The Goal of God's Love

Since its Sunday how about some theology?

I recently read an interesting article by John Piper called The Goal of God's Love May Not Be What You Think It Is.

In it he basically says that according to the Bible, God does the things he does pretty much to make himself look good.  “His glory is the goal.”  At first pass that is an outrageous statement.  I mean is God really that self centered, that much of an egomaniac?

It really depends on who is making himself look good.  If everything I did was in an effort to make myself appear as good as possible it would be incredibly selfish of me because the truth is I’m not that good.  However, what if I was perfectly good?  Wouldn’t I have a responsibility to behave in a way that helped others see that as true?

God, however, really is perfectly good.  He is the one person in this whole universe who not only can behave that way, but actually should behave in a way that helps all of us to see it.

I guess it would only be outrageous if God was trying to make himself appear to be something he’s not or be something more than he is.  Since God really is outrageously good, or glorious, for him to do anything different than making himself look as good as possible would be false advertising. It would make him appear to be less than he is, and would in fact detract from his goodness.

The whole thing is more complicated than I thought when I sat down and started typing.  And I don’t have enough coffee on board yet this morning to even come close to getting my mind around it all.

I’ll just sum up with a quote from my friend and favorite Brazilian pastor, Jedaias, “God is Good!”  That says it all.

Enjoy!