God Loves… Himself

Isaiah 6:1 In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. 2 Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” 4 And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. 5 Then I said, “Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.” 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. 7 He touched my mouth with it and said, “Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” 9 He said, “Go, and tell this people: ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.’ 10 “Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Otherwise they might see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed.” 11 Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And He answered, “Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people And the land is utterly desolate,

In the passage above we can see the glorious God-centeredness of God. We see that God is focused on Himself and His own glory. We can see that the Seraphim were focused on God and His glory. After God revealed Himself to Isaiah, we can see that the mission of Isaiah was all about the glory of God and was not man-centered at all. On the other hand, in the modern day (as well as in most days in history) the focus of man is on man. But even trickier, we see men focused on a god that is also focused on man. A god that is focused on man is not the living God of the Bible at all. A god like that would be a god that would not be holy at all but instead would be seeking the momentary good (at least in appearance) of man rather than the glory of Himself. A god like that would not be holy because He would have His love fixed on man rather than Himself as triune. Holiness, after all, cannot exist when human beings are loved rather than God, or perhaps have human beings as the object of the love and not God. It is a horrible sin for human beings to love self and each other rather than God, so can we imagine the thrice holy God who lives in perfect love in the Trinity as being fixed on human beings rather than Himself? Could He possibly be holy if He fixed on human beings and not Himself and His own glory?

The Seraphim were created to be in the presence of God and they were created specifically to do nothing but be in His presence and say or sing in response to each other “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.” In other words, God was not fixated on the Seraphim but He created them to be in His presence and to sing about His glory and holiness. This shows that God Himself is fixed on His own holiness and glory. The fact that these angelic beings of some kind were created for the purpose of being in His presence and declaring His holiness and glory shows that God is fixed on His own glory and His holiness is in doing so.

We then see the response of Isaiah in the presence of the thrice holy God. As soon as Isaiah saw something of the holiness of God he was utterly destroyed in terms of seeing himself as holy or as sufficient in any way. Isaiah was crushed and broken in his inner man and this was most likely the background for his writing in Isaiah 57 about how God dwells with the contrite and lowly of spirit. The person that has a crushed and broken heart is a person that is broken from the strength of self and has no trust in self but looks to God alone. This breaking from self is at the heart of what God does in the soul to turn the soul from self to Christ.

What we can see from this, then, is the God-centeredness of God. He created the Seraphim to be in His presence and to do nothing but cry out and perhaps sing of His holiness and glory. He created human beings in His image, but then man fell and began to be self-centered like the devil. When God converts the sinner, He breaks the sinner from self and turns the sinner back to seeking Him and His glory. The work of God in converting sinners to Himself demonstrates that true holiness is found in seeking the glory of God. This shows us that God Himself is holy in all He does which is to say He does all out of love for Himself and His own glory.

It is rather an odd thing that man is so blind to his perverse self-centeredness that he cannot but think of himself as righteous in his self-centeredness. In the United States today self-centeredness is taught and exalted as a wonderful thing and that in many “churches” as well. We think we love God when the reality of the matter is that we only love God because we think He loves us and does things for us. But to think about this for just a moment we see that when we love God only for what He does for us the reality of the matter is that we simply love ourselves. What we think of as God-centered, then, is just a way to speak of our self-centeredness with “God language.”

The “Gospel” in modern America is that God loves everybody the same way and that a person simply needs to believe this wonderful love as true and that person is saved. It seems to be a simple matter of believing what one believes. But this is nothing more than a false gospel and does not get at the nature of God, of man, or of regeneration. That view makes a mockery of the biblical teaching on many things. Once again, it basically flows out of man’s self-centered condition and his effort to make all things revolve around self.

Another problem in all of this is that we can study doctrine and theology as an academic exercise or as a plan of religious study and simply be ignorant of the true God and our studies actually increase our ignorance as our hearts are hardened. We have suffered “the loss of the concept of majesty” (A.W. Tozer) and have replaced it with more of a pop theology that makes people comfortable with some idea of God, but of course not the biblical God. “The Church has surrendered her once loft concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men” (A.W. Tozer). As our knowledge of science and technology increases, we have gone the other direction in our knowledge of God. True enough the academic study of the Bible has not been totally put aside, but it is not enough to have academic studies. We must know this God in the depths of our souls. Eternal life does not consist of knowing about God, but is in knowing God (John 17:3).

To put it bluntly, as long a human beings think of God as focused on them and that God loves them because they are nice or good or not that bad, they will continue in a vicious form of idolatry. It seems to escape the attention of people that God is thrice holy and He must love Himself as His greatest love to be holy. He cannot love human beings as His primary focus but can only love them out of His love for Himself as triune and in a way that is perfect in holiness and righteousness. When “churches” gather to worship and all they do is worship a “god” that is focused on them and does all for their sakes, they are in the worship of an unholy god and as such they worship and idol. The stakes could not be higher. The Church must bow with humble and broken hearts in real and true adoration before the true and living God who in His holiness must do all for the glory of His own name.

Isaiah 6:3 And one called out to another and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, The whole earth is full of His glory.”

Isaiah 42:8 “I am the LORD, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, Nor My praise to graven images.

Isaiah 48:11 “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, “I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.