The good news that is the Christian gospel includes the good news that the God of the Bible is an eternally and infinitely happy God. That is not to say God is happy with everything that goes on in the universe he created. After, by our sin we disciples of Jesus grieve the heart of God (Ephesians 4:30). The Lord certainly does not enjoy either sin or the effects of sin in the world, like illness, brokenness, and death. What the Lord does delight in, eternally and infinitely, is himself. Within the Godhead, the Father has delighted from all eternity in the Son and the Spirit; the Son has delighted from all eternity in the Father and the Spirit; and the Spirit has delighted from all eternity in the Father and the Son. We catch just a glimpse of this intratrinitarian delight in the baptism and Transfiguration of Jesus, at both of which occasions the Father spoke from heaven and said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17; 17:5). Luke 10:21 also reports that Jesus the Son “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit” over the plan of the Father for his earthly ministry.
Jonathan Edwards, the great early American pastor and writer, summed up this intratrinitarian delight in “An Unpublished Essay on the Trinity” in these words: “It is common when speaking of the Divine happiness to say that God is infinitely happy in the enjoyment of Himself, in perfectly beholding and infinitely loving, and rejoicing in, His own essence and perfection.” Contemporary Christian writer and Pastor John Piper insightfully adds:
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. But, in fact, Jesus invites us to spend eternity with a happy God when he says, “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23). Jesus lived and died that his joy-- God’s joy—might be in us and our joy might be full (John 15:11; 17:13). Therefore the gospel is “the gospel of the glory of the happy God [1 Timothy 1:11].
(John Piper, The Pleasures of God, revised ed. (Sisters, Oreg.: Multnomah, 2006), 26, emphasis in original). The gospel is good news, among many other reasons, because it is the news of how in Jesus Christ, sinful human beings can come into right relationship with the God who is infinitely and eternally happy!
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