In sub-Saharan West Africa, the dry season slowly tightens its deathlike grip until that first thunderstorm. It begins as a speck on the horizon. The breeze stills; the furnace-like heat threatens to consume all in its oven. Dark clouds pile upon each other in the distance, as if in a mad race to block out the sun.

Then comes the wind: at first a whisper, but before long a mighty force that lifts months of dust and sand, whirling them into miniature tornadoes. In our early years, my siblings and I would run out and try to fight the strength of these winds. Taking our stand on the old garden mounds of last season’s planting, we would test our young legs against the power of the storm (always an exercise in futility).

Then the sky turns black. The rolling clouds have conquered the sun, declaring victory with lightning flashes and mighty cracks of thunder, a barrage of heavenly artillery. At last, finally, comes the rain — a marching wall of gray obscuring everything it passes, driven by the relentless wind. We fled for home as it approached and then flooded our street, turning the hard-packed earth into a sudden river.

I’ve always been awed by the power of storms. Their sheer might delights and overwhelms me. They produce in me a certain diminishing effect, reminding me that though God gave humans dominion over the earth, I am still made from dust. It’s fitting to flee.

But God designed thunderstorms to teach us about more than our smallness. In their unleashed fury, they are emblems of the wrath of God poured out in judgment. The short book of Nahum, tucked in the middle of the Minor Prophets, is one such place where God teaches us to rightly read events in nature like thunderstorms.

‘Woe to the Bloody City’

Nahum’s brief oracle, a mere 47 verses in our English translations, thunders with God’s righteous judgment against Nineveh, one of the great cities of the ancient Assyrian empire. We usually associate Nineveh with the ministry of Jonah. Jonah knew God to be “a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster” (Jonah 4:2). Thus, he preached to Israel’s enemies with reluctance, knowing that his prophetic word of judgment might just lead to Nineveh’s preservation.

We know the story. Nineveh repented, and God, in keeping with his character, relented from unleashing disaster upon them (Jonah 3:6–10). These events took place during the reign of Jeroboam II of Israel (2 Kings 14:25), which lasted from about 793 to 753 BC (Dictionary of the Old Testament: Prophets, 456).

It may come as a surprise, then, that Nahum’s prophecy a century or so later contains only words of judgment against Nineveh, with no opportunity to repent. Prophesying to Judah around 650 BC after the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 to Assyria (Dictionary, 560), Nahum declared that Assyria would be washed away “with an overflowing flood.” God would “make a complete end of the adversaries” of his people (Nahum 1:8).

The once-repentant Nineveh had spurned the mercy of God and directed its armies against God’s chosen people, leading the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity and even laying siege to Jerusalem itself during the reign of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:17–25).

God directed his fury against this “bloody city, all full of lies and plunder” (Nahum 3:1), declaring that the name of Assyria and Nineveh would no longer be perpetuated among the nations of the earth (Nahum 1:14). And through the poetic tongue of Nahum, he captured his fury with the image of a storm.

Chariots of Wrath

Nahum’s oracle begins with a threefold declaration that Yahweh takes vengeance (nōqêm) on his enemies. Similar to how the threefold “holy, holy, holy” in Isaiah 6:3 emphasizes the completeness of God’s holiness, Nahum’s repeated nōqêm reveals the fullness of God’s wrath. The fierce clouds seethe in the distance, and none can stay their path. Though “slow to anger” — a slowness Nineveh had experienced in the past — “the Lord will by no means clear the guilty.”

His way is in whirlwind and storm,and the clouds are the dust of his feet. (Nahum 1:3)

Nahum’s opening salvo (1:1–8), like the West African rainclouds piling upon each other, heaps image after image to describe the poured-out wrath of God. Before his rage, bodies of water dry up, vegetation withers, mountains quake, the earth heaves, and rocks split. His wrath is “like fire” (1:6), like “an overflowing flood” (1:8).

Who can stand before his indignation?Who can endure the heat of his anger? (1:6)

Anyone who has been caught in the elements by a powerful storm can appreciate, in part, the terror and doom Nahum intends to convey. Through such storms, God means for us to understand in a small way what it feels like to face his judgment with no hope. The hymnist appropriately captured this sense when he penned,

His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,And dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

Strong storms that flash and rage, that whip dust into frenzies and hurl rain in torrents, that envelop the earth in darkness, declare the glory of his just judgment on the wicked, teaching us not to treat his wrath lightly. They symbolize the frightening words uttered by God against unrepentant sinners: “Behold, I am against you” (Nahum 2:13; 3:5).

