The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God in 4 parts

by Richard Liantonio

Freedom From Boredom – The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God, Part I

In the first chapter of 1 Timothy, Paul tells us that he has been entrusted with the "glorious gospel of the Blessed God." This phrase is packed with life and meaning and deserves to be examined bit by bit. It breaks down simply as follows - a subject, gospel; a description of the subject, glorious, a noun describing the content of the gospel, God; and an adjective describing God, blessed.

Whatever Paul means by the gospel, he understands it to be glorious. Instead of the word glorious, put words like magnificent, incredible or marvelous. In the Scripture, "glorious" describes that which creates a dramatic impression, that which is striking and overwhelming. When one sees something that is truly glorious, casual indifference is impossible as it commands an overpowering response of awe and wonder. In 2 Chronicles 5:11, when the glory of the Lord filled the temple, the priests could not even remain standing to fulfill their duties because the presence of God was so glorious, so tremendous in its impact on their hearts and even on their physical bodies. Several times in the book of Isaiah (24:23; 58:8; 59:19; 60:1; 60:19), the word glory is used analogously with the great light of the sun. Think about looking directly into the blazing glare of the sun. Instantly your sensory capacities would be overloaded and you would have to look away or cover your eyes. To experience the Presence and glory of God is to receive a simultaneous surge of pleasure, terror, love and fascination that utterly overwhelms the puny capacity of our perception.

We all long for experiences in which we are overcome with awe. Every human being has an inherent desire to be deeply and profoundly moved at the heart level. Some scientists today are even saying that the longing for awe and transcendence is written into our genetic makeup. The opposite of such is where most people normally find themselves - boredom. The billions upon billions of dollars that Americans spend every year on the entertainment industry, let alone more extreme pursuits of pleasure in both legal and illegal arenas testifies that we all know the answer to the boredom, the lack of feeling and movement within our hearts, the listless apathy that shrouds us, surely lies beyond ourselves. Indeed, it must exceed our own limited stories, emotions and experiences. The ceaseless restlessness and compulsive consumption that we find - forget in our society - in our own lives shouts that we intuitively recognize our need, we comprehend our incompletion apart from something else. Yet, that "something else" seems so elusive and difficult to obtain. I like to classify our condition as terminal boredom - we are so discontent, dull and desperate that our hearts will surely die without an intervening miracle.

Whenever you are reading the Scriptures and you see the word "glorious," let it jump off the page to you, for therein is a clue to the cure of our terminal boredom. When Paul here uses the word "glorious" he is saying that what he speaks of carries the ability to overwhelm our hearts just as when the glory filled the temple and the people could not speak or move because they were so undone, so fascinated with who God is. In the same way that the brightness of the sun overpowers every eye that looks directly its way, every heart that as a way of life sets its gaze toward what Paul speaks of will over time find progressive liberation from the plague of possessing a dead, dull, dry and stagnant heart. There is freedom from boredom and Paul tells us where it is to be found.

We don't have time to fully develop the rest of our phrase today. We will continue it next time, but I will give you a hint as to where we are going. What was so glorious, so striking and remarkable; so moving, liberating and transforming to Paul was the "gospel of the blessed God." There is a story about a king who triumphs over and frees us from His enemies, giving His own life, only to return defeating even death itself. With us at His side, He will cause war to cease to the ends of the earth as He ushers in an era of untold peace and restoration for the lowly and downtrodden of humanity. Yet, the struggles of war and the toils of leadership do not dampen this man's spirit. Rather, He has the biggest, brightest smile you have ever seen, of which no accusation of insincerity could for one moment remotely stand. When He looks into your eyes you are absolutely certain He really, really likes you. This is the "gospel of the blessed God" and what is most glorious and truly breath taking about this is that it is a true story and it is our story. Search it out! Understanding this story as the context of our lives and this happy man as the One in whom we find our identity will cause our hearts to soar like nothing else.

The Kingdom of Freedom  - The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God, Part II

Previously, we discussed the phrase “the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” found in 1 Timothy and centered on the term glorious. We understand that whatever is glorious strikes the heart with lasting impression. It carries weight and significance that marks us and bears a splendor that lifts us out of deadening monotony enabling internal life, movement and vitality. The truly Glorious shatters the chains that encase our souls in deadening listlessness and depending on the depth of glory launches our hearts into an endless upward expanse. Paul is telling us that he holds the key to our freedom from seemingly terminal boredom. He knows where the pinnacle of glory, the height of wonder and the summit of pleasure can be located and experienced. This liberty of heart is to be found in a most unlikely of places. It is a word, that like glorious has such overrun religious use that most of its common meaning has been reduced to cliché.

