You Can't Staple Fruit to the Tree

Christ is not merely after people who aren't anxious. He's after people who aren't anxious because of how they trust so surely in Him as their Rock.

He is not after merely humble or devout people. He's after people who are humble and devout because they know the sweetness of knowing Him.

He is not after merely pure and holy people. He's after people who are pure and holy because they know the pleasure to be had from sin doesn't hold a candle to the pleasure to be had in seeing and knowing and following Him.

There are no shortcuts in the Christian life. Jesus gets no glory when we try to staple fruit to the tree. He gets glory when obedience is compelled by His own delightfulness, beauty, and pleasantness. When that happens, then the Holy Spirit -- and not we ourselves in our flesh -- is producing His fruit in us.

Holy! Holy! Holy!

A true love of God must begin
with a delight in his holiness,
and not with a delight in any other attribute;
for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.
- Jonathan Edwards -

As it seems to challenge an excellency above all His other perfections,
so it is the glory of all the rest;
as it is the glory of the Godhead,
so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead;
as His power is the strength of them,
so His holiness is the beauty of them;
as all would be weak without almightiness to back them,
so all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them.

Should this be sullied, all the rest would lose their honour;
as at the same instant the sun should lose its light,
it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue.
As sincerity is the luster of every grace in a Christian,
so is purity the splendor of every attribute in the Godhead.
His justice is a holy justice,
His wisdom a holy wisdom,
His arm of power a "holy arm" (Ps. 98:1),
His truth or promise a "holy promise" (Ps. 105:42).
His name, which signifies all His attributes in conjunction, "is holy," Psalm 103:1.
- Stephen Charnock -

I Benefit from God's God-Centeredness

"As I live," declares the Lord Yahweh, "surely with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out, I shall be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out; and I will bring you into the wilderness of the peoples, and there I will enter into judgment with you face to face. As I entered into judgment with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so I will enter into judgment with you," declares the Lord Yahweh.

"I will make you pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant; and I will purge from you the rebels and those who transgress against Me; I will bring them out of the land where they sojourn, but they will not enter the land of Israel. Thus you will know that I am the Yahweh. As for you, O house of Israel," thus says the Lord Yahweh, "Go, serve everyone his idols..."

"...but later you will surely listen to Me, and My holy name you will profane no longer with your gifts and with your idols. For on My holy mountain, on the high mountain of Israel," declares the Lord Yahweh, "there the whole house of Israel, all of them, will serve Me in the land; there I will accept them and there I will seek your contributions and the choicest of your gifts, with all your holy things. As a soothing aroma I will accept you when I bring you out from the peoples and gather you from the lands where you are scattered; and I will prove Myself holy among you in the sight of the nations. And you will know that I am Yahweh, when I bring you into the land of Israel, into the land which I swore to give to your forefathers. There you will remember your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves; and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. Then you will know that I am Yahweh when I have dealt with you for My name's sake, not according to your evil ways or according to your corrupt deeds, O house of Israel," declares the Lord Yahweh.
- Ezekiel 20:33-44 -

This text is so glorious. I could probably spend a month making observations that would make my soul sing. But right now I just want to just bask in how awesome the God-centeredness of God is, and how God's pursuing His own glory necessarily is for our benefit.

In the passage above, the scene is Judah's impending judgment. Soon the Babylonians will come and destroy the temple and destroy Jerusalem. And they will be acting entirely according to the will of Yahweh, who credits Himself with the destruction of His people, His land, and His holy temple.

But He declares that that judgment is not the end of the story for Judah. No, He will surely restore them as a people, will give them back their land, and, as Ezekiel will tell us later on, will give them back their temple (Ezek 40-48).

But what's amazing is why God says He'll have mercy on them and graciously restore them. He declares that He will save Israel to prove Himself holy, and to ensure that His name be properly honored and not be profaned. You see, He is not content to simply cut off His people in judgment. That would not magnify His attractiveness. It would give the nations occasion to mock and jeer, "These are the people of Yahweh; yet they have come out of His land" (Ezek 36:20). "What kind of weak God is Yahweh that His people regard Him so lightly that they defy Him so greatly, that He must resort to such measures to punish them?"

