God Loves… Himself

Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are at Ephesus and who are faithful in Christ Jesus: 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love 5 He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us

It is easy to read Ephesians 1 with the concept that man is the focus of it all and that God is focused on human souls, which in turn means that human beings tend to look to themselves as they read Ephesians 1. In other words, though the Great Commandment teaches us that we are to love God with all of our being, we will take passages of Scripture like Ephesians 1 that are dripping with the glory of God and dry them up with the aridness of humanism. The soul that loves God should look for God and His glory in this great epistle rather than be caught up with theology or duty. Sure this book is full of theology and doctrine, but to see the real purpose of theology and doctrine we must see it as a revelation of God by God first and foremost.

The text starts off and tells us who Paul is and that Paul is an apostle of Christ Jesus. In other words, the reason for Paul and the reason for Ephesians is because Paul was sent by Jesus Christ with this message. Then to go on, Paul is an apostle of Christ by the will of God. Why was Paul saved? It was because God had elected Paul from all eternity and while Paul was on his way to Damascus to persecute the followers of Christ a bright light shone from heaven and God revealed himself to Paul. When Paul was blinded for three days God sent a man named Ananias to him, but Ananias did not want to God. Here was what God said to Ananias about Paul: “But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel;16 for I will show him how much he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15-16).

In order to get at the real issues concerning Ephesians we must get at the reason for why Paul was Paul (instead of Saul) and why he was an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. We must learn to look at Scripture from a God-centered view rather than a view that makes man the center. God called Paul and sent Paul to the Gentiles for the sake of His own name. All of the sufferings of Paul should not make us admire Paul as such, but instead to behold the glory of God because Paul suffered for the sake of His name and not his own.

Paul identifies the source of grace and peace, and those are not from him. Grace and peace come from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. This is vital to grab a hold on and to see that Paul is directing us away from him and a theology about him, but instead he is pointing us to the source of grace and peace. The book of Ephesians has a lot of teaching about grace in it and unless we think of grace as coming from God and His sovereign hand we will miss the real point of it all. Who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ? God the Father has. So why doesn’t this text turn us in admiration of the living God to behold Him and love Him? It is because we get caught up with wanting our doctrine to be correct and precise (which is important) and forget that this is primarily about the glory of God and God blessing to manifest His glory.

In the first few verses of Ephesians Paul directs us to why he is an apostle and the source of grace and peace. He moves on to tell the readers that all their spiritual blessings are in Christ and are given to them by God the Father. For Paul, it would appear; he is very small in his own eyes and is nothing but a messenger of the grace and glory of God in Christ Jesus. That should be a great lesson to all who would dare to handle the words in this text. Human beings are not the focus of this text but God is. Human beings are instruments that God manifests His glory through and they are not to try to steal some of the glory of God by their preaching, teaching, or expert handling of the text. No, God is the star (if we may say that with reverence) and man is to stand down. Even more, man is to bow on his face before this God and be in awe of Him while He praises Him for the splendor of who He is.

Isaiah 48: 9 “For the sake of My name I delay My wrath, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. 10 “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.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.

This text shows us the motive and the central desire and love of God. When God acts to either judge or forgive, what is His motive in doing so? It is for the sake of His own name. This seems so bizarre to many people because they think that God should help people for the sake of the people, but a few moments of reflection should help for that view to dissipate. If God helps people for the sake of the people in and of themselves rather than for the sake of His own name, then that means that God is less holy than what He commands of others. Human beings are commanded to love God with all of their being and to do all for His glory even in the mundane things like eating and drinking. It is only because human beings think of all things in relation to themselves (from their fallen nature which thinks it can be like God) that they think it odd that God would do all things out of love for Himself and His glory in accordance with the Greatest Commandment He gives to human beings.

Human beings may say words of praise to God when He does not punish them for their sins, but they think of that in relation to how nice He is being toward them. What they fail to see (most of the time) is that God restrains wrath for the sake of His own name. God restrains wrath for the sake of His praise. This points us to the primary meaning of what it really means to pray in the name of Christ. To really pray in the name of Christ is not to simply give a list so things that we want and then invoke the name of Christ after we finish asking for the things we want, but it is asking for things that will exalt God and having a heart that truly desires God to be exalted in what we ask for.

