I love Reformed theology (the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism) the way I love a cherished picture of my wife. If I said, “I love that picture,” would you say to me, “But that’s not your wife. That’s a picture. You shouldn’t love a picture. You should love your wife”? If you said that to me, I would say, “I know it’s only a picture. I don’t love the picture instead of her; I love the picture because of her. I know the difference. She is precious in herself. The picture is not. It is precious only because she is.” The picture is precious because it reveals her. It does the best a picture can do.

That’s the way Reformed theology is precious. God is valuable in himself. Theology is not valuable in itself. It is valuable as a picture, a portrait, a window, a telescope. So, I love Reformed theology because I love God. I love Reformed soteriology because I love the sovereign Savior. Reformed theology makes me happy because God makes me happy. I find in Reformed theology a vast Lake Superior in which to paddle around and make thrilling discoveries because Reformed theology is a lake-sized picture of an ocean without bottom and without shores. And that ocean is God.

Few people have helped me go deeper or farther in that ocean than Jonathan Edwards. He wrote,

The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean. (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2:244).

The truths of Reformed theology are shadows; God is the substance, the reality. The beauties of Reformed theology are beams; God is the sun. The depths of Reformed theology are the streams; God is the ocean. The delights of Reformed theology are sweet, but in God’s presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). Reformed theology is beautiful because God is beautiful.

Reformed Theology and the Centrality of God

The portrait of God in Reformed theology is beautiful first because it relentlessly foregrounds the greatness of God, the supremacy of God, the centrality of God, or — the word most often used in Scripture — the glory of God. Geerhardus Vos, a Dutch-American theologian who died in 1949, captured the central theme of Reformed theology when he wrote,

Reformed theology took hold of the Scriptures in their deepest root idea. . . . The root idea which served as the key to unlock the rich treasuries of the Scriptures was the preeminence of God’s glory in the consideration of all that has been created. . . . [Reformed theology] begins with God. God does not exist because of man, but man because of God. This is what is written at the entrance of the temple of Reformed theology. (Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation, 241–42)

When we tried to formulate a mission statement for our church in 1995, which is still on the wall in our sanctuary today, we said, “We exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” That was our effort to give expression to what Reformed theology saw in the Bible — namely, that God is first. God is supreme. God is central.

Or to put it more accurately, God is not just the first reality, the supreme reality, or the central reality; he is Reality. He is the only reality that absolutely is. When God identified himself and gave himself a name in Exodus 3:14, he said, “I am who I am.” He simply and absolutely is. He never came into being. When there was no universe, and no space or time, there was God.

“Reformed theology is beautiful because God is beautiful.”

This is an electrifying truth! God simply is. Explosive. Wild. Untamable. It changes absolutely everything to know this. To foreground this and make it the bedrock, the capstone, and the all-pervasive reality of your theology will shape all thought, all feeling, and all of life and ministry.

Jonathan Edwards captured the supremacy and centrality of God like this:

All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God’s works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God. . . . The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, and the middle, and end [in this affair]. (God’s Passion for His Glory, 242, 247)

That’s a beautiful rendering of the truth and sentiment of the apostle Paul in Romans 11:33–36:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Antidote for Pragmatism

I remember ten years into my pastorate reading this terrible indictment of Christian pastors from Albert Einstein, and resolving, God helping me, never to be guilty of this. Charles Misner wrote,

I do see the design of the universe as essentially a religious question. That is, one should have some kind of respect and awe for the whole business. . . . It’s very magnificent and shouldn’t be taken for granted. In fact, I believe that is why Einstein had so little use for organized religion, although he strikes me as a basically very religious man. He must have looked at what the preachers said about God and felt that they were blaspheming. He had seen much more majesty than they had ever imagined, and they were just not talking about the real thing.

Reformed theology is beautiful because it is a great antidote to a kind of pragmatic, managerial, therapeutic dumbing down of the glory of God and the central reality of the universe and the Bible and life and ministry.

