Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:37–39)

Erik Reece is Professor of English at the University of Kentucky. Reece grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home, like I did. He rejected his. I loved mine and give thanks for it to this day. He published a book in 2009 titled An American Gospel: On Family, History, and the Kingdom of God. He did a radio interview about his book, and something he said there is why I am speaking to you about the question, Is Jesus an egomaniac?

At one point in the interview, the host of the show pointed Reece to page 28 of his book, where he quotes the words of Jesus that we just read from Matthew 10: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Then, after quoting Jesus, Reece says, “Who is the egomaniac speaking these words?” The radio host asks him, “Would you elaborate on that reaction?”

Reece replies, “Well, it just struck me as, ‘Who is this person speaking two thousand years ago, a complete historical stranger, saying that we should love him (who we are really incapable emotionally of loving) more so than we should love our own fathers and sons?’ It just seemed like an incredibly egomaniacal kind of claim to make.”

So here is Jesus saying: “Love me more than you love anyone in the world. If you don’t, you are not worthy of me.” And Erik Reece says: “That is an egomaniac talking.” The word is pretty self-explanatory. But the dictionary puts egomaniac in plain English: “someone who displays excessive selfishness and self-centeredness.”

Neither New nor Uncommon

Now, Mr. Reece is not the only one who feels that way. If this were an isolated opinion, I wouldn’t bother you with it. But it’s not. Take the young C. S. Lewis, for example. If you haven’t already met him in your reading, you will. He eventually became a brilliant, creative, courageous defender of the Christian faith. He was an English professor at the University of Oxford in England who died about seventy years ago. But he was slow to come to Christ — age 29 before he was converted.

He says in his book Reflections on the Psalms that one of the great obstacles in coming to believe in the God of the Bible was that when he read the Psalms, the constant demand from God to be praised seemed (to him) to picture God as craving “for our worship like a vain woman who wants compliments.” In other words, he stumbled, just like Erik Reece, over the self-exalting commands of God that we praise him above all others and over the self-exalting commands of Jesus that we love him above all others. To C. S. Lewis and Erik Reece, this was sheer egomania.

Then there is Michael Prowse, a writer for a major London newspaper. Here’s what he wrote in one of his columns:

Worship is an aspect of religion that I always found difficult to understand. Suppose we postulate an omnipotent being who, for reasons inscrutable to us, decided to create something other than himself. Why should he . . . expect us to worship him? We didn’t ask to be created. Our lives are often troubled. We know that human tyrants, puffed up with pride, crave adulation and homage. But a morally perfect God would surely have no character defects. So why are all those people on their knees every Sunday?

In other words, it’s a character defect for God to command his creatures to praise him and worship him. And we know what the name of that character defect is: egomania. If Prowse were here, he would say, “Why are all these young people letting themselves be coerced into doing just what this egomaniac wants them to do — namely, admiring him and praising him above everybody else in the universe?”

Then there’s Oprah Winfrey. You can go to YouTube and listen to her explain why she left traditional Christianity. She was describing being in a church service where the preacher was talking about the attributes of God, his omnipotence and omnipresence. Here’s what she said,

Then he said, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God.” I was caught up in the rapture of that moment until he said “jealous.” And something struck me. I was 27 or 28, and I was thinking God is all-powerful, God is omnipresent, God is . . . also jealous? A jealous God is jealous of me? And something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love, and that God is in all things.

Why did she stumble over the jealousy of God? In Exodus 34:14 God says, “You shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” In other words, God demands that you and I and Oprah Winfrey give him all our worship. If we give any of our worship to another, he is jealous, because it belongs to him. And if we don’t repent, he will break forth in wrath. “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (Deuteronomy 4:24). Oprah Winfrey walked away from that truth because God sounded to her like an egomaniac.

One more example. Actor Brad Pitt did an interview with Parade magazine. In it he describes how he stumbled over God’s ego. Pitt was raised a conservative Southern Baptist, like many of you, and like me. At first his faith seemed real. He said,

Religion works. I know there’s comfort there, a crash pad. It’s something to explain the world and tell you there is something bigger than you, and it is going to be all right in the end. It works because it’s comforting. I grew up believing in it, and it worked for me in whatever my little personal high school crisis was, but it didn’t last for me.

Why not? He points to the ego of God:

I didn’t understand this idea of a God who says, “You have to acknowledge me. You have to say that I’m the best, and then I’ll give you eternal happiness. If you won’t, then you don’t get it!” It seemed to be about ego. I can’t see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.

