Jonathan Edwards helps us comprehend the reality of God’s happiness: “It is of infinite importance … to know what kind of being God is. For he is … the only fountain of our true happiness …”1 Notice, then, several reasons for God’s happiness.
The Reasons for God’s Happiness
God finds happiness in himself
The primary reason for God’s happiness is this: he is God. We find a God in Scripture whose greatest delight is in – himself! So we begin with the doctrine of the Trinity which helps us understand the supreme happiness among the members of the godhead. C.S. Lewis argues, “The words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person then before the world was made, he was not love.”2 Daniel Fuller adds, “God’s love is primarily to Himself … and his infinite delight is in Himself, in the Father and the Son (and the Spirit) delighting in each other … The happiness of the Deity, as all other true happiness, consists in love and society.”3 God has from all eternity been happy in the marvelous fellowship of the Trinity!
God finds happiness in creation
“May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works” (Ps. 104:31, ESV). God rejoices in his creation because it is a reflection of his glory.
God finds happiness in his Son
In his high priestly prayer, Jesus prays, “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. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:24–26, ESV).
God finds happiness in the Son because the Son reflects the glory of the Father (Heb. 1:3). “The infinite happiness of the Father consist in the enjoyment of his Son, writes Jonathan Edwards.4
God finds happiness in his people
Listen how the Old Testament zeroes in on God’s happiness in his people:
For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you (Isaiah 62:5, ESV).
The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing (Zephaniah 3:17, ESV).
God finds happiness in people, not only because he created them but because, like his creation and like his Son, his people are a reflection of his glory!
God finds happiness in the prayers of his people
Proverbs 15:8 says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.”
Let us marvel at our great God who delight to hear the prayers of his people.
- Jonathan Edwards, cited in Randy Alcorn, Happiness (Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, 2015), 111-112. ↩
- C.S. Lewis, cited in Daniel Fuller, The Unity of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 121. ↩
- Daniel Fuller, The Unity of the Bible, 122. ↩
- Jonathan Edwards, cited in John Piper, The Pleasures of God, 31. ↩
Veritas et Lux 
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