Named No More

In 612 BC, about forty years after Nahum spoke his oracle against Nineveh, the city was overrun and destroyed by the Babylonians. Though a few Assyrians escaped and tried to reestablish themselves, they too were wiped out in 609 BC. The Assyrians disappeared (ESV Study Bible, 1710). In fact, a mere three hundred years later, a whole army passed over the place where Nineveh had been without even recognizing the location of the once-famous city (The Books of Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, 72).

The Lord has given commandment about you:“No more shall your name be perpetuated. . . .I will make your grave, for you are vile.” (Nahum 1:14)

Nahum’s prophecy was no hyperbolic description of God’s vengeance. Every word came to pass. Nineveh took its stand against the awesome storm of God’s wrath — and perished.

Nineveh’s fate reveals the holiness of God. He will not, cannot, allow sin to remain in his presence. Every unrepentant sinner stands, as it were, on the garden mound of ancient Nineveh’s ruins, shaking a fist in the face of God and daring him to unleash the winds of wrath. God does not change. The same words he uttered against Nineveh he will speak again in judgment. “Behold, I am against you.” “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). No sinner will stand in the assembly of the righteous people of God (Psalm 1:5).

‘Stronghold in the Day of Trouble’

Though it may seem like a misnomer for one tasked with prophesying judgment, Nahum’s name means “comfort.” But where shall one find comfort in his oracle?

Though Nahum spoke a word against Nineveh, his audience was the people of God, those remaining in the southern kingdom of Judah. Twice in the opening chapter, the Lord speaks directly to his people (1:12–13, 15), giving them reason to hope as he lifts the yoke of oppression Assyria had laid upon them. This wicked nation will not pass through Judah again to bring terror. As his word of wrath displays his holy character, so too does this word of comfort. The punishment of God’s enemies displays, at the same time, his covenant-keeping love for his people.

Tucked away in Nahum’s opening description of divine wrath stands a little verse, a place of shelter from the storm:

The Lord is good,a stronghold in the day of trouble;he knows those who take refuge in him. (Nahum 1:7)

This knowing refers to more than God’s knowledge about his people. It suggests an intimate knowledge that means salvation, a setting of love upon his own. This is the same knowing described by the Good Shepherd, who knows his own sheep and preserves them to the end (John 10:14, 28–29). This knowing serves as a firm foundation for hope (2 Timothy 2:19).

Those who are known by God have a shelter to which they can flee: not the pitiful garden mound, but the secure home, with windows that fasten tight, solid walls, and a strong roof. Though the storm rages outside, in this stronghold peace reigns.

Flee for Shelter

God has always provided a shelter from the storm. To Noah and his family he gave an ark, a fortress to carry them through the cleansing flood of wrath. To Moses he gave a basket of reeds and pitch, a floating bassinet to guard the future leader from the storm of Pharaoh’s decree. To Jonah he gave the belly of a fish, a place of repentance and preservation. To the disciples, he gave the God-man, whose words made a haven for a wave-tossed boat. To us he gives the risen and exalted Christ, and he promises that all who take refuge in the shadow of his wings will find a shelter from the storm.

Flee, then, to this stronghold. Learn to read the weather and seek refuge in Christ. Tucked into his everlasting arms, we experience no raging storms of wrath. While his glory “thunders” and his voice “flashes forth flames of fire” (Psalm 29:3, 7), we ascribe him glory, and we rest secure in his peace and under his eternal reign.

The road to the pastorate is filled with men who had hoped to arrive a long time ago. Many years have passed since they first felt the seed of a desire to shepherd Christ’s church. But for any number of reasons — life circumstances, personal immaturity, the need for training — no church has called them as shepherd. Not yet.

I think of one friend whose aspiration has quietly burned for over a decade. I think of another man, barely out of his teens, who recently started pursuing the pastorate and likely has years ahead of him. I think of my former self, traveling that road through my entire twenties. Such men may feel ambitions as big as Paul’s — but then remember, with a sigh, that they are not even a Timothy yet.

What can a man do on that road, especially when he can’t see the end of it? Well, quite a lot. Bobby Jamieson offers a couple of dozen ideas in his helpful book The Path to Being a Pastor. My colleague Marshall Segal boils those down to seven worthy ambitions. But lately my mind has been focused on a passage from Paul to Timothy. Timothy was already a pastor at the time of Paul’s writing, but he was a young pastor, not far removed from the road of aspiring men. And Paul’s counsel applies wonderfully to those preparing to join him.

