The Self-Centered God

Glorify

If you seen Jesus you have seen the Father.

Jesus never glorified Himself, but always the Father and He is our example.

There is no problem with praying to God to glorify Himself. God has glorified Himself not through Himself , but through Jesus.

 

I assume you meant to differentiate between the Father and Jesus, not God and Jesus. God glorified Himself through Himself. The reference is: THE OLD TESTAMENT.

 

Father and Son

The Father and Jesus is one so to glorify Jesus is to glorify the Father.

Just as the Father has life to Himself, So He has granted Jesus to be a life to Himself.

They are one with the same goal, just we are to be.

The Holy Spirit makes us all in one

 

Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:20But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For he "has put everything under his feet."[Greek Cephas ] Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

 

I don't know. Does God have to be God centered to be "God centered"? He's God...He knows that. What is the need to be "centered" on that?

If I'm a CEO of a company, have all of the money and power I need, and I know this...there's no reason to be centered on that fact. I can show grace to my employees out of a genuine love and care for them without being centered on myself. The result of grace ultimately leads back to the focus being on me, though.

 

Well, YEAH! What don't you understand about "this gospel of the kingdom going out to all the world, and then shall the end come?"

skypair

 

Pls try to update your sermons with NT scriptures. Of course Israel is OT-speak for God's children. And God is INTIMATELY centered on His children, no?

skypair

 

:laugh: God tries to save everyone but fails. Gotta love it. :laugh:

Skypair: If God can't do something, He is not God.
Skypair: God tries to save everyone but fails.

Ergo, God is not God.

 

Thank you WD
I think maybe we agree.

It is a problem with semantics, it seems to me.

Now to the rest: I think God is neither self-centered nor selfish: But we have a problem when we try to ascribe to God characteristics which we ourselves possess. God has motives and emotions....... but to ascribe to him the same meaning as we have with terms we use for ourselves can be limiting, misleading, and unjust to God.
When God 'repents', it is a term we know and used, but it means so much more and different when God speaks it. When we are jealous or covet, we are motivated by sinful and selfish motives and emotions..... and if allowed to bear fruit will lead to other sins like adultry, stealing, lying, murder etc. But when God is 'jealous' it might be as correct to say He is protective. Of what? Of his reputation, of his word, of his glory, of his holiness, of his Name. Why shouldn't he be... He is the only one with the justice to determine the assaults on his character, and powerful to correct it. It is to his glory and his mercy love and grace that he has patience with us and some of the questions and thoughts which may come into our mind......... :godisgood:

 

We're not thinking so much about what God knows, or what the facts are, but rather what God values most or what's most important to him. Sure, he genuinely loves his creatures, but does he value them more than he does himself?

I'd say he values himself more than he does them because he magnifies his name above all other names. The commandments reflect God's character, and the foundational commandment has to do with God's passion to defend his honor: I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.

This is more than just knowing the fact that he is the most important thing in the universe--it's being passionate to defend that. It's "centering" or focusing on his own glory, and getting "the glory due unto his name."

And what is the value he finds in humankind that separates them from the rest of creation? Is it not that they are in his image? In other words, isn't it that they are like him in some way that give them their significance?

And of course, like your example of the CEO, God's love for his creatures ultimately puts the focus back on him, but is that merely a side effect of his saving work, or is his saving worked designed to do that? I'd say, on the basis of all those places where God's saving or delivering work is said to be so that one or the other of his attributes or his name is magnified or praised or whatever, that it's designed to do that, and that is, in the end, the ultimate purpose of his saving work--to show how loving he is, or to show how gracious he is.

 

Centers

God reveals Himself through what He has made and that is what He centers on.

We as humans wants to make God into what He has cast down.

Satan is self centered not God.

That is how we will recognize the anti-christ because He will be self-centered.

 

Didn't Christ?

 

Apparently SP must have missed this post, so here it is again.

Skypair: If God can't do something, He is not God.
Skypair: God tries to save everyone but fails.

Ergo, God is not God.

 

I don't think so. He gave his life to save us out of love for us (and God sent his son out of his love for us), so yes, he valued us. But the ultimate reason he did what he did was to glorify the Father by accomplishing the mission given him by the Father. I'd have to say that this means that the absolute center point of Christ's motivation for his saving work was serving the Father in order to glorify him. That is, ultimately, being God-centered, or valuing God highest of all.

John 17:1ff

And in turn, on the basis of Christ's work, the Father glorifies the Son. The ultimate end of our salvation, then, is the glorification of the Son by the Father, and the Father by the Son. It all comes back to that. And since, in the end, God's purposes stand, if the ultimate glory for our salvation comes back to God himself, then God purposed things that way. That was his intent. He intended to have the ultimate glory for our salvation come back to himself. We are saved out of God's love for us, but we are saved out of God's love for us as a means to God's own glorification of himself.

That's an argument based mostly on scripture. We could think of it logically, though, too. If God is true, then what he values most has to be what really, truly has the most value. And that would not be us, but God.

 

You'er incorrigible, peterely! :laugh: There are other "wills" at work in this world and, for the time being, permits them to have their own way.

Could He overcome their wills? Sure, if He were a tyrant.

And I defer one comment to Pastor Larry -- God can't make a rock He can't lift nor can He square a circle nor do anything else that is a basic contradiction of truth. So by your definition, He's not God?

skypair

 

Maybe God even thinks the song "You're So Vain" was about Him, ya think? Can you imagine Him now -- "His hat strategically tipped below one eye, His scarf it was apricot. He had one eye in the mirror as He watched Himself go by..."

Gimme a break, folks! God is as much about glorifying us in eternity as we are about glorifying Him! God -- "all in all!" Do you ever contemplate that He "will be glorified in His saints?" 2Thes 1:10 Do you ever consider that He wants us to be glorified so that He can spend eternity with us? Why do you make God out to be Zeus or one of those gods who are fickle and deal with men as chattel and not as sons?

You know -- it's guys like you that make me think the Calvin worshipped some Greek god of "Fate" rather than a personal God of love. Reminds me of Jesus speech to the woman at the well -- "Ye worship ye know not what." He is "Abba, Father" to me. What is He to you?

skypair

 

It's YOUR definition, not mine. I go by the Bible. It is impossible for God to lie. It is also logically impossible for God to sin.

 

Is God Self-centered.

Is God self centered? The scriptuire show He is not through the life of Jesus.

John 15:9"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. 11I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do what I command. 15I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 17This is my command: Love each other.

 

What a horrible tyrant God would be if He saved everyone. I guess we should be glad He'll fail.