From Jonathan Edwards’ sermon I referred to yesterday (God’s Excellencies), here is an end of the day meditation on why the enjoyment of God exceeds all that the best of human friendship can produce.
How great must be the happiness of the enjoyment of him. The happiness of society, and the enjoyment of entire friends, is one of the highest sorts of pleasures, next to the pleasures of religion; if that be so sweet, how inexpressibly sweet and delightful must it be to enjoy this excellent being, who is infinitely more excellent, more lovely, than the most perfect, than any of our fellow creatures. There is inexpressibly more pleasure and delight in the enjoyment of God, than in the enjoyment of the most excellent, dear, and entire friends upon earth, and that upon these several accounts:
1. God is every way transcendently more amiable, than the most perfect and lovely of all our fellow creatures. If men take great delight and pleasure in beholding and enjoying the perfections and beauties of their fellow mortals, with what ecstasies, with what sweet rapture, will the sweet glories and beauties of the blessed God be beheld and enjoyed!
2. God loves those that he admits to the enjoyment of him with far greater love than the highest love of fellow creatures.
3. Those that enjoy God shall love him with transcendently greater love than it is possible to love the most lovely creature, so that the love will be mutual; the glorified saint shall be all transformed to love to God, and shall be all transformed to joy at the thought of God’s so dearly loving him.
4. The glorified saint shall be more nearly united to God than ever the best friends are united here in this world. They shall be received into the closest union with God: we represent it by “being embraced in God’s arms,” but that is too faint a shadow to represent the close union that there will be; the very soul of the saint shall be united to God, and God shall be in them, in their very souls, by his glorious presence.
5. They shall more fully enjoy God than the nearest friends. The enjoyment of friends is not full and satisfying; it is frequently interrupted; but it is not so with respect to God and the glorified saint, but the enjoyment will be entire, to the constant full satisfaction of the enlarged desires of the soul, and it shall be constant and without interruption, shall continue to the same height, and shall rise and increase to all eternity.
6. The sweet relish of these enjoyments shall never decrease or be diminished. In all temporal enjoyments, one has enough of it presently; we are quickly weary of them and want some new sort of delights, but in heaven the joys will be so full, and so great, and so sweet, that the relish of them shall hold; and there will be as high, as sweet, and [as] ravishing delight in the enjoyment of God at the end of millions of ages, as there was the first hour. All these things meeting together, there must needs result an unutterable delight and unimaginable pleasure; the saint will be transformed to be all pure holiness, all light, all understanding, all vision, all love, all joy and delight; they shall not only, as it were, be full of love and full of joy, but their very souls will be transformed to love and to joy, and exceeding excellent pleasure.
Holiness is the very beauty and loveliness of Jehovah himself. ‘Tis the excellency of his excellencies, the beauty of his beauties, the perfection of his infinite perfections, and the glory of his attributes. What an honor, then, must it be to a creature who is infinitely below God, and less than he, to be beautified and adorned with this beauty, with that beauty which is the highest beauty of God himself, even holiness. The highest honor of angels is their holiness. ‘Tis astonishing that God should make even the angels, or any creature, in his own likeness, but how much more admirable is it that God should sanctify sinners—loathsome and abominable creatures—and make them like to himself.
