Isaiah 48:9–11:
“For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.”
The End for Which God Created the World
If you are going to have a blog, I say it should be focused on God’s supreme treasure—namely God Himself. Does it surprise you that someone would claim that God’s main treasure is God? I mean, yes, as Christians God should be our supreme treasure, but should God be God’s supreme treasure? Towards the end of his life, America’s greatest theologian, Jonathan Edwards, began a book that was published seven years after he died, entitled The Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World (1765). Edwards envisioned the book to be read together with Charity and Its Fruits (a series of sermons he preached in 1738 on 1 Corinthians 13) and The Nature of True Virtue—all three are published together in volume 8, Ethical Writings, of the Works of Jonathan Edwards 26 volume Yale edition.
God is Supremely God-Centered
Two massive realities spring forth from Edwards’s End for Which God Created the World. First, that God is first and foremost God-centered. That is, he is passionately committed to His own self-exaltation. Edwards argues, “God in seeking his glory, therein…seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his own eternal glory).1 Or elsewhere, “as God delights in his own beauty,” “God’s “happiness consists in enjoying and rejoicing in himself.”2 In short, God is Godward; he does everything for His own sake. Did you notice the radically God-centered statements God makes in Isaiah 48:9–11 for why he patiently bears with His people in their sanctification? What motivates Him? “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you” “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.”
Some may read this and think that God is simply another being, who is entirely focused on Himself and, in that way, is not altogether different from an egomaniac. However, what makes God entirely different is that it is not that He needs our worship, as C.S. has said “like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him.”3 Rather, it is only fitting that He be the only object of worship in the universe since He alone is “the supremely beautiful and all-satisfying Object.”4 To say it another way, there is a right ordering of our loves when we follow God in worshiping that which is most lovely, namely God Himself. This is why we say at GodwardGod.com that the goal of this site is to “join God in enjoying making much of Him.”
[1] Jonathan Edwards, Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, in Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol.8 in Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p.459.
[2] Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World, in WJE, 8:442.
[3] C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1958), pp. 92-93
[4] Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, pp. 92-93
