“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.” Acts 17.24, 25

He doesn’t need us
One school of Christian thought teaches that, in order for God to be God, He needed something outside Himself to love. Thus, He made the cosmos and in it, people as the crown of creation, the objects above all others of God’s love, and the key to His realizing His own being and purpose.

This view derives from a faulty understanding both of love and of God. It makes human beings the end of all love, the beings most deserving of love – so much so that even God Himself is fulfilled in loving them.

The folly of such a view should be evident. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, God needs neither us nor anything we might offer Him. God is complete within Himself, quite apart from anything else (theologians refer to this as the aseity of God). And this means that God finds full satisfaction and pleasure – perfect and pure – within Himself alone.

In the Godhead, the pleasure of God’s company is the ultimate pleasure, the pleasure above all else to be sought, known, and enjoyed.

What’s so pleasurable?
It might be difficult for us to imagine how God could be perfectly complete and content within Himself alone, apart from external things or experiences to give Him meaning or pleasure. However, a few moments’ reflection might reveal why this must be so.

God, after all, is perfection in all its forms. He is perfect being, truth, beauty, love, goodness, and life. God is also purity in all its forms – of being, knowledge, communion, enjoyment, and pleasure. God exists in three Persons – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Each is wholly God, yet each is different and unique in His attributes and functions. These three enjoy continuous, perfect, uninterrupted, inexhaustible fellowship with and enjoyment of one another. That is, all the members of the Godhead are continually involved with the highest forms and experiences of everything lasting, pure, perfect, and pleasurable.

Thus, God is complete within Himself, even with respect to the pleasure He enjoys. God’s pleasure is complete, and God’s pleasure is perfect and pure. He wants nothing, no pleasure, beyond that which He enjoys in Himself alone.

The pleasure of His own company is sufficient for God. And it is pleasurable to God to invite certain others into the pleasure He enjoys within Himself, chief among them, all those who have made the Kingdom turn.

In God, partaking of His pleasure, we can know the pleasure for which we were created, pleasure perfect and pure, and pleasure that knows no end. We experience this pleasure as glory, which makes seeking and enjoying the glory of God our highest passion within the Kingdom.

Entering the pleasure of the Lord
The Scriptures encourage us to partake of God’s pleasure by seeking Him and gaining entrance to the fellowship He enjoys within Himself. We are encouraged to contemplate the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 27.4), thus to know the highest aesthetic pleasure anyone can ever know. The Scriptures promise that we can know true oneness with the Lord, and share in the perfect and pure intimacy of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Jn. 17.20-23) – an intimacy that is literally out of this world! We are even told we may participate in God and partake of the divine essence (1 Cor. 10.16; 2 Pet. 1.4), and so become enveloped in His eternal presence, redeeming grace, and transforming power.

When entering into the pleasure that God knows in Himself is our highest pleasurable aspiration, all the other pleasures of life – those many and varied gifts and tokens of His love – realize their fullest purpose and peak delight, because enjoying pleasure in and as the pleasure of the Lord gives to every earthly pleasure a perfection and purity that it otherwise must always lack.

Make no mistake: God does not need us to share in His pleasure in order for His pleasure to be complete within Himself alone. But it pleases God, in and of Himself, to invite us into His pleasure, there to discover the true meaning and lasting joy of all pleasures.

The pleasure of His company, friends, is the key to knowing all true and satisfying pleasure.

Next steps: In what ways do you experience the pleasure God has within Himself? How might this become a more consistent part of your daily walk with and work for the Lord? Talk with a pastor or church leader about these questions.

T. M. Moore

This week’s study, Kingdom Pleasure, is the seventh of an eight-part series on The Kingdom Turn, and is available as a free download. T. M. has written two books to complement this eight-part series. You can order The Kingship of Jesus by clicking here, and The Gospel of the Kingdom by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.