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The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty. The saving love of God is his doing whatever must be done, at great cost to himself, and for the least deserving, so that he might enthrall them with what will make them supremely happy forever, namely, himself. Therefore, the gospel of God and the love of God are expressed finally and fully in God's gift of himself for our everlasting pleasure. "In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Ps. 16:11).

GOD IS THE GOSPEL: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself by John Piper Crossway, 192 pp.; $17.99

Those who have seen God most clearly in the face of Christ and have savored him most fully tell us something of what this is like. Jonathan Edwards opens the window on his own soul and on the meaning of the gospel with these exultant words:

They that have Christ, they have a soul satisfying portion. They have the truest pleasures and comforts. Here is to be found the proper happiness of the soul. Least liable to accidents and change … Here is the best employment for the understanding … Such as have Christ, they have better and greater riches than others … Better honor … Far better pleasures than sensual men. The joys are more exquisitely delighting than ever was enjoyed by the greatest epicure. [There are] no pleasures like those that are by the enlightenings of the Spirit of Christ, the discoveries of the beauty of Christ and the manifestations of his love.

This is why Jesus said that the pure are blessed because "they shall see God" (Matt. 5:8). It's why David said, "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple" (Ps. 27:4). Beholding the beauty of God has always been the supreme desire of those who know him best.

The upshot of saying this is that the love of God and the gospel of God are radically God centered. God loves us by giving us himself to enjoy. The gospel is good news because it announces to us that God has acted in Christ not just that we may have heaven, but so that we may have God. "Everyone who … does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God" (2 John 9). The greatest good of the gospel is "having God" as our treasure forever.

The God centered love of God is foreign to fallen human beings, especially to those who like most of us have been saturated for decades with doctrines of self esteem. We have absorbed a definition of love that makes us the center. That is, we feel loved when someone makes much of us. Thus the natural, human definition of love is making much of someone. The main reason this feels like love is that it feels so good to be made much of. The problem is that this feels good on wholly natural grounds. There is nothing spiritual about it. No change in us is needed at all to experience this kind of "love." This love is wholly natural. It operates on the principles that are already present in our fallen, sinful, and spiritually dead souls We love the praise of man. It feels good. Praise is to the ego what sex is to the body. It just doesn't get any better as long as we are spiritually dead.

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February (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50