Today the word “gospel” has several different meanings in various contexts. Sometimes it is “used to denote a particular sort of religious meeting (a ‘gospel rally’), and as a metaphor for utterly reliable information (‘gospel truth’).” [1] In a strict sense it is commonly understood as the “order of salvation.” It is an explanation of how one obtains salvation, a description of the means through which one personally appropriates the redemptive work of Christ. In frequent usage, one “Admits they are a sinner, Believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and gave His life for their sin and Confesses that He is Lord of their life, giving everything to Him.”

Nevertheless, however one understands “the gospel” we must stop and ask what Paul meant when he used the word, what he sought to communicate under the inspiration of the Spirit, rather than assume the connotative meaning we have in our specific cultural and sub-cultural context.

Isaiah 52:7-10 encapsulates the essence of the Hebrew understanding of “gospel” or “good news” (Heb. bashar)  – “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” ⁸The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the LORD to Zion. ⁹Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem. ¹⁰The LORD has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.”

This aligns analogously to the Greek understanding of gospel (Gk. euangellion), which was the announcement of a great military victory by an emperor beginning a new era of peace. When such happened, the emperor would send messengers (evangelists) to proclaim their reign. The passage in Isaiah takes this conception further, seeing the victorious king as none other than God himself. When He comes, He brings restoration to the waste places and comfort to the broken.

Traditional thinking about the Messiah was not that he would save us from our sins, but that He would usher in a new world order. He would launch the “restoration of all things (Rev. 21:5; 2 Cor. 5:17; Acts 3:21).” He would establish a revolutionary age of human existence in which peace, righteousness and the knowledge of God would flood the earth (Hab. 2:14; Isaiah 9:1-7; 11:1-9). Modern Christian thinking tends to think of Messiah only in terms of sin and an abstract destiny in heaven. The Messianic hope centered on the earth, on justice, on a great reversal in which the poor, meek and lowly are exalted while the proud, insolent and oppressing are brought down. This idea is maintained in the New Testament as its consummate vision shows God as one who “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev. 21:4).”

However, He is not just any king. He is God – having supreme ability to carry out His plan with utmost perfection securing justice for the oppressed, the liberation of humanity and even all of creation. However, our text also tells us that He is the blessed God. He is a king with not only supreme ability, but with supreme affection. A critical dimension of this victory announcement (i.e. gospel) is that the God of the victory is a thoroughly happy God – indeed the happiest man in existence. He is not affecting his purpose because He “must” grudge His way through it: He does it out of a glad heart. The accomplishment of this purpose makes Him happy. This is a critical dimension of the gospel and God’s kingship. As John Piper has said, “No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all.”[2] 

It is not merely the freedom from a cage that makes us laugh, dance, soar and sing – it is a happy person on the other side of the cage. Considering the fate of many Jewish people “liberated” by the Russians from the Nazis during World War II illustrates the significance of not only the fact of liberation but who it is that is doing the liberation. Though not nearly as discussed as the holocaust, the Russian treatment of the Jewish people was often worse than the Nazis and led to even more deaths and brutal torture. If the person breaking the lock on our cage does not have a heart of love and gladness, our new condition can potentially be more detrimental than the former. For all who trust in Jesus Christ for their emancipation from sin and death, we can be confident that we are set free not into a brutal dictatorship, but into “the kingdom of the Son of [the Father’s] love,” (Col. 1:13) the Son who is “not ashamed to call us brothers” (Heb. 2:11). All things will be made right in the earth and every tear of humanity will be wiped away by a Son who is deeply loved by His Father and freely opens that relationship to be shared by us, His brothers and sisters. He is not just God; He is the blessed, exceedingly glad God.

God of Pure Happiness – The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God, Part III

1 Timothy 1:11 Part II - God of Pure Happiness

Last time, I began sharing about "the glorious gospel of the Blessed God" (1 Timothy 1:11). I specifically discussed the term "glorious" and how it is used to describe that which creates a dramatic impression and deeply moves the human heart. The truly glorious is that which possesses the ability to liberate us from the terminal boredom that plagues our societies and lives. Our verse tells us that the "gospel of the Blessed God" will do just that.

It is the gospel of the Blessed God in that it speaks of a God who is characterized by blessedness. "Blessed" is a pretty “churchicized” word which to many has vague and unclear meaning. To the average Greek speaker of the day, it would simply communicate the idea "happy." Someone who is blessed is fully happy and is a conduit of happiness to others. Whatever the gospel tells us, it shouts of a God who is richly and deeply happy, a God who has a glad heart. There are many reasons for this happiness, but first He is supremely happy in Himself, in the fellowship of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Forever in eternity past, God has existed as one being, yet three persons, and these persons interacted and communicated in a dynamic exchange of delight and love that is infinitely unknowable. He was wholly cheerful in Himself and entirely satisfied. He had need of nothing.

