Glory Be to Our Great God | Day 31 - God is Man's Highest Good
Give Thanks to the All-Satisfying, All-Fulfilling, and Wonderful God
God, and God alone, is man’s highest good. - Herman Bavinck
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. - Psalm 16:11
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. - Psalm 73:25-26
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. - Psalm 90:14
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. - Romans 11:33–36
Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.
- Westminster Shorter CatechismThe chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Himself forever. - John Piper
God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in him. - John Piper
We are becoming what we love. We are to a large degree the sum of our loves and we will of moral necessity grow into the image of what we love most; for love is among other things a creative affinity; it changes and molds and shapes and transforms. - A. W. Tozer
As clowns yearn to play Hamlet, so I have wanted to write a treatise on God. - J. I. Packer
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. - C. S. Lewis
I rejoice in my Redeemer
Greatest treasure, wellspring of my soul
I will trust in Him, no other
My soul is satisfied in Him alone
- Keith Getty, Kristyn Getty, and Graham Kendrick, “My Worth is Not in What I Own”Give to our God immortal praise;
mercy and truth are all His ways;
wonders of grace to God belong,
repeat His mercies in your song.
- Isaac Watts, “Give to Our God Immortal Praise”Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
- Thomas Ken, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow”
Try It! Don’t Like It? Return It!
As a child who grew up watching many Saturday morning cartoons, I remember viewing many interesting commercials that sold various products. Whether it was the classic Billy Mays1 with OxyClean, Vince Offer2, the ShamWow guy, or the Songs4Worship3 CD collection for $19.99, they all aimed to persuade the consumer that this product is needed in his or her life. However, some advertisements that aired often included a message towards the end of the segment: “Buy now! Satisfaction guaranteed! If you don’t like it, you can return it for your money back!” It’s a funny statement because companies are putting out these products that are supposed to be life-changing, and yet they have to caveat their message with a “satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.” So... maybe these products really can’t guarantee our total satisfaction. In the moment when watching our TVs, we can feel lured and caught by the commercial’s attempt to close a sale, but in our right minds, we would consider whether or not this product would be useful or not.
But is God like an “As Seen On TV” product? Can you just try God, and, if you don’t like him, can you return him? Or maybe in your younger years, you were once religiously zealous and excited about God, but today, things are different. That was then, and this is now. God is not fascinating like when you were a kid, and you have grown up more and need “grown-up” reliefs and outlets to satisfy you. Is God just an important being for children to grow up with, but then to throw off when they get older to explore life on their own terms? Is God a product that overpromises satisfaction but underdelivers when used?
We’ve spent the past thirty posts thinking, reflecting, meditating on God—his nature, his personhood, and his works. At the beginning, I shared how I, like many Christians, started doing theology in the middle of the order (Salvation, Christ’s Work, the End Times, Spiritual Gifts, etc.), not at the beginning with God.4 However, as we have seen, if “theology is a distinct and unified science by virtue of its single complex object: God and all things studied under the formality of being relative to God,” then he must be the starting point for all theology.5 The doctrine or study of God has been called “Theology Proper” because theology is primarily about God as the main character, and in light of the previous posts on his nature, persons, and works, we can conclude that God is not the equivalent of a cheap TV product.
No, God is far supremely valuable than anything we could ever imagine or experience.
Why?