So there it is again. Erik Reece and the early C. S. Lewis and Michael Prowse and Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt — and I dare say thousands of people, maybe some of you — have turned away from the God of the Bible because they thought he was too self-exalting. Too self-centered. Too much the egomaniac.

Christianity’s Very Heart

I heard a wise New Testament scholar, Don Carson, say that as he did evangelistic outreaches on university campuses for decades, the questions from students have changed over the years. Thirty years ago, he said, they tended to revolve around historical problems with Christianity. Did Jesus exist? Did he do miracles? Did he rise from the dead?

Nowadays, he said, there are questions like, How can you worship a God who is so self-exalting and so self-centered as the God of the Bible — a God who is constantly pointing to his own greatness and constantly telling people that they should recognize this greatness and tell him how much you like it? (Which is what worship is.)

I don’t think that what we are seeing here is a small, marginal, or tricky opposition to Christianity. I think what Erik Reece, C. S. Lewis, Michael Prowse, Oprah Winfrey, and Brad Pitt are seeing touches the very center of Christianity.

If you say in response: “I thought Christ crucified for sinners and risen triumphantly was the heart of Christianity?” — you would be right. Paul said, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). The death of Jesus, the Son of God, for sinners is the center.

That’s true. But amazingly it’s the intersection of God’s apparent egomania with the human condition of sin that makes the cross of Christ necessary, and makes it understandable, and reveals the deepest things about God in the death of Christ. So we are not dealing with something small or marginal here, but something central and crucial, when we face this accusation of God’s egomania and Jesus’s egomania.

No Impersonal Matter

I didn’t face this issue until I was about 33 years old — 54 years ago now. I had grown up in a Christian home where I was taught 1 Corinthians 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” So it was clear to me that I should live for the glory of God. That seemed obviously right to me. I never kicked against that.

But no one ever said to me that God lives for the glory of God. Then I read the New England preacher from 250 years ago, Jonathan Edwards, who wrote a short book called The End for Which God Created the World, and everything changed. He simply blew me away with page after page of biblical texts showing God’s pervasive God-centeredness. That God does everything for his glory. That he is unwaveringly committed to uphold and display his glory.

And what became clear to me, and remains clear to this day, is that many Christians think it is good for us to be God-centered, but do not feel at all comfortable with God being God-centered. We should be Christ-exalting, but Christ shouldn’t be Christ-exalting.

“God’s God-centeredness is the test of whether our own God-centeredness is real.”

But what I have found in my own life, and in the life of many others, is that God’s God-centeredness is the test of whether our own God-centeredness is real: Do I rejoice in God’s unwavering commitment to uphold and display his glory — do I rejoice in God’s God-centeredness?

Or am I God-centered only because deep down I believe God is man-centered, so that my supposed God-centeredness is really man-centeredness, even me-centeredness? As long as God is me-centered, then I’ll be God-centered, which is really a way of me being me-centered. Which is what I want. So the crucial question is: Does my opposition to God’s God-centeredness reveal that my supposed God-centeredness is just a cover for wanting myself to be at the center?

Stamped Across Scripture

Reading the Bible with these eyes, I began to see what Erik Reece and C. S. Lewis and Michael Prowse and Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt were seeing. God really is radically devoted to being exalted by his people. God is radically committed to seeing to it that his glory is esteemed as the supreme value of the universe.

Here is a sampling of what I saw:

God creates for his glory: “Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory” (Isaiah 43:6–7).
God elects Israel for his glory: “I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, declares the Lord, that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory” (Jeremiah 13:11).
God saves them from Egypt for his glory: “Our fathers . . . rebelled [against God] by the sea, at the Red Sea. Yet he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:7–8).
God restrains his anger in exile for his glory: “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you . . . For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:9–11).
God sends his Son into the world the first time “that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy” (Romans 15:9).
God sends his Son at the end of the age for his glory: “He comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).

In all of redemptive history, from beginning to ending, God has this one ultimate goal: that his name be glorified. The aim of God in all that he does is ultimately the praise of his glory. All of redemptive history is bookended by this amazing purpose in God the Father and God the Son. And in the middle of that redemptive history stands the greatest event in the history of the world: the death of Jesus Christ.