“Do we enjoy Jesus before we preach him, and preach him because we enjoy him?”

We might capture the heart of Paul’s burden in 1 Timothy 4:6–16 with the words of verse 15: “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress.” Let them see your progress, Timothy. Don’t grow discouraged. Don’t remain stuck. Instead, by God’s grace, gain ground. Hone your character. Develop your competency. Become more godly, more fruitful, more zealous, more skilled. Make progress — the kind of progress that others can see.

To that end, consider a two-part plan: Train privately. Practice publicly.

Train Privately

Most of Paul’s commands in 1 Timothy 4:6–16 focus on Timothy’s public ministry. “Command and teach” (verse 11); “set the believers an example” (verse 12); “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (verse 13); and so on. At the same time, Paul knew just how easily public ministry could outpace private piety. He knew how tempting it could be to “keep a close watch on . . . the teaching” without keeping a close watch “on yourself” (verse 16).

It is frightfully possible to preach in public what you disobey in private. It is sadly common for men, even pastors-in-training, to lose delight in God’s word, and neglect the prayer closet. So, behind, before, and alongside Timothy’s public ministry, Paul says, “Train yourself for godliness” (verse 7). Explain publicly what you have experienced privately. Let all your teaching be plucked from the orchard of your soul. Remember that all God-pleasing progress in public flows from God-centered progress in private.

Enjoy His Words

“Train yourself for godliness”: the command takes us into an athletic spirituality, a pursuit of Christ that doesn’t mind the uphill climb, that relishes some sweat, that is willing to beat disobedient feelings into submission. Give yourself, Timothy, to the long, gradual, difficult, joyful process of becoming more like Jesus — or what some Puritans called “the great business of godliness” (The Genius of Puritanism, 12).

Such training may take many forms, but Paul leaves no doubt about the central content of Timothy’s regimen: he would progress in godliness by “being trained in the words of the faith” (1 Timothy 4:6). Reject “deceitful spirits and teachings of demons” (verse 1); sidestep “irreverent, silly myths” (verse 7). Instead, give yourself to God’s word.

If there is a secret to public progress, surely it lies in private soul-dealings with the God who speaks. I for one have felt chastened lately by Andrew Bonar’s description of the young Robert Murray M’Cheyne, who would often ride outside town “to enjoy an hour’s perfect solitude; for he felt meditation and prayer to be the very sinews of his work” (Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, 56). Meditation and prayer are the sinews of ministry. Without them, we may have the muscle of charisma and the bones of orthodoxy, but the body hangs loose and weak; we stagger rather than run.

In one way or another, the depth of our private dealings with God will become evident in public. Our faces will shine like Moses’s — or they won’t. Our spontaneous speech and conduct will “set . . . an example” (verse 12) — or it won’t. We will hand others the ripe fruit of our own meditations — or we will deal in plastic apples and pears.

As aspiring leaders, we know God’s word forms the soul and substance of our public ministry. But over time, has our private life come to betray that conviction? Do we still read God’s word with anything like athletic obsession? Do we enjoy Jesus before we preach him, and preach him because we enjoy him? Do we treat meditation and prayer as the indispensable sinews of ministry?

Examine Your Soul

As Timothy devotes himself to “the words of the faith,” Paul calls him to turn his attention inward as well. “Keep a close watch on yourself,” he writes (1 Timothy 4:16). Timothy was an overseer of souls, but the first soul he needed to oversee was his own.

“The gifts of God are not only given, but cultivated; not only bestowed, but honed.”

Paul had spoken such words to pastors before. “Pay careful attention to yourselves,” he told the elders in Ephesus (Acts 20:28). And he had good reason to warn: “From among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things” (Acts 20:30). Pastor or not, if a man does not keep a close watch on himself, he will lose himself. He will not only fail to progress; he will regress, sometimes beyond hope. And Timothy was no exception.

So, Paul says, keep a close watch. Regularly tour the city of your heart to see if any enemies have breached the gate and now threaten the throne. Stand sentinel in your soul; know the weak spots on the walls, and study the enemies you are likely to face. Pray and then patiently review in God’s presence your speech, conduct, love, faith, purity (1 Timothy 4:12). As you read God’s word, ask him to search you and save you, to reveal you and rescue you (Psalm 139:23–24). “Lord, discipline me, correct me, expose me, confront me — and whatever it takes, keep me from destroying myself.”