God’s Commitment to His Glory

One of the ways that Reformed theology portrays the glory of God and the centrality of God is by drawing attention not just to the God-centeredness of the Bible, but to the God-centeredness of God. God’s commitment to his own self-exaltation — his God-centeredness — permeates the Bible from cover to cover. And Reformed theology holds the great honor, the great beauty, of reveling in God’s God-centeredness. Listen to this litany of God’s God-centeredness — God’s zeal to see his own glory, his own name, exalted:

• “He predestined us for adoption . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:5–6 my translation). God planned his praise.
• “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19:1). He designed it that way.
• “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified” (Isaiah 49:3). That’s why he chose them.
• “He saved them [at the Red Sea] for his name’s sake, that he might make known his mighty power” (Psalm 106:8).
• “I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations” (Ezekiel 20:14).
• “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name. . . . And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name . . . and the nations will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 36:22–23).
• “For my name’s sake I defer my anger; for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you. . . . For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another” (Isaiah 48:9–11).
• “I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake” (Isaiah 43:25).
• “[Jesus comes] on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed” (2 Thessalonians 1:10).
• Jesus prays, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory” (John 17:24). He’s saying, “I died for this — that my people would see my glory. I will be central and supreme among my people.”

I know that a lot of people, thousands of people, do not at first regard God’s God-centeredness as beautiful and, therefore, they don’t regard Reformed theology as beautiful. As far as they’re concerned, what I just described is megalomania. Before C.S. Lewis was a Christian, he said he read texts like these and they sounded to him “like a vain woman wanting compliments” (Reflections on the Psalms, 109). When Oprah Winfrey was 27, she heard a sermon on God’s jealousy for his name and said, “Something about that didn’t feel right in my spirit because I believe that God is love, and that God is in all things,” and she walked away from biblical Christianity. Brad Pitt grew up in a Southern Baptist church but turned away because he said,

I didn’t understand this idea of a God who says, “You have to acknowledge me. You have to say that I’m the best, and then I’ll give you eternal happiness. If you won’t, then you don’t get it!” It seemed to be about ego. I can’t see God operating from ego, so it made no sense to me.

So, it’s pretty clear that many people do not find God’s God-centeredness — God’s self-exaltation — beautiful and, therefore, turn away from him and from Reformed theology. It’s like George MacDonald (one of C.S. Lewis’s heroes), who said (to my utter dismay so many decades ago), “From all copies of Jonathan Edwards’s portrait of God, however faded by time . . . I turn with loathing” (Creation in Christ, 81). That was like a gut punch to me as a young man, as I was falling in love with the God of Jonathan Edwards and this portrait of him called Reformed theology. I have spent the lion’s share of my thinking in the last fifty years trying to show that baked into the biblical portrait of God’s God-centeredness is a beautiful answer to the accusation of megalomania.

Answering the Objection

The answer goes like this: God’s commitment to making himself supreme and glorious and central is not megalomania, because unlike our self-exaltation, God’s self-exaltation draws attention to what gives us the greatest and longest joy — namely, himself. It doesn’t work that way with us. That’s why we don’t like human beings who exalt themselves. Our self-exaltation draws people away from the one thing that can satisfy their souls: the infinite worth and beauty of God in Christ.

If I say, “Look at me,” I’m your enemy. If God says, “Look at me,” he’s your friend. If you obey me when I say, “Come, drink at the fountain of my resourcefulness,” you will die. If you obey God when he says, “Come, drink at the fountain of my infinite resourcefulness,” you will live. When God exalts himself, he is loving us. He is showing and offering the one thing that can satisfy our souls forever — namely, God. If Psalm 16:11 is true (“In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore”), what should he do to love you?

He should stand on every mountain and in every church, and say, “I am that great. I am that great. I will satisfy.” In our very experience of supreme satisfaction in him, his ultimate purpose is fulfilled — namely, the magnifying of his own all-sufficient, all-satisfying glory, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. This is the answer to the accusation of God’s megalomania: when he offers us himself at the cost of his Son’s life, he is both magnifying his own worth and satisfying our souls forever. There is a name for this, and it is not megalomania. It is love.

Reformed theology is beautiful because it foregrounds the centrality of the glory of God and, therefore, provides the deepest and longest satisfaction to the human soul. But neither C.S. Lewis, nor Brad Pitt, nor Oprah Winfrey, nor that precious prodigal for whom you would lay down your life will ever see this beauty, unless God, by omnipotent sovereign grace, rescues them from the blindness of our spiritual depravity and death, which is the second thing that makes Reformed theology beautiful. The first was that Reformed theology foregrounds the centrality of God. The second is that Reformed theology exalts the sovereignty of God’s grace in saving sinners.

