The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God's Delight in Being God by Piper John

Author:Piper, John [Piper, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781601422910
Publisher: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group
Published: 2012-01-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6

THE PLEASURE OF GOD IN BRUISING THE SON

The LORD was pleased to bruise him,

he has put him to grief …

when he makes himself an offspring,

he shall prolong his days;

the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

ISAIAH 53:10

Something troubling has emerged in these chapters.

We have seen that God has pleasure in his Son: he delights in the glory of his own perfections reflected back to him in the countenance of Christ. We have seen that God delights in his sovereign freedom: the Lord is in heaven and does all that he pleases. We have seen that he rejoices over the work of his hands: day by day they declare his glory. We have seen that God has pleasure in his fame: he aims to make a name for himself in all the world and win a reputation for the glory of his grace from every people and tribe and language and nation. And we have seen that, as a means to that end, God has had pleasure in election from before creation: he delights to reveal the glory of his Son to babes and to call out for himself an unlikely people who will make their boast only in the Lord.

Clearly God has a great passion to promote his glory. But the troubling thing that emerges is that God has chosen sinners. He is honoring and blessing and exalting a people who are sinners. And the essence of sin is the belittling of God’s glory. Something is askew here. A God infinitely committed to promote the worth of his name and the greatness of his glory is engaging all his powers to bring the enemies of his name into everlasting joy and honor!

Make no mistake, sin is diametrically opposed to the glory of God. Romans 3:23 says that sin is a “falling short” of God’s glory. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Paul means that sinners have fallen short of prizing the glory of God. We have exchanged1 the glory of God for something else: for images of glory, like a new home or car or computers or vacation days or impressive resumés or whatever makes our ticker tick more than the wonder of God’s glory.

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