This morning was like any other. I fixed oatmeal for my 4-year-old and went for a walk with our dogs. Mundane, everyday moments like these seem insignificant. But they’re seen. We live every moment in the sight of God: “The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good” (Prov. 15:3). Nothing escapes his sight.
Yet God doesn’t just see us—he delights in us. Scripture includes staggering verses about God’s aesthetic delight in his people. C. S. Lewis captures the wonder: “To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.”
When people respond aesthetically to something they see, either in delight or revulsion, it changes them. But God doesn’t change in response to what he sees. Another way to say this is that God is immutable and impassable. Yet creation and people bring real delight to God. God delights in the good, the true, and the beautiful; he hates the evil and the false. Let’s contemplate how Christians bring true pleasure to an infinitely happy God based on their union with Christ.
God’s Delight in Creation
God’s aesthetic delight in creation is introduced on Scripture’s first page. In Genesis 1, God creates and shapes the cosmos by his Word and Spirit. Six times, at the end of each day, we’re told of God’s pleasure in the goodness and beauty of his work.
God delights in the presence of light (v. 4), the ocean and the dry land (v. 10), and the stars and the universe (v. 18). The variety of birds, fish, and animals please him (vv. 21, 25). God relishes the glory of the trees and the fruit they produce (v. 12). At the end of the climactic sixth day, we’re told of God’s delight a seventh time: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (v. 31).
God’s Revulsion at Sin
God’s pleasure in seeing creation’s beauty is starkly contrasted with his disgust at sin’s pollution and destruction. In the world after the fall, evil runs rampant. When we scroll our news feeds, it doesn’t take long to see something horrific. Murder, adultery, abuse, and countless other evils are reported daily.
God’s pleasure in seeing the beauty of creation is starkly contrasted with his disgust at sin’s pollution and destruction.
The proper response is sorrow and disgust. When we respond like this, in our limited way we reflect God’s infinite hatred of evil. God looks at sin with displeasure: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth . . . and it grieved him to his heart” (6:5–6). God, in his infinite holiness, looks on sin and evil in all its forms with perfect disgust.
Unfortunately, evil is not simply something out there. It is painfully personal as it marks our fallen identity and daily reality. Without exception, every person is full of sin’s evil corruption (Romans 3:9–19). This is hard to grasp, but only because we do not consider our sin from God’s perspective. Apart from Christ, we are truly repulsive to God.
God’s Pleasure in New Creation
But God takes what is repulsive to him and creates something beautiful. As Luther once said, “God’s love does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to him.” In redemption and glorification, God re-creates the cosmos and fallen people so creation’s original beauty is restored and surpassed. In the incarnation, God affirms his delight in his Son: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt. 3:17). G. K. Beale shows how the Father is alluding to something he said before: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights” (Isa. 42:1). The Father has pleasure in Jesus, the new Israel of Isaiah’s servant songs. Jesus leads his people in a new exodus and identifies with them through his substitutionary sacrifice (Isa. 53). Jesus succeeded where Israel failed and represents a new people before God (49:6).
God’s pleasure in Jesus extends to believers united to him. It’s only when we are joined to the loveliness of Christ that we become lovely. Because of our union with Christ, God sees Christians as we live our everyday lives and responds, “This is my child, in whom I am well pleased.” An earthly picture is a father and mother’s delight in their children. Children who play a sport or musical instrument experience joy when their parents are pleased by their efforts. In the same way, believers live in the freedom of bringing God joy.
We may not always feel God’s delight, but it’s there. Sometimes, we do sense his delight in us. Eric Liddell, a gold medalist in the 1924 Paris Olympics, felt this. “When I run, I feel his pleasure,” is the way the screenwriters for Chariots of Fire put it. What Liddell’s character said about running, we can say of all of life: “I feel his pleasure.”
Pleasing in His Sight
God’s aesthetic delight becomes an orienting principle for the Christian’s life. We’re pleasing to him through Christ, so we seek to become who we are by following his commands: “We make it our aim to please him” (2 Cor. 5:9). We have the privilege to be a real ingredient in God’s happiness through sacrificial and daily obedience.
Believers live in the freedom of bringing God joy.
In one sense, God already sees us basking in the dawn of new creation light in the new heavens and earth. There, it will one day be repeated, “And God saw everything that he had remade, and behold, it was very good.” Until then, we live every day with all its joyful monotony—fixing breakfast for the kids and walking the dogs—in his sight and in his good pleasure.
The Gospel Coalition