But in the pursuit of His glory, to ensure that His compelling beauty be magnified in the sight of all the world, He will see to it that Israel worship Him. It's as if He's saying, "Oh, one day you will see how great I am. One day you will finally have your eyes opened to fully appreciate how beautifully glorious and delightfully satisfying I am. I will make sure of it. You will not get away with not worshiping Me!"

How awesome is that? God is emphatic about saving Israel not for their sake but for His sake. Here, He's said, "I will deal with you for My name's sake" (Ezek 20:44)! Later on He says, "It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name. ... I will vindicate the holiness of My great name" (Ezek 36:22-23)! He is radically and recklessly God-centered.

But isn't it just lovely that it is precisely His love for Himself that we, as His people, experience as love for us!

That God's absolute commitment to His own glory is linked to my finding Him delightful and being satisfied by Him in worship is unspeakably glorious and the most lofty demonstration of grace that I could ever conceive of! God has designed this universe to work in such a way that His glory and our good are not only vitally connected and related -- they are the very same thing! It's not just that whatever God decides will glorify Him most will satisfy us most. It's that God's glory is our good! The good we are looking for is to see Him magnified!

That is absolutely astounding to me. I hope it is for you too. May your heart be captivated and worship at such benevolent grace from such a large-hearted God.

I want to add one thing in closing. I don't know about you, but as I ponder these things, I sense that I am loved in an infinitely greater way knowing that God is not acting for my sake or for my benefit per se, but rather for His own. If He was doing everything He does for my sake and not His own sake, I would feel less loved, because I know in my heart that I'm not worthy to be so highly regarded that way. God would seem smaller to me; He would be man-centered. But because He is unwaveringly committed to the glory of His name, He is magnified in my sight as utterly righteous and utterly worthy. And then, because it is His nature that, in tireless commitment to Himself I somehow benefit from that, well that takes my breath away. My God is a big God. My God is an amazing God. I feel more loved by God because He aims at loving Himself above all things, and loving Himself spills over into benefit for me.

I hope you feel the same way.

God's Love Defined by His Holiness

A couple of Fridays ago I posted some of my own ruminations on the relationship between God's love for us and His glory. I argued that it is wrong to say that God created us for His glory because of His love for us, because such a statement confuses God's end with His means. It makes His glory subordinate to His love, when really it is His love that is subordinate to -- indeed, it serves -- His glory. And I demonstrated that that is Biblical based on 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 4:6. If you haven't read that post, read it.

An objection that I'd expect to hear regarding that post goes something like this: "Mike, I appreciate your zeal for God's Word and for His glory. Those are good things, and we should be talking about those things. But you cannot say that God's love is subordinate to His pursuit of His glory. In fact, you can't say that God's love is subordinate to anything. It's true that God is glorious, but it's not true that God is just loving. He is love, as 1 John 4:8 says. Love is not merely another of His attributes, it is His very nature!"

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the other two "God is" statements in the Bible. Not only does Scripture reveal that God is love (1Jn 4:8), but also that He is spirit (Jn 4:24) and He is Light (1Jn 1:5). It is the latter of these three that we must consider if we are to order our thinking aright in this matter.

To say that God is Light is to declare that He is utterly holy, pure, and righteous. "In Him there is no darkness at all," the Apostle continues (1Jn 1:5). Just as much as love is essential to the very nature and character of God, so is holiness so essential. This means that, simply within the context of these two absolute statements, there is no reason to subordinate one attribute to the other. God is love, and God is holiness. However, if we turn to the rest of the Biblical witness, we do find a reason to subordinate one to the other, but it's not in the direction that many 21st-century American evangelicals think it is.