And just at these points — the beginning, the end, and the middle — the predestining of our salvation at the beginning, the consummation of our salvation at the end, and the purchase of our salvation in the middle — just at these points the problem of God’s apparent egomania finds its amazing solution. So consider a passage of Scripture about each of these points — the beginning (predestination), the end (consummation), and the middle (propitiation).

Beginning: Predestination

God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace. (Ephesians 1:4–6)

Before the foundation of the world, God planned a redemption in Christ with this great and ultimate goal: that we would praise his glory. And the apex of that glory would be the glory of his grace.

“The glory of his grace shines most brightly in your enjoyment of it.”

So from the very beginning, we see that God made his exaltation and the joy of our salvation one piece. You don’t have to choose between God’s glory and your joy, because the apex — the highest point — of your joy is its overflow in praise of God’s grace, and that grace is the apex of his glory. Your joy in his grace and his zeal for the glory of his grace are one. They happen together. The glory of his grace shines most brightly in your enjoyment of it.

C. S. Lewis broke through to the beauty and goodness of God’s self-exaltation (though he stumbled over it at first). Here’s the breakthrough:

My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. (Reflections on the Psalms, 93–95)

Lewis saw that praising the glory of God is the consummation of joy in God.

End: Consummation

Therefore, when God is pursuing — even demanding — our praise, he is pursuing the consummation of our joy. If Jesus wants you to have the greatest and longest happiness, what would he give you for your enjoyment? He would give you the greatest, most beautiful, most admirable, most satisfying reality in the universe — himself. In Jesus Christ, who made that gift possible. That’s what Jesus prayed for, as the greatest thing God could do for us:

“Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24)

That’s not egomania. It’s love. Because nothing will make us happier forever than to be with the greatest Person in the universe, to see his glory, and to be changed to be like him. This is why Psalm 16:11 says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

When all is said and done, and the history of the world is complete, and the new heavens and the new earth are established, and the infinitely joyful age to come is here, the ultimate joy, the ultimate climax of history for our aching hearts, is this: “We will see his glory.” And we will be transformed by it into the kind of people who can enjoy it fully and not be incinerated by it.

When, to paraphrase, Jesus says, “Love me more than you love your mother and father and sons and daughters and your own children and your best beloved on earth” (Matthew 10:37), he is not hurting anyone! He is saying:

If you find your ultimate joy in your most cherished earthly treasure, you will be disappointed in the end, and I will be dishonored. Because I am offering myself to you as the all-satisfying beauty and greatness and wisdom and strength and love of the universe. I am what you were made for. And I am telling you that, if you see this — if you see me as your supreme Treasure — then you don’t have to choose between your satisfaction and my glorification, because in the very act of your being most satisfied in me, I will be most glorified in you. I am not an egomaniac. I am your all-satisfying friend.

But of course, there is a great problem — namely, that we are sinners. Not only do we not want to treasure someone above ourselves; we don’t deserve that privilege. And so how will sinners like us be able to stand in the presence of God and enjoy his greatness as our all-satisfying Treasure?

Which brings us now to the middle of history and the work of Christ on the cross.

Middle: Propitiation

At the center of God’s plan — from beginning to end — stands the mighty cross of Christ. And in it we see the clearest statement of God’s passion for his own glory, precisely and amazingly in the joyful salvation of sinners.

All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:23–26)

So here’s the argument:

1. What did God do?

Romans 3:25: He put Christ “forward as propitiation by his blood.” Christ died to remove the wrath of God.

Romans 8:3: “[God did] what the law could not do . . . he condemned sin in the flesh.”

Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

2. Why did he need to do it this way — by dying on a cross?

Romans 3:25: “This was to show God’s righteousness.”

3. Why did he need to show his righteousness?

Romans 3:25: “. . . because in his divine forbearance [or patience] he had passed over former sins.” Sins like David’s adultery with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband — for which David should be hell!

4. Why does passing over sins call God’s righteousness into question?

Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

To “fall short” means to “lack.” We have exchanged the glory of God in every sin (Romans 1:23). Every time we sin, we say that the glory of God is not the supreme Treasure to be desired above all others. It is not satisfying. It is not to be preferred. Here’s something else I want more.

So when God passes over that, it looks as if he agrees, that he agrees that he is not to be preferred above all. And if he agrees, he is unrighteous. He is wrong. He is acting in contradiction to what is true. His righteousness — his commitment to doing what is right — is his commitment to act in a way that shows his glory is supremely valuable. His righteousness is his commitment to uphold and display the infinite worth of his glory. And that is what the cross does.

