In what’s been the most-anticipated session of the conference, John Piper presents a session titled Discerning What Pleases God: Himself. His purpose is to argue from the Bible that God is supremely valuable to God, that there’s no more God-centered person in the universe than God. His promise: “If God does an illuminating work in this hour, you will never read your Bible the same again. You’ll see it everywhere.”

He begins with a seven-question discernment test:

A Discernment Test

1.) Who is the most God-centered person in the universe?

Answer: God is the most God-centered person in the universe.

2.) Who is upper-most in God’s affections?

Answer: God is upper-most in His affections.

3.) Is God an idolater?

Answer: No. He has no other God’s before Himself.

4.) What is God’s chief jealousy?

Answer: To be known and admired and trusted and obeyed above all others.

5.) What is the chief end of God?

Answer: To glorify God and enjoy Himself forever.

6.) Do you feel most loved by God because He makes much of you, or because He frees you to make much of Him forever?

Answer: This you must answer for yourself.

7.) Are you God-centered because God is supremely valuable to you? Or because you believe you are supremely valuable to Him?

Answer: This you must answer for yourself.

Most of us are okay with our duty to make much of God, Piper points out, but many people squirm at the idea of God making much of Himself. Below are his arguments from Scripture for why that second truth is just as true as the first:

1.) Predestination

Ephesians 1:11-12 “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory.”

2.) Creation

Isaiah 43:6-7 “I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory.”

3.) Incarnation

Romans 15:8-9 “For I tell you that Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness, in order to confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy.”

4.) Propitiation

Romans 3:23-26 “[F]or all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

Sin is an attitude or action that belittles the glory of God.

5.) Sanctification

Philippians 1:9-11 “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.”

1 Peter 4:11 “[W]hoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.“

6.) Consummation

2 Thessalonians 1:9-10 “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed.”

We don’t understand God seeking His own glory because it seems unloving. But we define love as us being made much of, when love truly is a commitment to plan and labor and suffer, if necessary, enthrall us with what will totally satisfy our souls. If God was to have mock humility and say, “I’m not all that great. I’m not all that ultimate. I’m not all that central,” He would be hateful because He’d be hiding from us the one person who can satisfy us.

God is the one being in the universe in which the most loving act is self-exultation because by doing so He is offering us the one thing that will satisfy our souls forever and ever and ever. Love labors to enthrall us with what is eternally satisfy, namely, God. When you define love that way you see that self-exultation is the meaning of divine love.

ATTENTION: Audio for Piper’s first session is now available here.