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What is the delight of God’s heart? Or, to use the language of Ephesians, what is His “good pleasure” (1:5, 9)?
Did you know that our God is emotional? A number of times we are told that He was pleased (1 Sam. 12:22; 1 Kings 3:10; Isa. 42:21; Heb. 13:16) or that He was angry (Deut. 1:37; 9:20; 1 Kings 11:9; 2 Kings 17:18). Emotion is a sign of life. A stone does not get angry. If you are living, your face will express emotion, for example, when you come to the meetings.
The Lord Jesus illustrated how emotional the Father is in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. In fact, it is more accurate to call this the parable of the happy father. The son left his father for a distant country, but one day his hunger caused his thoughts to turn homeward, not so much toward his father as toward the riches in his father’s house. “He rose up and came to his own father” (v. 20), prepared to say that he was no longer worthy to be called a son. Before he caught sight of his father, however, “while he was still a long way off, his father saw him.” The father must have been watching for his errant son to return. Verse 20 is the only verse in the Bible that says God ran. He “was moved with compassion, and he ran and fell on his neck and kissed him affectionately.” How emotional! I am sorry to say I have never so embraced any of my three sons. This indicates that I am short of life, not like God. Praise God that He is so emotional toward us all!
The father cut short the son’s confession of unworthiness by telling the slaves to bring forth the robe, the ring, and the sandals for him to wear. Qualified by these outward things, the son was ready to feast on the fattened calf. The father said, “Let us eat and be merry” (v. 23). “And they began to be merry” (v. 24). Here is the merriment of God. Because He is full of life, God can be extremely happy or, by the same token, furiously angry.
Our emotions come not only because we have life but also because we are purposeful. If we have no plans, we have no reason to feel joy or anger; we are indifferent about what happens. But if we have a strong purpose, we will be excited and delighted to see it realized. For the same reason, we will be angry if its fulfillment is frustrated.
Our God is a God of life and a God of purpose. He “predestinated us unto sonship through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). He has made “known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself, unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ” (vv. 9-10). We were “predestinated according to the purpose of the One who works all things according to the counsel of His will” (v. 11).
From these verses we can see that the good pleasure of God is related to such great matters as His will, His purpose (used here in both the verbal and noun forms), a dispensation (or administration, or economy), and His counsel. All these great matters have God’s good pleasure as their source. It was because of His good pleasure that He had a will. According to that will, He made a plan (or purposed something). For this plan He took counsel with Himself. Then His economy emerged for an administration.
We have no way of knowing when this good pleasure began, but since our God is eternal, without beginning or ending, His good pleasure must also be eternal. It lies at the heart of the origin of the universe.
God’s good pleasure was expressed first in the creation of the earth: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? / ...When the morning stars sang together / And all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7). I can find no hint in the Bible of a similar delight on the part of the angels and the morning stars when the heavens were created. Why was there this singing and shouting for joy when the foundations of the earth were laid?
To the scientists the earth is a small planet, not particularly outstanding in relation to the other heavenly bodies. To God, however, the earth is the most pleasant planet. Of course, it is also the one that gives Him the most trouble, but nonetheless His heart is for the earth. Do you love the earth? I surely do not encourage you to love the world, for that belongs to Satan; but the earth is the Lord’s, and we should love it.
There is a common belief among Christians that the earth is a place of suffering, but that some day we shall go to a happy place called heaven. This concept came from Buddhism, which calls this happy place the Western heaven. It was Catholicism that introduced this pagan idea into Christianity.
God loves the earth. All His attention is focused on the earth, not on the heavens.
God’s kingdom will be set up on earth, not on any other planet (Matt. 6:10; Rev. 11:15). The eternal universe will be called the new heaven and the new earth (21:1). God’s eternal kingdom will not be on the moon or on Mars. The earth is where His pleasure lies, even unto eternity.
If you read the first chapter of Genesis a few times, you will notice how often it says, “God saw that it was good” (e.g., vv. 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). As He was restoring the creation those first five days, God found that it was good. However, on the sixth day, the day that man was created, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed, it was very good” (v. 31). If the earth is pleasant to God, man is more pleasant. God was so happy with the man He had created that He said “very good.”
God does not say “very good” lightly. If He says only “good” on the day that I meet Him, I will be satisfied! For Him to say “very good” indicates that He felt emotional. There were plants and trees, fish and birds, beasts and cattle. As God saw man in the midst of the rest of His creation, His love toward man prompted Him to say “very good.” Man is the delight of God’s heart. God loves the earth because it was prepared for this man in whom He delights.
As happened when the foundations of the earth were laid, the heavenly hosts rejoiced also at the incarnation. The angel of the Lord brought “good news of great joy” to the shepherds. “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army, praising God and saying, Glory in the highest places to God, and on earth peace among men of His good pleasure” (Luke 2:9-14).
