This is the manuscript version of a lesson I taught to the adult Sunday School class at the Bible Church of Buena Park in June of 2002. I am indebted to John Piper for much of it's ideological framework.
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Open with me this morning to Ephesians chapter one, starting in verse three and reading through to verse fourteen. This is our primary passage for the morning, but since it is going to take me some time to get there, I want to read it as a way of preview. I’ve no doubt that it will be more beneficial to our souls if we begin with God’s words rather than with my own. Follow with me as I read from the New American Standard.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will, to the end that we who were the first to hope in Christ should be to the praise of His glory. In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation – having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.

If you were here when I taught in April, you will remember I argued that the call to be a Christian is the call to never sacrifice. I defended that rather provocative premise by saying if you look at your union with Christ as a sacrifice rather than a reward, you do not honor God and you probably will not survive the fight of faith. If you think in terms of what you give up rather than in terms of what you gain, you falsely magnify your own devotion and piety while totally minimizing the unspeakable worth of eternal fellowship with God. To help illustrate I asked questions like, “Is it a sacrifice to give up the lesser to receive the greater? Is it a sacrifice to give up blindness to receive sight? Is it a sacrifice to give up cancer to receive the cure? Is it a sacrifice to give up the passing pleasures of sin and their yield of eternal damnation to gain everlasting joy?” No. In the end, the Christian life is not a sacrifice and even though it cost you everything in this world, and yea even your very life, the return is Christ and that is gain!

As I reviewed that last message in my head, I was struck with the thought that it was essentially a portrait of a believer’s love to God. We do not express love to God by patting ourselves on the back and saying, “Oh, I’ve given up so much to follow you.” No, rather we say, “There is nothing in all the universe which compares with the surpassing worth of knowing you!” We express our love to God by being satisfied in Him, by remembering that He is the benefactor, we are the beneficiary and counting fellowship with Him not as sacrifice but as gain!

So, if this is how we express our love to God, by being satisfied in all that He is, how does God manifest His love towards us? What does God’s love look like in the life of the believer? That’s what I want to talk about this morning, the love of God. Specifically, how can a God who is so completely and irrevocably committed to His own glory still have room to love me and to love you...we who trample upon the very thing which is most precious to Him, namely His own glory?

There is a real tension that is implied in the statement I’ve just made and I hope you feel it. The tension is this. On the one hand, we know that God loves us. The Bible is clear. God is love. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. We love Him because He first loved us. On the other hand the Bible also teaches that God is uppermost in His own affections. In fact, there isn’t a more God-centered being in the whole universe than God Himself. God loves His own glory and he guards it jealously so that everything God does is for the magnification of His own glory. I hope you know that. Many believers don’t.

Here’s a quick survey of this often overlooked biblical reality.

Isaiah 43:6,7 - God created us for His glory.
Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, every one who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.

Jeremiah 13:11 - God chose Israel for His glory.
I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory.

Exodus 14:4 - God rescued Israel from Pharaoh for His glory.
And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.

Ezekial 20:14 - God spared Israel in the wilderness for His glory.
I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations in whose sight I brought them out.

Isaiah 48:9, 11 - God is patient for His glory.
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 like 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.

Ezekial 36:22 - God restores Israel for the sake of His glory.
Thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name.

Isaiah 43:25 - God forgives sin for His glory
I, I am he who blots our your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.

2 Thess. 1:9,10 - Christ returns for Gods’ glory
Those who do not obey the gospel will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at in all who have believed.

Romans 9:22,23 - God’s wrath is poured out for His glory
Desiring to show his wrath and make known his power, he endured with much patience the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy which he prepared beforehand for glory.