He did not create us because the Father was lonely with only Jesus and the Holy Spirit. He possessed no ache of soul that needed to be assuaged, no void that needed to be filled, no hint of sadness that yearned for joy. His heart was fully radiant and alive with delight. He did not create us out of a longing for completion, but rather in the freedom of His happiness overflowed in love to create us entirely uncompelled and uncoerced by external forces. He brought humanity into being fully by His own desire, not to meet some emotional need. The self-existent happiness in the heart of God is the core of the gospel - the locus of our good news, the center of that which will fascinate our hearts forever. It is in understanding and experiencing God as the veritable fount of all blessedness, the possessor of unfathomable happiness that we are liberated from terminal boredom. If the God we love and follow is happy, then the Gospel really is good news. As John Piper says, "It is good news that God is gloriously happy. No one would want to spend eternity with an unhappy God. If God is unhappy then the goal of the gospel is not a happy goal, and that means it would be no gospel at all."

God's enjoyment in and of Himself is based, not only, but significantly on beholding glory within the inner-trinitarian relations - between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is nothing about His Son that the Father does not like, or even makes Him less than completely ecstatic. All that the Son delights in and desires, the Father possesses entirely. In 1 Chronicles 29:17 we learn that God has pleasure in uprightness and He is entirely upright (Deut. 32:4). Psalm 45:7 informs us that Jesus takes delight in righteousness and takes no pleasure in wickedness and we know that He is completely righteous (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 3:7). He delights in truth in the innermost part (Psalm 51:6) and He is righteous and true (Revelation 15:3) while John 14:6 tells us that Jesus indeed IS the truth. He delights in steadfast love (Hosea 6:6) and where is love more reliable, firm and secure than in God's own heart? We could go on and on. God is thoroughly and entirely happy and satisfied in the Fellowship of the Trinity without anything else.

From here, we can make many distinct deductions about God's happiness that we will only begin to address here. First, the happiness of God is infinite. If God's delight is in His own glory, then the degree to which He is glorious and the degree to which He perceives His glory is the degree to which He is happy. Since "his greatness is unsearchable" (Psalm 145:3) and "His understanding is beyond measure" (Psalm 147:5), His delight is therefore without measure and without limit. His feelings are in full accordance with the truth and the truth is that His glory is unbounded, therefore His pleasure precisely corresponds to such infinity. For every degree of glory He possesses, He has an equal and commensurate degree of delight. As such, it is impossible to say anything definite and concrete about (in terms of precisely describing) His pleasure since distinct units could never measure it, no language could ever contain it and no mind could ever grasp it. It is entirely indefinable in its unknowable immensity.

God's joy is also uninterrupted. Proverbs 8:30 says, "Then I [Jesus] was beside him, like a master workman [architect, artisan], and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always." Jesus is daily His Father's delight and Jesus always rejoices before His Father. There could never be anything that might prevent God from beholding His own glory in the Fellowship of the Trinity and He will never fail to fully rejoice in what He sees. As He ever beholds the pinnacle of beauty, the summit of perfection, He experiences an uninterrupted corresponding delight. It is without pause, without break and without relent*. It is a completely consistent unbroken chain of sight and delight, of beholding and enjoying. Whenever the Father looks at the Son He is filled with ecstasy. Whenever the Son looks at the Father, joy flows free. Whenever the Father and Son see the Spirit, their hearts move abundantly. This delight never stops. It is a fountain whose waters never fail. A torrent that never relents. A flood that will not give up. It would be impossible to ever catch God without a smile. Every successive thought and action within the Godhead is charged with delight, teeming with joy. Every infinitesimally small division of time in the life of the Trinity is radiant with glad brightness. Could one pinpoint even a moment when this radiance will be diminished? Does God delight in human sin and suffering? Never - but neither can it in any way affect the way the Father feels towards His Son and vice versa. His countenance is always shining like the incessant blaze of the sun. There is never turmoil or unrest in his soul and not for one moment will despair ever grip Him. Every moment, every second, every nanosecond is part of an unhindered flow, an unbending rhythm, a continuous melody of gladness in the heart of our God. Isn't this incredible? Someone this contagiously happy must be irresistible in winning our love.

