Is God an egomaniac?

Here, then, is the ground of redemption ― that upon which a soul can surely rest, revealed in God's covenant-name. He is the Self-existent One, who acts necessarily from Himself and according to His own nature: "all things were created by Him and for Him." (Col. 1:16.) That this is said of Christ shows at once who Christ is, and how truly He is the full expression of the divine mind. God is revealing Himself, acting for the display of Himself, — the joy and blessing of His creatures. And this is the true thought of His glorifying Himself, not as if glory could be conferred upon Him, or as if He craved or had need of something from His creatures. "Love seeketh not her own "(1 Cor. 13:5), and "God is love." If He seek His own glory, it is to fill as the sun the heavens with His brightness. This is grace, and the theme of His people's praise forever.

The end and object of all is the glory of God. It is perfectly, divinely true, that "God hath ordained for His own glory whatsoever comes to pass." In order to guard this from all possibility of mistake, we have only to remember who is this God, and what the glory that He seeks. It is He who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, — of Him in whom divine love came seeking not her own, among us as "One that serveth." It is He who, sufficient to Himself, can receive no real accession of glory from His creatures, but from whom" Love," as He is "Light," — cometh down every good and every perfect gift, in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning. Of His own alone can His creatures give to Him.

The glory of such an one is found in the display of His own goodness, righteousness, holiness, truth; in manifesting Himself as in Christ He has manifested Himself and will forever. The glory of this God is what of necessity all things must serve, — adversaries and evil as well as all else. He has ordained it; His power will insure it; and when all apparent clouds and obstructions are removed, then shall He rest — "rest in His love" forever, although eternity only will suffice for the apprehension of the revelation. "God shall be all in all" gives in six words the ineffable result.

Can His creatures add aught to Him? Did the making of a universe put more into His treasury than it had before? Being sufficient to Himself from all eternity, if He would display His glory it must be from love's delight to fill with happiness the vessels which His hands prepared for this.

We greatly need the same truth presented by Mr. Haldane, and so much owned of God. When we love ourselves it is because we are selfish, but God in loving Himself shews His unselfishness. He is all that is perfect, He must love Himself, and He must labour unceasingly for the gratification of His own love. He must have the happiness of blessing, we may have all the happiness of being blessed. Would that we understood this better.

It may however be asked, What scripture do you give for this? The answer is that God says, "My glory will I not give to another." What is God's glory which He cannot give to another? The glory surely of being the source of all goodness and blessing. He cannot be otherwise than what He has ever been. "God is Love," and He cannot but sustain that character. This is His glory. Ours is to know Him in the love and to reflect that character.

Most surely. There never can be any other purpose before God than His own glory, because when His counsels were brought forth there was no one whose blessing needed to be considered. His counsels were before all His works, and therefore, there was no one to take into consideration except Himself. But He has been pleased to create myriads to be spectators of His glory, and others to share the glory that can be shared by the creature. He has bound up our blessing with His glory. And as we have it in this chapter, "That we should be to the praise of His glory," and as the hymn has it: —

(1) God must first maintain His own honor. This is the basis of all blessing for the creature. Were it possible to conceive of His honor being overthrown, all would lapse into hopeless chaos. This is ever prominent in Scripture: "In the beginning, GOD." The first part of the law is devoted to His glory; the opening petitions of the "Lord's prayer" are concerned with that. The gospel is founded upon it, and in eternity heaven and earth will display it to an adoring universe.

The Lord will be enquired of: it is all-important for man; but He has His own way. As His end is that He is very pitiful and of tender mercy, so His beginning is goodness without limit where failure is impossible. But man needs to learn by his misery and need, ever prone to forget it through misuse of His very mercies. How blessed that God acts for His own glory!

Whenever God works, the first point with Him is to secure manifestly His own glory in what He does. When unrenewed man works, or when renewed man works like an unrenewed man, God's glory is left out of the question.

He next refers to proofs; for there are certain moral proofs quite evident to hearts opened by grace. Never in a single thing sought He His own glory.

There is another thing. "If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself." The glorifying of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of God was the answer to the moral glory we find in His cross. "And shall straightway glorify him." God did not wait for the restoration of His kingdom to Israel. He raised Him up and set Him at His own right hand, far above every name that is named. This was the answer to the cross, the only adequate answer to the Lord's giving Himself up to the judgment of God against sin. I say the judgment of sin, because therein the question is not yet raised as to who is to be saved. The matter in hand was God's glory in presence of sin. And so we find our Lord in John 10 saying, not that He was loved because He laid down His life for the sheep, but, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." None doubts the delight of the Father in His dying for the sheep, but apart from that work, for surely in the absolute laying down of His life, there was manifested perfect confidence in His Father as well as devotedness to His glory. He would lay it down and take it again; and on this account the Father loved Him. Surely this should — could — not be forgotten by our hearts if we love God and feel how He has been outraged by sin. To lay down His life because of the glory of God; to show the most absolute confidence in God and the most complete surrender and self-sacrifice for God is of an essentially higher character than any application of His work to bear our sins and secure our pardon. Putting the people's lot first — that is, making what Christ suffered for us the principal or only thing — is not only unscriptural, but an essentially God-forgetting and selfish consideration. It is the outcome of that natural instinctive egoism which, even when we are awakened and in some degree instructed by the Spirit, is apt to rise so readily to the surface in us. How inveterately the heart turns to think, if not what we are to do, at any rate, how things affect ourselves in the first place! One easily understands it as being natural. Still it is incomparably more blessed to estimate God's side of Christ and His work confiding in Him about ourselves without question. If God proposes aught for our learning, it is well to weigh it; but if God gives, it is according to His own thoughts and heart, and this will always prove the best portion. He remembers our every want as well as His glory; and this finds its fullest illustration in the death of Christ as scripture puts it.