John Piper on God’s Delight in Being God

“We may conclude that the pleasure of God in his Son is pleasure in himself. Since the Son is the image of God and the radiance of God and the form of God, equal with God, and indeed is God, therefore God’s delight in the Son is delight in himself. The original, the primal, the deepest, the foundational joy of God is the joy he has in his own perfections as he sees them reflected in the glory of his Son. Paul speaks of “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). From all eternity God had beheld the panorama of his own perfections in the face of his Son. All that he is he sees reflected fully and perfectly in the countenance of his Son. And in this he rejoices with infinite joy.

“At first this sounds like vanity. It would be vanity if we humans found our deepest joy by looking in the mirror. We would be vain and conceited and smug and selfish if we were like God in this regard. But why? Aren’t we supposed to imitate God (Matthew 5:8; Ephesians 5:1)? Yes, in some ways. But not in every way. This was the first deceit of Satan in the garden of Eden: he tempted Adam and Eve to try to be like God in a way that God never intended them to be like him—namely, self-reliant. Only God should be self-reliant. All the rest of us should be God-reliant. In the same way we were created for something infinitely better and nobler and greater and deeper than self-contemplation. We were created for the contemplation and enjoyment of God! Anything less than this would be idolatry toward him and disappointment for us. God is the most glorious of all beings. Not to love him and delight in him is a great loss to us and insults him.

“But the same is true for God. How shall God not insult what is infinitely beautiful and glorious? How shall God not commit idolatry? There is only one possible answer: God must love and delight in his own beauty and perfection above all things.”

~John Piper, The Pleasures of God (Multnomah, 1991), 38-39.