When the text sets out God proclaiming how can His name be profaned we see why God does all things for His own name’s sake. When Israel did not keep covenant with God, He was obligated to act for the sake of His own name. He was not obligated to them in and of themselves, but instead because He had made a covenant with them and so His name was at stake. To quote Thomas Manton, “God only is independent and self sufficient of himself and from himself; but self-seeking is monstrous and unnatural in the creature!” The Israelites sought themselves in what they did and sought God (in a manner of speaking) for the sake of themselves, but God judged them and blessed them for His own sake. So fallen man, though blind to the reality of it, seems himself primarily and seeks God for the sake of self. But God, on the other hand, seeks all things for the sake of His own name.

Once again, then, the distorted concept of the modern portrayal of God is set forth quite clearly. Man thinks of God as being centered upon himself and his perceived needs, but in reality God is centered upon Himself and His own glory. Man longs for and desires nothing but what will give him comfort and pleasure, but God does nothing which is not for His own glory. While fallen man seeks himself as his own god, the religious person seeks a god of his own imagination to do things for self that he cannot do. But both are demonstrative evidence that in the fall of human beings into sin the fall was from being centered upon God to being centered upon self. What a great delusion it is when man is very religious and yet all of his religion is truly fixated upon and for the sake of self.

A God that that truly does all for His own glory and pleasure is a God that will view the open sinner and the very religious sinner as both being opposed to Him and His glory. The open sinner seeks self and is quite unashamed to do so. The open sinner seeks pleasure for self and all that he does is for self as opposed to doing all for the glory of God. But the religious sinner does the same thing in that he does all for self, though indeed he may utter words that deny that. The religious sinner does all for the sake of self just like the open sinner, but the religious sinner may be worse in that he uses religion and the name of God in order to obtain honor and glory for self. But God, who as a holy God must always do all for the sake of His own name, will punish the open sinner and the religious sinner for the sake of His own name. It is the just and holy thing to do.

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.

In this text we see that the LORD (YAHWEH, the self-existent, self-sufficient sovereign of all) will not give His glory to another and will not give His praise to graven images. In other words, the Greatest Command and the first two commandments given to men are reflections of how God exists in and of Himself as well as toward Himself. It is not that God does not shine forth of Himself in glory and have that glory dwell in men so that they may enjoy Him and live so that His glory would shine through them, but that as a thrice holy God He will not put up with someone taking glory to themselves and seeking themselves in living for themselves. We know what happened to King Nebuchadnezzar when he tried to glorify himself.

The LORD will not share His glory in that He will not allow Israel to take the credit for defending themselves as a nation and try to trust in their systems of defense. The LORD will not share His glory with anyone in terms of saving themselves are finding ways to earn anything before Him. No, the Gospel is the Gospel of the glory of God and the Gospel is the glory of God shining in the face of Christ. God saves to the glory of His own name and He will not share that glory with others. The Gospel is all about the glory of God and when puny man tries to share in that glory in any way, it is no longer the Gospel of the glory of God.

For some reason man continues to fight and attempt to come up with ways to make the Gospel all about himself. Man tries to think that God values man so much that God saved man. Man tries to think that God loves man so much that God saves man. Man tries to think that God cannot violate the liberty of man and so He provides a way for man to make a choice or to work hard and be saved. Some seem to think that as long as man comes up with the right beliefs about God then God will save man. But what escapes man in his sinful self-centeredness is that God is thrice holy and it would be sin for Him to save man unless He saved man for His own glory. It would be sin for God to value man above Himself and it would be sin for Him to love man above Himself. No, no and a thousand times no. God can only save man in a way that demonstrates how much He values Himself (as triune), loves Himself, and does this as His choice and work rather than man’s.

