Who Is It All About

Is it about you being special? Or is it about God’s glory?

Is it about you needing some help? Or is it about God’s holiness?

Is it about your inherent goodness? Or is it about God’s righteousness?

Is it about you, man? Or is it about Him, God Almighty?

The tragedy of today’s Christendom is that man is at the center of it. The professing Christian believes that he and his problem, whatever he may consider that problem to be, is at the center of God’s attention. What can God do for them? Oh yes! He can heal their marriage. He can get them a better job. He’s there to get them out of a bind. His job is to love and approve of them. Maybe He can even forgive some occasional sin. Thus God only exists to be needed by them and to meet that need for their benefit. Consequently the secular church has created a man-centered gospel.

Let me quote at length John Piper:

Before you ever came on the scene or this universe ever existed, God was holy. Infinitely, valuable, incomparable, absolutely unique. And He knows it. And He loved it. And He treasured it because He is wise and righteous and a righteous person always values what is most valuable. Therefore before you ever came on the scene God valued God above all things.

He saw the perfections of Himself shining out of His own infinitely glorious divine Son and He loved His Son and the Son loved the Father and the Holy Spirit powerfully, personally radiated between the Father and the Son. Before you were ever on the scene there was a gladsomeness in reality. And then you came and I’ll tell you something. Nothing changed.

Let me tell you one of the ways God is so good to me. In the midst of all the slop (the greasy, obnoxious, watered down remains that were formally expelled by the cook from his kitchen, but which the religious counterpart of today serves up as the main course by pseudo-Christian teachers) God graciously leads me to feast on such truth as Piper emphatically proclaims.

It is only natural and logical that God values and loves Himself above all. His righteousness is righteousness. His holiness is holiness. His perfection is perfection. And when you came along, even if you hadn’t been a miscarriage in sin, why would you think you were special and God owed you something? Only because you have committed the grossest of sin - the sin of dishonoring God because you do not recognize Him as He really is but attribute to Him that which He isn‘t. You create another god before Him. You create a god who has yourself as his center. You create a god who exists to meet your needs as you see fit. You take no delight in humbly searching the Scriptures and worshipping God as He is there revealed. You may think yourself beyond those that worship a golden calf but you still commit the sin of idolatry.

Piper continues:

God did not suddenly become an idolater when He created man, putting man where God belongs. God is not a man worshiper. God is a God worshiper. Or would you deny Him the highest joys of the universe? You are not the center of God’s values. The glory of God is the center of His values. You are not the center of His redeeming work. The magnifying of Christ in your life is the center of His redeeming work. You are not the treasure of the gospel. God is the treasure of the gospel.

God glories in Himself. There is none other greater in whom He can glory. He is not an idolater. He has no other gods before Him. His greatest joy is Himself. It has been so throughout all eternity. With the creation of the speck called time should He find something greater than Himself that He can glory in more than Himself? His highest joy will ever be Himself.

I would continue on but I am not worthy to the task. To retire and muse on He who is infinite and seek to conform to Him by His grace is necessary. Blessed be the day when this body of sin is shed and I am brought before Him to dwell forever in wonder and awe and praise.

But this I do for you. Listen to John Piper’s sermon, “A Generation Passionate For God’s Holiness.” This is from where I have taken the above quotes. Among other things, he will define for you sin and God’s love, righteousness, holiness and glory.

You need to know these things because it is not about you. It is about the Most High God.