God stands in no need of creatures, and is not profited by them. Neither can His happiness be said to be added to by the creature; yet God has a real and proper delight in the excellency and happiness of His creatures. He has a real delight in the excellency and loveliness of the creature in His own image in the creature, as that is a manifestation, an expression, and shining forth of His own loveliness. God has a real delight in His own loveliness, and He also has a real delight in the shining forth and glorifying of it. As it is a fit and decent thing that God’s glory should shine forth, so God delights in its shining forth. So God has a real delight in the spiritual loveliness of the saints, which delight is not a delight distinct from what He has in Himself, but is to be resolved into the delight He has in Himself. For He delights in His image in the creature as He delights in His own being glorified, or as He delights in it that His own glory shines forth. And so He has real, proper delight in the happiness of His creatures, which also is not distinct from the delight He has in Himself, for it is to be resolved into the delight that He has in His own goodness.
Jonathan Edwards
Human beings spend too little time reflecting and admiring the glory and wonders of God and too much time reflecting on themselves. Human beings need to spend more time in the mirror of the Scriptures with meditation and prayer than primping themselves in front of the mirrors at home. When a human being is in front of the mirror at home, that usually means that the human is not in front of the mirror of the Word. The mirror at home reflects what we look like and we spend a lot of time trying to improve what we look like in order to obtain praise of others or to think well of ourselves. However, spending time in front of the mirror of the Word will reflect things to us of our ugly our soul is apart from Christ.
It is only when human beings begin to be more concerned (even far more) with how their soul appears to God than how they appear to themselves or others in the physical realm that they can begin to understand that they are to be mirrors (in a sense) of the glory of God to Himself. Indeed Christ is the perfect image of the Father and the shining forth of His glory, but all human beings were created in His image and they are to shine forth His glory rather than try to obtain glory for themselves. When God looks at a human being, He looks primarily at their soul because that is what either reflects Him or it reflects the devil. In a very real sense sanctification is the process by which a human being grows in grace and becomes a more accurate mirror of God to behold His own glory by. If a human being loves God, then that human being will desire to be one that God can behold and see His own glory.
Human beings must begin to see their own frailty and utter nothingness in one and very important sense. They can do nothing for God and He has no need of them at all. What can they do to make God look good? Surely just asking the question shows the absurdity of the thought. Yes, it is true, God delights in the creature but it is His own glory that He delights in. The creature cannot do anything in one sense to make God look good to Himself, so the creature must seek to have more of Christ so that when the Father beholds the creature what He really sees is Christ Himself. This line of thinking should show human beings how utterly worthless their filthy rags of righteousness are and how much they need Christ who alone can shine forth the glory of God back to Himself. But instead humans wonder around on earth thinking that they can do something themselves to glorify God and be righteous enough for Him to count them righteous.
The only thing that a human being can really do is to seek grace in order to be an empty vessel which God can fill with His glory with Christ and then behold Himself shining forth in Christ. This is one reason why self-righteousness is so repugnant to God. Self-righteousness is not possible and is not wanted to God. It is only His own glory in the face of Christ that He desires to behold in us. For God to have a proper delight, He can only delight in Himself. The human being must keep that in mind in all aspects of life. When a human being meditates on and longs for the true glory of God to shine forth from him or her, that is precisely what God desires. The human should desire to glorify God that God may be pleased rather than try to do something to glorify God so that the human can earn something before God. What a great and glorious God that would shine forth His glory in and through human beings and delight in Himself on display in them. How utterly beautiful and how ravishing it is to the soul that loves the Father through the Son and beholds the glory God in and through the Son as the Son dwells in the souls of men.
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