So much of the history of ancient Israel had to do with the idolatry of graven images. So much of the modern Church has to do with the idolatry of the self, of money, and impressing people with numbers and power. But God will not share His glory with another. Whether it was Israel bowing before idols of stone or the modern “Church” bowing before the idols of self, progress, numbers, success, and money; God will not share His glory and in fact doing those things will bring down His wrath upon them precisely because He loves Himself and His own glory.

Idolatrous mankind, after the fall, does believe the lie that Satan told Eve and so man thinks that he is as God. Man wants to live for self, decide for self, and to worship to please self. In doing so, though man may not understand it in these terms, man is attempting to play God to self and others and is trying to share in His glory. This is nothing more and nothing less than gross idolatry. While ancient Israel bowed before idols of stone out of love for self, today men bow before idols of money and success (yes, even in religion) and also do this out of love for self. It is a wicked sin to try to use a stone idol for self rather than to worship the living God to His glory, but it is at least as wicked (if not more) to use self as an object of worship in seeking things for self rather than for God.

God alone has the right to true worship. God alone has the right to the love and adoration of our thoughts, affections, and will. God alone has the right to do as He pleases in all areas of life. God is self-centered and is holy in doing that. All that man does out of his own self-centeredness and self-love just reflects the love that the devil has for himself and his enmity toward God. But the living God will not share His glory with another and as such men need to bow before Him in humility, lowliness, and broken hearts that they will not be full of self rather than full of the glory of God out of love for Him rather than self. In that way they will be like God because He is full of love for His own glory.

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 last writing we looked at the God-centeredness of God in His creating the Seraphim who do nothing but sing about His holiness and glory. Then we looked at the response of Isaiah and how he was broken from his pride and strength of self in order to be nothing in his own eyes. That, however, was in order that he would be a man that sought the glory of God rather than the glory of self. That was so that he would be able to be a minister for the purposes and glory of God rather than looking to the success and honor of self.
The ministry that Isaiah was called to was certainly not one that would build him up in the esteem of others or make him popular and well-liked. Isaiah did not have a message that was winsome in any way and he was told that his message was going to succeed, but it would succeed in bringing down the nation of Israel. Isaiah was brought down to the point where he was ready to preach for the purposes of God at the expense of self being hated and spoken against. He was told to preach and as part of his duty in preaching he was told to render their hearts insensitive. He was told to render their ears dull and their eyes dim. He was told to do this so that they would not understand and so return and be healed. These are hard words that are not easy to bear now, but imagine Isaiah as a prophet to his people now told that judgment was coming and he was to be an instrument of that judgment.
Isaiah wanted to know how long he had to go and preach such a message. One would think that such a message would be for the purpose of bringing them down to a point, but surely it wouldn’t be for long. But instead he was told to preach for the goals mentioned above “Until cities are devastated and without inhabitant, Houses are without people And the land is utterly desolate.” When Isaiah was told to go and preach that message, it had to have been a shock to his system and utterly crushing to him. But now he was told that he was to preach this message until the cities were without inhabitant and the land was utterly desolate. In other words, he was to be the messenger of judgment and also of bringing judgment until the people were carried away in captivity.
The message and intent of the message that was given to Isaiah is demonstrative evidence that God is not man-centered as men think of man-centeredness. Instead, these severe judgments were sent by God and they declared His glory over the whole earth. These judgments declare to us that God is concerned about His holiness and His name rather than what we think of as well-being. The Israelites made many mistakes, but perhaps one of the mistakes they made was in thinking that God loved them and watched over them according to the ways of their own thinking. They thought that they were the chosen people and that He was focused on them and that they could worship Him as they pleased and also live as they pleased. But God does not grade on the curve and He does not treat people according to the way they think is fair. But instead God always acts according to Himself and His own character and He always acts according to His perfect holiness and always does what He does to the glory of His own name. In this way we can see that God is centered upon Himself and His own glory. The living God who is focused and centered upon Himself is a far different god than the one that is made up and so man-centered in the modern world. The devil couldn’t do better in all of his deceitfulness than to replace the true God-centered God with one that is focused on man in the modern world. Could it be that we are as deceived as Israel was?

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.