By requiring the death of his only Son for my God-belittling sins, God shows how valuable the glory of God is. This is what it cost to vindicate the worth of the glory of God that I had so belittled by preferring other things.

Glorious Giver of Grace

Therefore, from beginning to end — from predestination before creation to the final state of contemplation of the glory of Christ at the end of history — God is passionate for his glory. In the center of that history, the greatest event that ever happened, the death of the Son of God for sinners like us, is the demonstration of God’s righteousness — the demonstration of his unwavering commitment to uphold and display the infinite worth of his glory as the supreme, all-satisfying Treasure of the universe.

“God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego.”

The greatest news in the world is that in the death of Christ, God has made a way for his glory to be exalted and my sins to be forgiven in the very same act. God is ultimately glorified in us, and we are ultimately satisfied in him. And they happen together.

Here is the end of the matter: God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is not the act of a needy ego, but an act of infinite giving. The reason God seeks our praise is not because he won’t be fully God until he gets it, but because we won’t be fully happy until we give it.

This is not arrogance. This is grace. This is not egomania. This is love.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16008271/called-to-holiness-called-to-glory

My first year of playing Pop Warner (or little league) football was an epic failure. We didn’t win a single game. But the next season was shockingly different. We won every game! What made the difference?

Coach Hall. He had coached eleven-to-twelve-year-old boys for years, and no matter how they performed the previous year, he transformed them into winners. I continued to compete in sports long after my time under Coach Hall, but I never forgot his way of making his players shine.

Fast forward to another season in my life when God taught me the inestimable value of good leadership. During my undergraduate days at UCLA and in seminary, I served in a church-based college ministry. Under the leadership of our campus shepherd, a young man with wisdom beyond his years, we planted, watered, evangelized, and discipled, and God gave the increase. The students grew spiritually under his Bible-saturated approach to small-group discipleship. Upon graduation, with their gifts developed and convictions rooted to live for the glory of Christ, they spread all over the United States and the world to shine as disciple-making lights.

Those two seasons of my life ingrained in me a deep conviction that good leadership makes people shine. And that principle applies especially to husbands in marriage.

So, fellow husband, here are four ways to make her shine.

1. Strive for a higher purpose.

What are you striving for as you lead your marriage? To have a house in a nice neighborhood with good conservative schools, two kids (preferably a boy and a girl), and a full-bred dog? If you say you want your family to live for the glory of Christ, yet your life is clearly animated by something else, your wife will know. And if she loves Jesus, she will not delight in wasting your family’s life, just as no one enjoys a season without a single mark in the “W” column.

But striving for your family to be used to the utmost for Christ is the pathway to joy. God remakes believers into his masterpieces “for good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Jesus commissions us to be his witnesses and to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:16–20). Paul commands Christians to live with the focus and determination of Greek athletes giving their all to win (1 Corinthians 9:23–27). These goals demand help, and God gave you a wife to help you. So, husband, strive for the kinds of God-honoring goals that require her help.

Good coaches inspire their players to avoid the snare of playing for personal stats. Likewise, good husbands inspire their wives with their radical commitment to live for Christ, reflected in how they use their income, time, and talents. Strive to so die to self, live for Christ, and serve his church that you need your wife’s help to flourish.

And as you do, give your wife the gift of a good church. Christ uses the corporate church, with all of its gifts, to cause its individual parts to grow into his likeness (Ephesians 4:11–16). You need to find, join, and serve, as a couple, in a Bible-teaching and Bible-living church. Over time, God will see to it that your wife shines.

2. Win her heart (again and again).

Tell her you love her. Don’t be like the man who, after being counseled to tell his wife that he loves her, retorts, “I told her that when we got married. If I changed my mind, I would have told her.”

It’s striking how many times God, who cannot lie and does not change his mind, reassures Abraham by repeating his covenant promises to him. What does God say that’s not final? What does he say that he does not do? So then, why does God promise Abraham in Genesis 12 that he will bless him and bless all the families of the earth through him, then ratify that promise with a covenant ceremony in Genesis 15, and then swear to him in Genesis 22?

“If God cares so much to assure us, how much more should every husband affirm his wife?”