Because, as Herman Bavinck wrote, “God, and God alone, is man’s highest good.”6
The Perfect, Triune God = Our Everlasting Happiness
At the beginning of his Monologion, Anselm writes, “Of all the things that exist, there is one nature that is supreme. It alone is self-sufficient in its eternal happiness, yet through its all-powerful goodness it creates and gives to all other things their very existence and their goodness.”7 What an apt description of who and what God is, but did you notice that he mentions how eternally happy God is and how that overflows into the creation of all things? I wonder if we forget that this God we’ve reflected on is infinitely happy. The simple, all-sufficient God who is infinite in all his perfections is eternally happy in himself. And why wouldn’t he be? After all, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit eternally enjoy love for one another that our mind can’t completely fathom because it is one of divine devotion/holiness. As Stephen Wellum writes, “For God, then, to be holy means that he is devoted to his own glory since he alone is God and thus the highest end of all things.”8 In other words, how would you answer this question: “What is the chief end of God?” John Piper answers, “The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Himself forever.”9 Only God can have such a goal because of who and what he is: he alone is God, not us. We all would despise prideful jerks who boast in themselves as the greatest phenomenon since sliced bread, but that’s because they are created beings like us. But God is not another created being like us since he is the transcendent Creator who is in a class by himself. Therefore, he alone deserves to delight himself because he alone is the supreme in perfection, and thus his happiness is the most wonderful thing. “God would be unrighteous (just as we would) if He valued anything more than what is supremely valuable. But He Himself is supremely valuable. If He did not take infinite delight in the worth of His own glory, He would be unrighteous.”10 In conclusion, as Bavinck writes:
In a general sense we can say that God is the highest good of all His creatures, For God is the Creator and sustainer of all things, the source of all being and of all lfie, and the abundant foundatain all goods, All creatures owe their existence from moemnt to moment solely to Him who is the one, eternal and omnipresent Being.11
So, we understand that God, being perfect in and of himself, is the only being who enjoys true, unadulterated, and eternal happiness, which he alone is the source of, but he doesn’t just want to keep his happiness to himself. Bavinck continues:
But the idea of the highest good usually includes the thought that this good is also recognized and enjoyed as such by the creatures themselves . . . For man . . . He is a creature who, right from the beginning, was created after God’s image and likeness, and this Divine origin and Divine kinship he can never erase or destroy. . . . What he is really seeking for is not a tangible reality, but spiritual, a truth which is one, eternal and imperishable. His understanding can find rest only in such an absolute Divine truth.12
God created every human with the capacity and longing to be satisfied in him alone. “This desiderium aeternitatis, this yearning for an eternal order, which God has planted in the heart of man, in the inmost recesses of his being, in the core of his personality, is the cause of the indisputable fact that everything which belongs to the temporal order cannot satisfy man. He is a sensuous, early, limited, and mortal being, and yet he is attracted to the eternal and is destined for it.”13 C. S. Lewis famously remarked, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”14 The Psalms highlight this reality numerous times, but here are a few examples:
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. - Psalm 16:11
Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. - Psalm 73:25-26
You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing. - Psalm 145:16
If God alone is the ultimate source of joy and happiness, and humanity was made “by him . . . and for him” (Col. 1:16), then “man’s chief end is to glorify and enjoy him forever.”15 Thus, if every man’s purpose and true satisfaction in life is to seek, know, and be known by the all-sufficient God, then the opposite—to reject, deny, and ignore God—is not only sinful rebellion against God but also the denial of man’s intended design and joy. Yet, sadly, we only have to look within and around us to see that all sinful mankind doesn’t seek him wholeheartedly (Rom. 3:10-18). How often, through Holy Scripture, has God rebuked us for not seeking him? Jeremiah proclaims, “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the LORD, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:13). Moses warned the Israelites that they will be punished for their idolatry “Because you did not serve the LORD you God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things” (Deut. 28:47). Even Paul highlights that these Old Testament warnings and examples of idolatry, “took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolators as some of them were . . . We must not put Christ to the test” (1 Cor. 10:6, 9).
Yet the beauty of the Gospel of Jesus comes over us like a tidal wave of never-ending grace because the Triune God delights to save sinners by giving them himself. The scandal of the Gospel tells us that the eternal God, who is joy, chose to save rebellious glory thieves who traded the enjoying his glory for a lie (Rom. 1:21-25). The Father sent his only begotten Son, the eternal Word and the true light, to give “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name . . . the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). The same Son in whom all things were made by, through, and for him (Col. 1:16-17) is the same Son who prays to the Father:
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. - John 17:1-5
God’s intimate, divine, Triune joy is displayed for all to see through Jesus living the perfectly obedient life we couldn’t live, dying the death that we deserved for our sins, rising from the dead triumphing over sin and death, and ascending into heaven to intercede for all the elect. It is this Father and Son that sends the Holy Spirit “into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Gal. 4:6-7). It is by the Holy Spirit that we have a hope that “does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). So, for man to experience his highest Good, God, the highest Good, must save man from seek all vain glories and goods by giving himself to him. As Bavinck writes, “In the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit is contained the whole salvation of men.”16
Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow!"