Reformed Theology and Sovereign Grace

Reformed theology takes seriously, with blood-earnest seriousness, the beauty-destroying, hopeless condition of human beings under the wrath of God and on our way to eternal punishment — if God himself doesn’t intervene. “For we have already charged,” Paul said, “that all . . . are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one’” (Romans 3:9–10).

The Bible describes us as spiritually dead and unresponsive to God (Ephesians 2:1), hardened in our hearts against spiritual reality (Ephesians 4:18), utterly unable to change ourselves: “The mind of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7–8 my translation). We are, therefore, according to Romans 6:17, “slaves of sin.” And all of this is a depravity that makes us blind to the glory of Christ — the beauty of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4). To the natural human heart, Christ appears as foolish, or legendary, or mythological, or just boring and irrelevant. Without a miracle, a work of omnipotent grace, we are all hopeless in our alienation from God. No theology takes this miserable condition more seriously than Reformed theology, which is why no other theology can portray salvation by sovereign grace more beautifully.

God’s Will, Not Man’s

Reformed theology not only takes this hopeless condition seriously. It also takes sovereign grace seriously. Oh, the beauty of sovereign grace — the beauty-restoring power of sovereign grace! This means that our rescue from the deadness, blindness, and ugliness of depravity into the life and beauty of salvation is found in God’s sovereign will, not man’s free will. Reformed theology does not believe in the existence of human free will — not if you define it as the power of ultimate self-determination. Left to our so-called “free will,” we die, because by nature we love and choose sin. The freedom to be the master of our own fate means death. If there is any hope for us in our rebellion against God, the hope will be in God’s sovereign, total rescue. Reformed theology does not believe that God contributes a helpful 99 percent and we contribute the decisive 1 percent to our conversion.

When we all get to heaven and lay our crowns before the feet of Jesus, no one is going to say, “Thank you, Jesus, for the 99 percent that you contributed to my conversion, but there is one crown I’m not going to lay down at your feet — namely, the decisive 1 percent that I, by my free, self-determining will, provided; that crown belongs to my final, decisive spiritual discernment.” No one is going to talk like that. Because that’s not the way it happened — not for one person in this room.

Purchased, Called, Kept

Reformed theology bows to the beautiful, humbling, precious reality that the blood of Christ — the blood of the new covenant (Luke 22:20) — purchased a new heart for his bride: “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19). Do you have the new heart that believes in Christ? That’s how it happened. Your new heart was bought with the blood of the covenant (1 Corinthians 6:20).

Then, on the basis of that bloody purchase in history, God actually did it in your life. He took away the blindness, and caused you to see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4–6). He caused you to see the spiritual beauty of Christ crucified as compelling. Christ became your supreme treasure (Matthew 13:44). You experienced the gift of faith (Ephesians 2:5–10). And then he gave you the Holy Spirit as a down payment, a guarantee, a seal (2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:14). And he speaks these words over every one of his blood-bought, believing children: “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing them good . . . with all my heart and all my soul” (Jeremiah 32:40–41).

Are there any more beautiful words for a 78-year-old sinner to hear (or an 18-year-old sinner) than this: “You are mine. I will keep you. You will not make shipwreck of your faith. No one can snatch you out of my hand. I bought you, I called you, I own you, and I will keep you”? Is there anything more firm, more beautiful than that?

Yes. There is one more brushstroke to add to this canvas of beautiful, sovereign salvation from the ugliness of total deadness and blindness and depravity. And that brushstroke makes the firmness of sovereign grace as deep as it can possibly be. I will read it to you from 2 Timothy 1:9: “[God] saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.” You will never love him, worship him, obey him, or enjoy him the way you ought until your heart leaps up with this reality: God gave me saving, sovereign grace in Christ Jesus before the creation of the universe. He chose me. He predestined me to believe, to be his child — “to the praise of the glory of his grace” (Ephesians 1:6 KJV) — before the foundation of the world.

Depraved, chosen, purchased, called, and kept (T.U.L.I.P.). We are saved by sovereign grace, infinitely beautiful sovereign grace. Reformed theology is beautiful because the God of sovereign grace is beautiful. Oh, that this sovereign God would look with such favor on the Acts 29 movement that nothing could move you from holding and heralding this beautiful and beautifying Reformed theology.