God: loving humans or Himself more highly?

Folks have been trying to “elevate” God by talking about how much he loves people, so much so that they actually start talking about Him loving them too much — and instead of yielding God the glory by this, they incidentally wind up with a lot of people thinking, “Wow, I really must be something for God to go to all that trouble just for me; why, there must have been something I did that He likes, if He loves me even more than He loves Himself ...”

It is solidly Scriptural, though, to realize that God does not place value on, or love, anything higher than he values and loves Himself! Author John Piper, especially, has written a lot about how God's salvation plan is not just for our benefit, but for His: He gains glory from it, and that is His “chief end” of existence: to glorify Himself.

“Selfish,” that may sound? Not at all. God expects us to value Him the most highly and He in no way is inconsistent by doing the same: not by reciprocating a “value someone else higher than yourself” ethic but also valuing Himself as most high. And why would He not? After all, He is!

Here I wonder about one's possible assumptions about God's motives. This is a question I often ask to see what people believe about God's reason for existence, and His reasons for creating humans:

Is God selfish?

It's a great question.

Think very carefully before answering — and those of you familiar with John Piper, din'na give away the answer!

I find this position just slightly frustrating, not just because of its substance, but because it's clearly at this point become a personal opinion versus Scripture.

“Logic” tells you that God's love for us is His highest objective of all, rather than His own glory as Scripture says. From whence comes this logic?

Yes, that was the answer, in three words: His own glory. God is a “selfish” God. He does not have a man-shaped hole in His heart that only we can fill. He could not love something, anything, more than He loves Himself — and the other two Persons within the fantastically bewildering Trinity. If He loved humans more than He loves Himself, He would be an idolator!

The other day I resisted posting the link to this article by John Piper. It's well-worth reading, including this excerpt — evidently they think it important enough to place it on the front page of Desiring God Ministries:

Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God's loving us is a means to our glorifying him. “Christ became a servant ... in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:8-9). God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him. We see it again in the words, “In love [God] destined us to adoption ... to the praise of the glory of His grace” (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God's loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: “I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great.” God's love is the ground. His glory is the goal. This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.

I think that people, despite these Scriptures and many like them, have good intentions in mind when they claim — or imply — that God loves humans soooo much, perhaps even more than Himself, that He would do anything for them. They want to glorify God somehow in this, attribute to Him this virtue of “unselfishness” and thus make Him look really, really good.

However, God has already told us the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Yes, here it is, what everyone wants to know, shining effervescently on this very forum and based on the words of Scripture itself: God's glory.

That's that answer — the purpose that should drive our lives. (Even Rick Warren sort-of gets this, in his infamous book's opening chapter: It's not About You.)

But before going further, I would enjoy — while hoping the replies don't stack up too much in the meantime — reading your view on the above material. Again, I do not mean this at all to sound as just a more-vehement rebuttal. I believe your attempted “glorification” of God as unselfish is well-intended.

However, ultimately we do not elevate God by considering Him so self-sacrificing that He would do anything for rebellious humans. We elevate ourselves. The Gospel is no longer centered on God and His glory, it is centered on humans — regardless of the simultaneous beliefs that we're all sinners, we're saying that God loves us more than He loves Himself, meaning that He in effect “has another God before Him.”

For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it [withhold my anger against Israel],
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.

Isaiah 48:11 (ESV, emphasis added)