What made God so pleased with the advent of the “Savior,...who is Christ the Lord” (v. 11)? Before the incarnation the earth was the earth, man was man, and God was God. But at this point God made Himself one with man. Jesus is the mingling of God and man. “‘They shall call His name Emmanuel’ (which is translated, God with us)” (Matt. 1:23).
How regrettable it is that the glorious fact of the incarnation has been corrupted into the Christmas celebration. Christians, for the most part, have only the understanding that a Savior was born to them. That God has been brought into man and made one with man escapes them. When Jesus was living on this earth, He was a wonder. He was the great God mingled with His creature.
The Bible is silent, except for one occasion, concerning the first thirty years of the life of Jesus. He was called a carpenter (Mark 6:3). In those thirty years He did not do any great work. The lesson in this is that God has no interest in our works. If God wants anything done, He speaks, and it is done (Psa. 33:9). He does not need us to work for Him.
Christ began His public ministry by being baptized. On this occasion “the heavens were opened to Him...And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight” (Matt. 3:16-17). The word delight here is from the same root in Greek as good pleasure in Ephesians 1:5 and 9. The Father took pleasure in this One who turned Himself over to John the Baptist to be baptized. By receiving baptism He was symbolically receiving the cross. This is apparent from His questions to the sons of Zebedee much later: “Are you able to drink the cup which I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” (Mark 10:38). By baptism He meant His crucifixion.
In the eyes of God, then, the death of Christ was pleasant. God delights in the crucified Christ. From week to week as we have the Lord’s table, we display this pleasant death to the universe (1 Cor. 11:26).
When Christ was transfigured, “Behold, a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I have found My delight. Hear Him!” (Matt. 17:5). The transfiguration was a foreshadowing of the resurrection. The changing of His form also typified His glorification. He asked the two on the road to Emmaus, “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). We can see from this verse that entering into His glory was the same as His being resurrected. God took pleasure in the resurrection and glorification of His Son.
“It pleased God...to reveal His Son in me” (Gal. 1:15-16). God’s good pleasure is wrapped up with us. There was joy in heaven the day we were saved because the Son of God was then revealed in us. This pleasure of God relates to all the other things that made God happy. If there had been no earth, how could Jesus have lived in Nazareth? Without the creation of man, how could there be Emmanuel, God with us? Without the earth and man, there could not have been the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of the Son of God. It was by His mingling with man that He became the Son of Man, instead of remaining as only the Son of God.
When He came into us, the meaning of the earth, of man, of the incarnation, of the crucifixion, and of the resurrection all became our portion. Where is Christ today? He is universal. He is both God and man. He is in the heavens and on the earth. We are one with Him. At one time we were ordinary people, insignificant sinners. But now there is something wonderful about us. It is hard for us to explain to others what we are, who we are, and even where we are! The Son revealed in us has brought us into the meaning of the earth, of man, and of the incarnated, crucified, and resurrected Lord.
“It is God who operates in you both the willing and the working for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). Our life, the Christian life and the church life, is according to God’s good pleasure. The Christian life is a happy life. Many times the New Testament exhorts us to be happy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (4:4). We should be rejoicing day after day, not in ourselves but in the Lord. We are a people “singing and psalming with [our] heart to the Lord, giving thanks at all times for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to our God and Father (Eph. 5:19-20). Rather than having Thanksgiving Day once a year, we daily give thanks to God for everything, singing hymns to Him and even stirring up others by our sense of excitement.
We Christians should be an emotional people. When we are with others, they should sense something exciting about us. In those years at Elden hall in Los Angeles, our neighbors called us the “hallelujah people.” We were excited enough to be singing and praising the Lord even while we walked on the streets.
What makes us so happy? It is because we have the very God working within us both the willing and the working for His good pleasure. How do we know that we are living a life according to God’s good pleasure? It is because of our sense of happiness. When we are happy, we are registering God’s happiness within us. Our inward joy is an indication that we are living and walking according to His good pleasure.
The day will come when we will all be glorified. We will be with Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. In that day God will be beside Himself with excitement and will call Satan’s attention to us: “Satan, look at My children! My children are glorified!” Surely this thought is hinted at in Romans 8: “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us. For the anxious watching of the creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the sons of God...The creation itself will also be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans together and travails in pain together until now. And not only so, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan in ourselves, eagerly awaiting sonship, the redemption of our body” (vv. 18-19, 21-23).
The recovery is for God to regain His good pleasure. Surely today’s Christianity is no source of joy to Him. We must be a people among whom God may have His good pleasure. It was for this that the earth was created. It was for this that man was created. It was for this that God became incarnated. It was for this that Jesus was crucified and resurrected. This was also the very purpose of our new birth.
We are now living and walking according to the pleasure of God. That pleasure will reach its climax on the day that we are glorified.