True, we do not make much progress in godliness by looking inward. But we may notice the enemies that keep us from progress — enemies that, unmortified, would ruin all our progress up till now.

Practice Publicly

If private progress relates mostly to our character, public progress relates mostly to our competence. And in our passage, Paul cares about Timothy’s competence a lot. When he writes, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:15), “these things” refers mainly to “the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching” (verse 13). Timothy was already “able to teach” (1 Timothy 3:2), but Paul wanted him to become more able, to increasingly look like “a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

Paul recognized in Timothy a pastoral gift (1 Timothy 4:14). But Timothy’s gift was not a static endowment: he could “neglect the gift” he had, or he could “practice” and improve it (verses 14–15). For the gifts of God are not only given, but cultivated; not only bestowed, but honed. And here men like us find hope. However gifted we may feel (or not), we are not at the mercy of our present attainments. We can handle God’s word with more care. We can apply it with more power. We can develop a greater readiness “in season and out of season” (2 Timothy 4:2). That is, as long as we practice.

Embrace Unspectacular Opportunities

Few men receive a ready-made gift of teaching, a gift with no assembly required. God’s kingdom has its occasional Spurgeons, of course, who preached better as a teenager than I ever will as an adult. But most of us become proficient only through repeated practice over years, and then most of us progress further only through more practice still. And if we’re going to practice as much as we ought — as much as Paul’s “immerse yourself” suggests (1 Timothy 4:15) — then we likely will need to embrace opportunities that seem pretty unspectacular.

We might, for example, lead a group of guys in middle-school ministry. We might pour more thought into family devotions. We might find a lonely, suffering saint, listen to his heart woes, and practice the complex art of pastoral counseling. We might gather a few men committed to exhorting and encouraging each other. We might spend time with the sermon passage before we hear it preached, developing our own ideas and applications, drafting our own outline. We might snatch up every realistic opportunity to open the Bible and say something about it.

Perhaps we feel tempted to despise these small, unspectacular opportunities. But small, unspectacular opportunities form, for most of us, the indispensable path toward progress. There is no progress without practice — and practice sometimes feels utterly ordinary.

Fail Well

Those who practice enough, of course, eventually discover an uncomfortable truth: with practice comes not only progress, but failure. Open your mouth often enough, and you’ll say something foolish. Exhort others enough, and you’ll damage a bruised reed. Counsel enough, and you’ll speak too soon or too late. Preach enough, and you’ll leave the pulpit disheartened.

In the aftermath of such moments, we may feel like practicing a little less; rather than immersing ourselves in ministry or devoting ourselves to teaching (1 Timothy 4:13, 15), we may feel like retreating to a safer place. We may want to dig a hole and bury our talents in the dirt of our failures.

Yet precisely in such moments, we need to hear Paul’s word to Timothy in verse 14: “Do not neglect the gift you have.” Yes, your effort ended in embarrassment, but do not neglect the gift you have. Yes, taking another public risk feels daunting, but do not neglect the gift you have. Yes, to fail again like that would feel shameful, but do not neglect the gift you have. In some cases, of course, repeated failure may suggest that we don’t actually have the gift we thought we did. In so many cases, however, the failure was just part of the practice.

So, hold your failures in open hands, and learn all you can from them. Remember “the words of the faith” that have been your private strength, your secret delight. Take courage that if “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15), he can certainly restore and use failures. And then get back in the pulpit, back before the small group, back on the streets, back wherever your ministry lies, and use the gift that God has given you.

And in time, all will see your progress.

What is the good that makes the gospel good news?

If the present, and especially the future, that the Christian gospel offers is undesirable, unimpressive, boring, bland, and unenjoyable, then how good is the good news? Is it only good in contrast with the active misery and punishments of hell? Or, does the good news positively reflect, and welcome us into, the very heart of the God who is Goodness himself?

At bottom, the good news that stands behind and beneath the Good News is what we might call “the God-centeredness of God.” Our Creator’s “supreme regard to himself” makes possible, solidifies, and guarantees his loving and gracious posture toward sinful creatures who are united to his Son by faith. And perhaps no other good news upholds the very foundation of good in the Good News itself like answering the question, What makes God happy?

Why Did God Create the World?