Isaiah chapter 6 chronicles Isaiah's call to the prophetic ministry. We know the story. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah saw a vision of heaven. He saw the Lord Jesus sitting on His throne, high and exalted in His glory. And he saw six-winged angels above him, covering their face and their feet in humility. And those angels had a perpetual song as they beheld the glory of the Lord. They cried out in acclamation and exultation: "Holy! Holy! Holy!"

As you may know, a way to express emphasis in Hebrew is to repeat that which you want to emphasize. One way to use the superlative in Hebrew is to repeat what you want to say multiple times. So if you wanted to say something was exceedingly good, you might repeat the word 'good.' And here in Isaiah 6, the angels call out, "Holy! Holy! Holy!" It's the only word in Scripture that's repeated three times.

This is what occupied the angels' worship as they beheld the glory of the Lord God high and lifted up on his exalted and glorious throne. This aspect of his nature. This attribute. The Bible never says that God is "love, love, love!" The one time the Bible gives this kind of emphasis to a particular attribute of God it is His holiness.

So how does this fit with my previous post?

God's holiness, or righteousness, consists in His doing what is right. He must love what is most worthy to be loved, delight in what is most worthy of delight, regard what is most worthy of regard, and esteem what is most worthy of esteem. For Him to not do any of those things would be for Him to fail morally. He would become an idolater, and would no longer be holy. So God's holiness demands that He treasure that which is most worthy to be treasured.

So what is most worthy to be treasured? The answer must be God Himself, for He is perfect. God must treasure Himself above all things, because He Himself is actually worthy of being treasured above all things. The way God treasures Himself above all things is to be unwaveringly committed to upholding the glory of His name. He pursues His glory in everything He does. This pursuit is at the foundation of the most foundational attribute of His nature. What it means for God to be God is that He is holy. What it means for God to be holy is that He pursues His own glory. That is what He is about. That is what is at the heart of His nature.

But what about love? Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to downplay the love of God. I'm trying to downplay the man-centered love of man that we attribute to God and call God's love. I'm trying to explode the idea that love is making much of someone, and instead present the Biblical truth that love labors, and, if need be, suffers to enthrall the beloved with what will make him eternally happy and satisfied. And reality is, we will not be eternally happy and satisfied with a God who makes much of ourselves. We are not worthy of being so magnified.

He, however, is. He is worthy of being so magnified, such that His very act of seeking His own glory (that is, manifesting and communicating the beauty of His manifold perfections to people) is love. Do you see how God's glory defines what it means for Him to love? Strictly speaking, God's seeking His own glory and His acts of love that benefit us are the very same thing. When God shows Himself off, that is love, because my seeing that beauty will most fully and abidingly satisfy me.

But even though they are manifested in the same action, God's love is logically dependent on His pursuing His own glory. If you try to reverse those and make His glory dependent on His love, you wind up with the small, pitiful God I described at the end of the original post. But if you rightly see God's love as a means to glorify Himself, you see more of God as He's revealed Himself, and not how 21st-century evangelicals have imagined Him to be.

As it seems to challenge an excellency above all His other perfections, so it is the glory of all the rest; as it is the glory of the Godhead, so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead; as His power is the strength of them, so His holiness is the beauty of them; as all would be weak without almightiness to back them, so all would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them. Should this be sullied, all the rest would lose their honour; as at the same instant the sun should lose its light, it would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue. As sincerity is the luster of every grace in a Christian, so is purity the splendor of every attribute in the Godhead. His justice is a holy justice, His wisdom a holy wisdom, His arm of power a "holy arm" (Ps. 98:1), His truth or promise a "holy promise" (Ps. 105:42). His name, which signifies all His attributes in conjunction, "is holy," Psalm 103:1.
- Stephen Charnock -

A true love of God must begin
with a delight in his holiness,
and not with a delight in any other attribute;
for no other attribute is truly lovely without this.
- Jonathan Edwards -

And I will be glorified in your midst.
Then they will know that I am Yahweh
when I execute judgments in her,
And I will manifest My holiness.
- Ezekiel 28:22 -