Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God

by Rankin Wilbourne

the center of Jonathan Edwards’s theology is the idea that God’s own glory is the end for which God created the world and all things. Edwards says, “The beams of glory come from God, and 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, middle and end in this affair.” 36 Edwards biographer George Marsden says, “That last sentence encapsulated the central premise of [Edwards’s] entire thought … Perfect goodness, beauty and love radiate from God and draw creatures to ever increasingly share in the Godhead’s joy and delight.” 37 That’s a remarkable statement from one of Edwards’s best readers. But it distills why, for Edwards, God’s glory and human happiness are not two differentiated things. True human happiness cannot be found or experienced apart from God’s glory. “Therefore God’s glory and human flourishing are one and the same.” 38 It is a beautiful dance: our highest joy is found in God’s glory, and God is most glorified in us when we find our highest joy in him. And it is at the cross of Christ that we see God’s glory most clearly because the cross is our best picture of who God is: God providing from within his own life the gift of bringing us back into his life.