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), remembered as “America’s Theologian,” authored books, essays, and sermons that have been read for generations, and freshly discovered in recent decades. But given its topic and its quality, Edward’s posthumously published Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World has yet to receive its due. As Stephen Holmes observes, and laments, “there is so little attention paid to this Dissertation in the secondary literature” (God of Grace and God of Glory, 45, note 45), and yet it addresses many of the same challenges we still face today.

Biographer George Marsden recognizes the dissertation as a “counterattack against some of the most prevalent assumptions of modern thought” (Edwards: A Life, 459). Edwards is “attempting to undermine the foundations of what had gone wrong in modern thought” (459) including its “fashionable scheme of divinity,” which still remain in the air we breathe.

In the final paragraph, Edwards mentions his concerns with “our modern free-thinkers who do not like the talk about satisfying justice with an infinite punishment” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 251). We still know the type. And with it typically comes a focus on the love or grace of God that is implicitly, if not explicitly, man-centered. In Edwards’s day, moral philosophers and writers — like Alexander Pope, whose Essay on Man was “the best-known popular expression” — were “increasingly speaking of the deity as a benevolent governor whose ultimate interest must be to maximize human happiness” (Marsden, 460). Edwards countered with the clear emphasis of the Christian Scriptures from beginning to end: the glory of God.

His response was not to reduce or minimize the love of God toward his people — including God’s grace and forgiveness and mercy and goodness — but to locate it properly in the full sweep of Scripture. And in doing so, we find that our God shows us a divine love and favor for his church that does not diminish but grows in the soil of God-centeredness — good news beneath the Good News, guarding the true gospel from the would-be poison of modern man-centeredness.

What Does Reason Teach?

The dissertation contains a brief introduction, to clarify terms, and only two chapters. Chapter 1 considers what human reason alone teaches; Chapter 2, God’s revelation in Scripture.

Reason alone, Edwards concedes, is not enough to make his case, but it can answer objections. Chapter 1 culminates with four objections and his responses — with the fourth being the one he will mention again at the end of the dissertation, and expound upon further in his companion work on The Nature of True Virtue.

What is this fourth objection? It is one that many still feel and voice today: that God’s supreme regard to himself takes away from (Edwards says “derogates”) his goodness and love toward his creatures. If God, goes the objection, “makes himself his end, and not the creatures, then what good he does, he does for himself, and not for them; for his sake, and not theirs.”

Here we are right at the heart of what Edwards means to make plain in this dissertation and in True Virtue: that God’s supreme regard to himself and his genuine love toward his creatures “are not properly set in opposition . . . these things, instead of appearing entirely distinct, are implied one in the other” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 176). Chapter 1 ends with Edwards acknowledging that revelation in Scripture, to which he now turns in Chapter 2, “is the surest guide” and yet “the voice of reason” can be valuable in showing “that what the word of God says of the matter is not unreasonable.”

What Does Scripture Teach?

In the second and longer chapter, Edwards turns to what Scripture teaches concerning God’s ultimate ends in creating the world. Note an important distinction here: that God has one supreme or chief end (singular) in creating the world does not mean that he does not have other ends (plural). Indeed, as Edwards will show from Scripture, God has multiple ultimate or last ends which he finds pleasing in themselves, including loving his people.

Edwards begins (Section 1) with the Alpha and Omega, first and last texts that show God making himself his own last end in creation. Section 2, then, takes a step back to lay out twelve positions for a right understanding of Scripture on this theme. Here he introduces key interpretive principles he will return to in dealing with particular texts in Section 3. For instance, God’s ultimate end in providence also would be an ultimate end in creation. So too would be God’s revealed end in the moral world (ethics), in his providential use of the world, in his main works of providence toward the moral world, in the goodness of moral agents, in what he commands of moral agents, in the goodness of the moral world, in what is sought by exemplary saints, in what is longed for in the hearts of saints in their best frames of mind, and what was sought by Christ. Section 3 then demonstrates that in these many ways God’s ultimate aim is his glory, or importantly, his name.

Section 4 turns to “places of Scripture that lead us to suppose that God created the world for his name, to make his perfections known; and that he made it for his praise.” Now Edwards expands the field of relevant texts to include not only God’s name but also his praise, as well as his perfections, greatness, and excellency which are spoken of like his glory.