Tim Chester writes that “Christianity is about a relationship with God, and it is about a relationship with God that brings joy.”17 In light of the doctrine of God, he is absolutely right. This God that we’ve encountered through the Scriptures and theological reflection is truly “greater than we can imagine . . . too beautiful for us to fathom . . . great and greatly to be praised,”18 and, thus, he alone can satisfy the desires of our heart (Ps. 37:4). So what ought we to do in light of the reality that God alone is our highest good and our unending need in our lives?19
First, behold your God, who is your ultimate joy! We can easily skirt this application as a given for the Christian life, but this assumed implication is not only for this point of doctrine but also for all theology. As John Webster writes, “Christian theology is a work of regenerate intelligence, awakened and illuminated by divine instruction to consider a twofold object. This object is, first, God in himself in the unsurpassable perfection of his inner being and work as Father, Son and Spirit and in his outer operations, and, second and by derivation, all other things relative to him.”20 How can you not be excited about this? Let us not continue believing the stupid stereotype that theology is just another boring, nerd exercise that possesses no life impact. As one friend of mine defined, “Theology is the study of the One who brings us the greatest joy and satisfaction.” To enjoy true joy which is God, “theology’s task is to know and love God according to his word (Matt 22:37-38). . . . As we grow in our understanding of Scripture and theology, we grow in our knowledge of God. In the end, there is no greater knowledge.”21 So, behold your God and enjoy him for (1) being God and (2) being your God.
Second, Christian life is one of constant war, where every day is a fight for joy in God above all other lesser delights. As I’ve reflected on the doctrine of God and the dynamics of sanctification (especially my personal sanctification), this has become more real to me than before. The lie of sin, which has always been around since Satan deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden, basically tells us, “God and his ways are not for your good” (Gen. 3:1-7). Sin is anything that goes against God’s character, design, and commands,22 and our joy is at the heart of this because sin says to God, “You are not good and not enough for me.” So, if the pursuit of holiness and killing sin is a war of desires, how then can we turn our affections away from the fleeting promises and pleasures of sin to desire those of God? A significant component is to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” as Paul writes in Romans 12:2. Notice that this is a command that is a present, ongoing work that we engage in but we are passive recipients of this transformation work in us. How can this be? If faith comes by hearing, then hearing by the Word of God (Rom. 10:17), then we must expose our hearts and minds with God’s Word, especially the Gospel of Christ. As those who are in Christ, “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18).
Third, if the Gospel is about the God who saves sinners from eternal damnation into everlasting joy in him, then we have the greatest news to bring to our lost and dying world! Everyone around us is looking for joy. They seek to obtain and experience it through many objects and activities: money, fame, power, romance, friendship, mindfulness, manifesting, hallucinations, highs, and even religion. Yet this “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction”23 cannot be found in the creation but in the God who created them all. All earthly pleasures, satisfactions, fulfillment, longings, aspirations are but fragmented shadows that scream within every human that “we were meant to live for so much more”24 because they point to the God of joy. Therefore, just as we were told the good news of the God who gave us joy through his Son, we Christians have been commissioned to go and make disciples by telling others about how rich a treasure we have in Christ. We can join with Isaiah by inviting others to behold our great God:
“Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. . . . “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. - Isaiah 55:1-2, 6-9
If God is all that he is, then every human being was created by him, indeed, “to glorify [him] and enjoy him forever.”
Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav'nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Amen.
- Thomas Ken, “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow”
See the Oxyclean ad and others.
John Webster, God Without Measure: Working Papers in Christian Theology, Vol. 1: God and the Works of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 4.
Herman Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, ed. John Bolt, trans. Henry Zylstra (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2019), 1.
Anselm, Monologion, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11.
Stephen J. Wellum, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: From Canon to Concept (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2024), 587.
John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, rev. ed. (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2011), 31.
Ibid., 43.
Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, 1.
Ibid.
Ibid., 3.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1980), 136-7.
Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question and Answer 1.
Bavinck, The Wonderful Works of God, 143.
Tim Chester, Enjoying God: Experience the Power and Love of God in Everyday Life (Epsom, UK: The Good Book Company, 2018), 27.
See “Greater Than We Can Imagine” by Sovereign Grace Music here and here in Spanish.
Webster, God Without Measure, 1.3.
Wellum, Systematic Theology Vol. 1, 28.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958), 17-18.
Switchfoot, "Meant to Live," track 2 on The Beautiful Letdown, Columbia/Sony BMG, 2003, CD.