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The Enlightened Self-Interest of Satisfying God

 




“Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” Rev. 5:9


Lost on our temporal mortal understanding of salvation is the eternal drive and motivation that preceded it. When God’s precreational intention behind human redemption is brought to the fore of our hearts, it completely changes our perspective on the true motive we should have behind pleasing God as our top priority in life.

The elders around the throne do not declare that our redemption was for our sake. We were not saved just because “we had a need” to be saved, even though that is true. Rather, the elders declare we were purchased “for God.” In other words, we were purchased “for God’s sake” in some way.

In so saying, the elders do not just speak about God’s right of possession. We were not purchased just so God could “own us” for the sake of owning us. How do we know this? We know this because our purchase was determined before time and creation. We were purchased before we were. As Paul has said,    

“Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world… according to the good pleasure of His will.” Eph. 1:4, 5


This means we were purchased before we had a need to be purchased. It means an originating purpose within God Himself had to be satisfied by that eventual purchase, so to be outworked through a creation yet to be spoken into being. He ordained in advance to creationally die for us because He had His own impelling eternal Need to do so. Our salvation is about an eternal precreational Need and Desire within the heart of God seeking out satisfaction unto His own “good pleasure.” That satisfaction would only be realized by the cosmologic scheme to ensue from that primal impulse eventuating in our pleasing redemption to Him.     

Whatever the hidden eternal factors comprising that originating Drive to bring forth a redeemed mankind, it is only for us to grasp that the “for God” in the elders’ explanation of redemption is not centered merely on God’s possessing us or on our need to be saved. It is centered on the fact of the satisfying of divine precreational yearning.

Because this is so, it means everything and anything able to satisfy us now in course of our redeemed existing can only do so because our redeemed existing first brings satisfaction to His eternal yearning. For sure, our redemption was meant to satisfy us. It is of benefit to us. It brings us every blessing possible to us amidst a corrupt world. But it does so only inside the fact that our redemption first satisfies God’s eternal longing for us. Everything able to possibly satisfy us is thus inextricably tied to His being satisfied in it also.

Therefore, if satisfaction in any regard is what we seek through our redemption, then God’s satisfaction in it must and will be our ultimate quest. For our satisfaction entirely depends on His prevenient satisfaction. This is axiomatic, and therefore a matter of enlightened self-interest. There’s no other way for us to be happy apart from our seeing to His originating happiness. Why or how could we then think otherwise?

Yet we do think exactly otherwise as immature carnal babes. We are first saddled with the thought that salvation is all about our need to be saved, nothing more. Then past that, we innately believe that to put God’s satisfaction first for the rest of our lives is somehow detrimental to our own happiness. (We don’t say that aloud, but it is still what we secretly believe.) We live out of mindsets that pit the idea of God’s satisfaction against ours. We are always fighting within over whether the desire to please God will somehow result in deprivation to us, and are therefore woefully slow to consecrate ourselves to Him.

Well, indeed, seeking God’s satisfaction first will result in deprivation to our flesh. But it will not result in deprivation to us. It will only result in our greatest and deepest satisfaction. For redemption can only satisfy the creature in its satisfying of the Creator. By virtue of redemption’s nature, it is not possible for God to receive a satisfaction by our redemption that does not accrue to our satisfaction also.

Our real problem is that we don’t know the difference between our flesh and who we are as redeemed eternal Children, or how to separate out our short-sighted fleshly lusts from our existential eternal yearnings calibrated to His precreational yearning for us. Such separating is what the pain of sanctification is for, and why we must experience the pain of the cross in course of growing into our redemption.

But as we grow in the grace of yielding ourselves to His sanctification, it should be that God’s eternal life replenishes the places of soul emptied out by fleshly crucifixion, and our awareness of compatibility between God’s pleasure and our own should grow. The purpose of this article is only to show us most deeply from eternity why it should grow.

We want to know the real how and why that seeking first the eternal pleasure of God can only accrue to our own redemptive pleasure. The blessings of our redemption literally excite Him! He is eternally satisfied by satisfying us through redemption. That is why we were redeemed—“for God.”

May these few thoughts help further purge and refine us of the false mental divides we still hold in any way that pitch the idea of God’s satisfaction against ours as His adoptively redeemed children. I write especially for those among the mature who still struggle with this at all due to the rigors of our discipleship.

Blessings and love to the eternal priesthood,

 

Chris Anderson

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

12/23

 


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