough and loved Himself enough to die for sinners and save them by grace alone. If a human being is able to look at the cross and discover his or her worth in that, then the cross of Jesus Christ was not by grace alone. That means that the Gospel is not one of grace alone either and sinners are not justified by grace alone through faith alone but by grace and worth. The value that is assigned to man as a cause for the cross is the value deducted from grace. God sent Christ to take human flesh and go to the cross not to declare the worth and value of human beings, but to show how committed God is to His own glory. When human beings look at the glory that shines in Christ at the cross, they are to realize that He did this to the praise of the glory of His grace (Ephesians 1:5ff).
We must begin to focus out thoughts, hearts, theology, and our practices upon the glorious teaching of a God-centered God who loves Himself and does all for His own glory. If God does not truly do all for His own glory, then we have no model to follow. If God does not truly do all for His own glory, then we are left up to our own efforts and works to do what we can because God may not be working His grace in us by the life of Christ in order that we would be strengthened by grace to do all for His own glory. The ramifications of a man-centered God are enormous for our theology. If God does not do all for His own glory then the cry of Soli Deo Gloria during the Reformation was and is a meaningless phrase in reality. If God does not love Himself and seek His own glory above all, then why should human beings who are made in His own image and are commanded to do all things for His glory? Scripture teaches us that falling short of His glory is what sin really is (Romans 3:23). Can we imagine God Himself falling short of His own glory and doing something that was not for that?
Reformed theology must start and end where God starts and ends which is that all is to be done for His glory. This is what Luther and Calvin did. Whenever Reformed theology focuses on academics, morality, the family, or whatever more than the glory of God in truth it has a wrong focus. We can raise our children in a sterile environment and teach them how Christians behave and they can become little Pharisees quite easily. Unless we teach them that all their morality and all of their correct theology is nothing but sin apart from a heart that loves God and intends His glory in all it does they will become little Pharisees. We can be Reformed in creed but be Pharisees indeed apart from this all important teaching of Holy Scripture. If God loves Himself and His glory and does all to the glory of His name, then the life of Christ in us and the fruit of the Spirit being worked in us will work for no other love and no other goal. No matter what else we do, if we do not love God and strive to manifest His glory in all things we are not like God in holiness and love. We are like the devil who does all for himself.
God Loves... Himself 
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