Pleasures Evermore – The Glorious Gospel of the Blessed God Part IV

This is the forth time in which I am launching from 1 Timothy 1:11 to talk about "the glorious gospel of the Blessed God," that is, the incredible good news that God is exceedingly happy. First, I discussed the term glorious and explained why that which is glorious fascinates and liberates our hearts from terminal boredom and the compulsive pursuit of and addiction to the millions of things in the world that vie for our attention and affection. Then, we honed in on the word "blessed" and discussed the blessedness, that is, the happiness of God in and of Himself. His delight is not only, but largely a rejoicing of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the Fellowship of the Trinity - three in one, a glorious tri-unity of ever-flowing love and delight. When the Father looks at His Son, He sees everything He loves and cannot help but to be exceptionally glad. This pleasure of God exists within Himself, before and apart from any other created thing. The glory of the gospel, the pinnacle of that which will fill our hearts will awe, wonder and fascination is the unspeakably great happiness of our God. Understanding that the God we love and serve is joyful will awaken a corresponding joy within us and cause our hearts to come alive.

Now, I would like to share about the idea that the gladness of God is uncreated. Since the mutual enjoyment of the Fellowship of the Trinity has no beginning we must understand it to be uncreated – as long as God existed (forever in eternity past), His self-existent delight was present. There was never a time when God consciously created this pleasure. His delight and His existence are entirely inseparable. His happiness is simply corollary to His being.

Gladness is part of the being of God – hence it shares in his “uncreated-ness.” Rejoicing has always been in the core of His uncreated essence and has resonated in His uncaused form. His gladness is not a result of His will but is part of the essence and divine nature of God. The entirety of His willing, determining, planning, executing, and creating is an expression of His gladness.

His delight is an intrinsic attribute He possesses apart from and before any involvement in creation. His happiness is irrespective to and eternally preceding the beginning of His creative activity. The totality of His creativity is subsequent to and derivative from His unbounded pleasure. Therefore everything He creates is not necessary to His gladness since He brought them into being when He already was glad.  No relationships, which He freely chooses to participate in can, place a “final limit on His primordial” delight. As Thomas Oden has said, “The blessedness of the divine being...both transcends and embraces all entanglements of history. God’s freely chosen relationships do not fundamentally displace or frustrate this divine blessedness.”[3]

The gladness of God has absolutely no contingency, in that it does not depend on anything to bring it into being or expression. Not all of the traditional “attributes” of God are alike in this regard. God’s attributes can be categorized as either essential or variable. An essential attribute forms the basic and ultimate reality of who He is apart from anything else. These attributes are the substance of God’s inmost constitution. These have always existed and do not change at all. A variable attribute is that which arises from extrinsic (external), secondary or additional causes and forces that are not intrinsic to one’s nature. They all have contingency.

God’s mercy, grace, patience, wrath, jealousy and others all have contingency since they depend on beings external to God and therefore did not have expression in eternity past. For example, God was not merciful in eternity past because there was nothing that had sinned and required mercy. It was only was after He created beings and they transgressed His glory that God’s mercy found expression. His jealousy never found expression because the Trinity never once threatened Their own glory and the pure knowledge of it.

 God's delight within Himself is furthermore unending. Psalm 16:11 tells us that "In His presence is the fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures evermore." In His presence, in the literal presence of God around His throne in heaven, there is an exceeding abundance of joy flowing from His heart. There also are pleasures that in the psalm, David describes as existing evermore. The pleasures of God will continue forevermore. An endless succession of processions flow out of His glad heart. It is impossible to number such a limitless progression of pleasures. Billions times billions of years are just the beginning. They are hardly a breath of the unending delight His heart will forever enjoy; hardly a flash of the joyful light of undying day.

Since his delight is based within Himself, it is as permanent as He is permanent, as enduring as He is enduring, as indestructible as He is indestructible. Its staying power is unfathomable. This well will never run dry. His enthusiasm will never be infinitesimally depleted. His celebration will never flag in intensity. It will never fatigue, never wear out, never draw back, and never relent. The Fellowship of the Trinity's enjoyment of each other will have no conclusion.

Thomas Watson, a preacher from the 17th century, once said, "Their joy lasts forever whose object remains forever." As long as the gaze of God is fixed on the circle of Trinitarian relations, as long as their affections are reciprocally engaged, as long as they are the objects of each other’s delight, this internal euphoria will forever remain strong. The Trinity cannot look around and fail to be pleased. Oh, it will go on and on and on and on in eternal progression, in never-ending succession - wave after wave of unrelenting, unadulterated, unchangeable, unlimited happiness.

Simply put, God will always be happy. He will be exploding with pleasure forever. Nothing will be able to put out this flame. This light will never go out. His happiness will never die. Day will turn to day again and again without the slightest sign of decay in His ever-renewing gladness. The joys of His heart will never fade, never wither, never lessen and never die. It will endure indefinitely, persisting perpetually. He possesses a smile that knows no end. What an incredible destiny that lies ahead of us if we have such a great God who loves us and is profoundly committed to us!