My fellow husbands, if God cares so much to assure us with words of his unwavering commitment, how much more should every husband regularly affirm his wife with words of his covenant love for her? At times, your wife will feel insecure. She will fear your love for her has changed. She will question whether your commitment to your job, your sports team, or your hobby is greater than your commitment to her. So, use your words wisely. Tell her, and tell her often, how you love her.

Don’t flatter. Speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). Be vulnerable. Express your admiration for her gifts and your commitment to her. Let her into your heart and mind. When marriage gets hard (and it will), let her know, publicly and privately, that you will never break your covenant commitment to her. Tongue in cheek, I repeat a line (which I heard from a preacher friend) to my wife: “Girl, if you ever decide to leave me, I’m going with you.”

3. Serve her with Christlike love.

In the Bible, love is an action word. The descriptive words for love in 1 Corinthians 13 are not adjectives in the original language; they are all verbs. We know God loves the world because he gave his only Son. Your wife will know that you love her more than words when you tirelessly sacrifice for her.

Mr. Smith was an amazing husband. We attended the same church, and he and his wife had three kids in the college ministry I led at UCLA. I invited him and his wife to share their wisdom about marriage with our single collegians. One student asked Mrs. Smith, “What makes Mr. Smith such a godly husband?” God seared her response into my consciousness: “I’ve never once felt from him that it was a burden to serve me.”

When God commands men to love their wives, he doesn’t call us to do so according to worldly standards of feelings-driven romance movies. He raises before every Christian husband the model of Christ’s life-giving sacrifice for his church (Ephesians 5:25). Christian husband, love your wife that way, with the love with which Jesus loves you, through the power of the Spirit whom he gave you.

When your flesh and the tempter whisper in your mind, “But she sins. She doesn’t deserve your love anymore,” whisper back, “I sin, and Christ will never stop giving me the free, unearned gift of his love.” To love your wife as Christ loves the church means you embrace your role as a key means Christ uses to sanctify your wife (Ephesians 5:25–28). As Jesus is a friend of sinners, so he means for you to be your wife’s friend when she sins. Be the friend she can always turn to for help, the one she doesn’t have to fear when her performance fails, the person who will draw closer to her the way Christ does as he sanctifies sinners. Let God wash her with the cleansing ministry of his word through you.

4. Strengthen her in weakness.

In marriage, you will see your wife’s weaknesses up close, which means you occupy the perfect position to humbly empower her. Bless her as Christ blesses you with his strength. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings, yet he humbly serves you. Like Mr. Smith, use your strength to support your wife’s interests above your own (Philippians 2:4). Here are two practical suggestions.

First, encourage your wife to use her gifts for the family’s mission. If God has gifted your wife to counsel, bless her with your blessing to attend classes and seminars. If God has gifted her to teach, encourage her to hone and practice her abilities. Use your strength to strengthen her gifts.

For the last ten years, a family from our church has been serving in Haiti at a Creole-speaking training institute for pastors. The wife thought her contribution would be homeschooling their kids and learning Creole. But her husband, a native Haitian, had a greater vision for her ministry. Haiti is bereft of equipping ministries for women, so he encouraged her to teach Scripture in Creole to the women in their village. Nervous about teaching in a language she was still learning, she nevertheless followed his lead. At first, he would sit in the back, filling in words she missed. Then, over time, he would slip out of class with the encouragement, “You can do this.” Now, she shines for her Lord, fluently blessing women who would otherwise not learn the word of God.

Second, see your wife as a helper needing your help. Helpers can have a hard time saying, “No, I can’t take that on.” Just being a wife and mother is a 24-7 job in and of itself. As our children were growing up, my wife served as the CFO, chef, purchaser, tutor for all subjects and all grades, nurse practitioner, Uber driver, cleaning company, biblical counselor, and more. Husbands, think carefully about what it takes to add more ministry to that to-do list, especially in seasons when the demands at home are high. Help her say no when she is overcommitted, and freely serve her when she needs you. Letting your wife burn out doesn’t make her shine, but blessing her with your protective leadership will.

Privileged to Serve

Husband, make your wife shine, and let your marriage shine by openly giving Christ all the glory for your ability to bless your wife. She is your co-heir! Therefore, honor her. Praise God for the till-death-parts-you gift that your wife is. Thank him for how, throughout eternity, her brilliance will outshine the stars.

God has entrusted to you his precious daughter to lead into his service, to love the way he loves you, to serve with his strength, and to embrace with awe that he would give you such a gift. What a glorious privilege! So, be the husband whom God uses to make his wife shine.