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Piper:WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT HAVING A GLAD GOD IN THE GOSPEL?

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WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT HAVING A GLAD GOD IN THE GOSPEL?

The happiness of God is first and foremost a happiness in his Son. Thus when we share in the happiness of God, we share in the very pleasure that the Father has in the Son. Ultimately this is what makes the gospel good news. It opens the way for us to see and savor the glory of Christ. And when we reach that ultimate goal we will find ourselves savoring the Son with the very happiness that the Father has in the Son.

This is why Jesus made the Father known to us. At the end of his great prayer in John 17:26 he said to his Father, “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” The love God has for the Son will be in us. That is, the love for the Son that will be in us will be the Father’s love for the Son. We will not merely love the Son with our paltry ability to love. But our love for the Son will be infused with the divine love between the Father and the Son. Therefore, we should realize from John 17:26 that Jesus made God known so that God’s pleasure in his Son might be in us and become our pleasure in Christ.

 Imagine being able to enjoy what is infinitely enjoyable with unbounded energy and passion forever. This is not our experience now. Three things stand in the way of our complete satisfaction in this world. 

  • One is that nothing here has a personal worth great enough to meet the deepest longings of our hearts. 
  • Another is that we lack the strength to savor the best treasures to their maximum worth. 
  • And the third obstacle to complete satisfaction is that our joys here come to an end. Nothing lasts.


 But if the aim of the gospel—the aim of Jesus in John 17:26 and the aim of Paul in 1 Timothy 1:11 and 2 Corinthians 4:4–6—comes true, all this will change. If God’s pleasure in the Son becomes our pleasure, then the object of our pleasure, Jesus, will be inexhaustible in personal worth. He will never become boring or disappointing or frustrating. No greater treasure can be conceived than the very Son of God. Moreover, our ability to savor this inexhaustible treasure will not be limited by human weaknesses. We will enjoy the Son of God with the very enjoyment of his omnipotently happy Father. God’s delight in his Son will be in us, and it will be ours. And this will never end, because neither the Father nor the Son ever ends. Their love for each other will be our love for them, and therefore our loving them will never die.

 This is the ultimate reason why the gospel is good news. If this does not come true for Christ’s people, there is no good news. Therefore, preaching the good news must endeavor to lead people to this. We must make plain to people that if their hope stops short of seeing and savoring the glory of God in Christ, they are not fixing their hearts on the main thing and the best thing Christ died to accomplish—seeing and savoring the glory of God in the face of Christ with everlasting and ever-increasing joy.



Piper, J. (2005). God is the Gospel: meditations on God’s love as the gift of himself (pp. 101–102). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
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