In the beginning God created all things. If we begin to think about this and ask why an eternal God that exists in three Divine Persons in perfect love would create, we are left with only one answer. This God could only create out of love for Himself as triune and to manifest His own glory. The Scripture declares this as well: “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Rev 4:11). Colossians 1:16 echoes this thought in a different way: “For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities– all things have been created through Him and for Him.” The Father, who lives in perfect unity and love with the Son, tells us by the inspiration of the Spirit that all things were created for Christ Himself. God is certainly God-centered in all that He does, and all things were created for God-centered purposes.
“He himself began with an egocentric conception in his quest for a ‘gracious God.’ His problem was: ‘How can I attain such conformity with the Law of God that I may be sure of acceptance with Him and secure peace for my troubled mind and conscience? He found a gracious God, as we have seen, but not by the way he had sought, not by becoming worthy of God’s approval. Indeed, it was rather the gracious God who found him and took him to Himself, despite his unworthiness and sin. Luther did not win God’s favor by his merits, but God’s unmerited grace overmastered Luther and became the compelling force in his life. To his egocentric question, we might say, Luther received a theocentric answer, which became thenceforward his dominant and all-absorbing theme. We can certainly speak of a Copernican revolution here.” (Let God Be God! An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther)
The love of God for Himself as triune is so great that He cannot do anything that does not have the primary motive of manifesting His glory. Human beings are commanded to love God with all of their beings and yet we are commanded to be holy as He is holy. If love for God is the Greatest Commandment for human beings, then it is clear that for God to love human beings more than Himself would be idolatry for Him too. The Greatest Commandment is given to human beings so that they may be like God in doing that but also that they may go to Him as the only origin and source for love.
God cannot give the greatest good to human beings apart from giving them a love for Himself. The greatest thing in the universe is love for God as God which is to say that God shares His love for Himself with human beings. The triune God lives in perfect love within the Trinity. The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love (Gal 5:22) and the love of God is poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). The Gospel is not about just delivering people from hell, but it is also about delivering people into eternal life and having eternal life in them. Eternal life is to know God and Jesus and to know them is to share in their love for one another. The believer has Christ and is beloved for the sake of Christ. The believer has access to the Father and the love of the Father for the Son is then given to and shared with the believer. The Gospel is about people having eternal life which is to know God (John 17:3; I John 4:7-8). The Gospel is about having the Spirit who enables people to love the Father by sharing the very love that flows within the Trinity. The Gospel takes God-hating sinners and turns them into those who love God and do all out of love for Him and His glory.
Pride is living in the love of self, though it is not the pure love that flows from the throne of God. Pride is to be focused on self and doing all for the sake of self which ends up being nothing but enmity with God. Unbelievers live at enmity with God and doing all that they do out of hatred for Him. This is not according to what they think, but it is what they do when they live out of love for self. To love self is to be in direct contradiction to the Greatest Commandment that commands us to love God with all of our being. That means that the one that loves self is living in hatred of the living God. Living out of love for self is to love self rather than God and is an act of great pride. This is what the Pharisees did. They loved self rather than God when they prayed so that others would honor them when they prayed. Their very act of “praying” was the height of pride and an act of enmity with God. Salvation from that is to deliver sinners from pride and self-love so that now they would be God-centered.
God Loves... Himself 
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