Love as End and Means

Section 5 is the heart of the dissertation in addressing the modern question we still hear today: Does God’s supreme regard to himself undermine, and even ruin, his love toward his creatures? Edwards answers with texts of Scripture in which God’s goodness toward the creature (that is, his love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation) is “one thing which God had in view as an ultimate end of the creation of the world.” The ten parts of Section 5 include, first and foremost, that God is pleased, in itself, to do his creatures good — which, he says, “is not merely subordinately agreeable, and esteemed valuable on account of its relation to a further end, as it is in executing justice in punishing the sins of men; but what God is inclined to on its own account and what he delights in simply and ultimately” (220–221). In other words, God genuinely loves his people. He is pleased in itself, not simply in service of his glory, to love them. He truly delights in his people “simply and ultimately.” And he loves them enough not to leave his love unrelated to his great “further end” but to love them both as end and means.

“Does God’s supreme regard to himself undermine, and even ruin, his love toward his creatures?”

So too (Part 2) God is pleased in the work of redemption itself as an ultimate end. Here Edwards visits the love of God, and love of Christ, texts we rehearse often in the modern world: John 3:16; 1 John 4:9–10; Ephesians 2:4; as well as Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:25; John 17:19. Edwards even presents Christ’s sacrificial work of “labors and extreme agonies” as satisfying in itself (Isaiah 53:10–11), “not merely as a means, but as what he rejoices and is satisfied in, most directly and properly” (223).

Third, forgiveness and salvation are for the sake of God’s goodness or mercy, meaning for his name. Fourth and fifth, Christ governs the moral universe and the whole creation for the good of his people. Sixth, God judges the wicked for the happiness of his people. Seventh, speaking again of the church (“them who are to be the eternal subjects of his goodness”) “the whole of creation, in all its parts is spoken of as THEIRS” (227). Eighth and ninth, all God’s works are good and merciful to his people, and have been preparing a kingdom and glory for them. Finally (Part 10), related to Christian ethics and the companion dissertation to come on true virtue, the good of men is an ultimate end of moral virtue.

That One Phrase

In Section 6, Edwards draws together the strands of what is meant in Scripture by the glory and name of God. To this point, he has been considering what Scripture speaks of as ultimate ends in creation; now he moves to ask what they are. First, glory of God can (1) refer to what is internal (excellency, dignity, worthiness; great possessions, or fullness of good), or (2) the (external) exhibition or communication of internal glory; or (3) the view or knowledge of God’s excellency (that is, in the sight of the beholder); or (4) signify or imply praise. “Name of God” often indicates his glory, sometimes his praise, and especially is used for the external manifestation of God’s goodness.

In the final Section (7), Edwards argues that the ultimate end of the creation of the world is one (not many), and that one end is best captured as the glory of God. “All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works, is included in that one phrase, the glory of God” — that is, the “true external expression of God’s internal glory and fullness.”

Given how many conceptual threads Edwards has drawn together (glory, name, praise, goodness, grace, mercy, love, Christ, church), we might ask why Scripture contains so many different expressions for one supreme and ultimate end. “It is confessed,” he writes, “that there is an obscurity which is unavoidable, through the imperfection of language to express things of so sublime a nature. And therefore the thing may possibly be better understood by using a variety of expressions” (242). Yet these do amount to “one thing, in a variety of views and relations” (243).

This one thing, to express it afresh yet again, is “God’s internal glory or fullness existing in its emanation.”

Good News: God Loves Himself

Why marshal such energy and focus, 250 years ago or today, to argue something so obvious to most faithful readers of Scripture? Surely, many would say with Holmes, “Scripture is constantly clear that God makes Himself His end” (50).

“Our God seeks our good in seeking his glory — and we seek his glory in seeking our full and final good in him.”

This issue is a watershed, not just then but now, and not just between the contrasting theological instincts of Arminians and Calvinists, but reveals how seriously we take the Scriptures — and how functional they are in our theology and lives. Edwards serves the church in his day, and ours, with his intellect, keen observations, insights, and logic, but most of all with his knowledge of the Scriptures and by compiling into one place, in such short space, the overwhelming testimony of God himself as to what makes him happy and why he does all that he does.

It is profoundly good news that the true God — the God who is and who loves his people — does have “supreme regard to himself” and that his own God-centeredness is not in opposition with his love and mercy, but the very foundation beneath and force behind it. Such a God, who really does make much of us through his goodness and grace, is also such a God who can be our supreme joy both now and forever.

And in an often-overlooked insight in Edwards’s dissertation — which he himself does not nearly make as much of as he could — our joy in such a God not only delights and satisfies our souls, but also glorifies him. In fact, as John Piper, captures it, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Our God seeks our good in seeking his glory — and we seek his glory in seeking our full and final good in him.