The ancients struggled to figure out why God created the world. They crafted stories of war between gods and other catastrophic tales of our origin. The Scriptures past down to us offer us something remarkably different. The book of Genesis tells us that each day when God made something new, He “saw that it was good.” God, our Father, was actually getting joy out of creating this universe.
The Living Bible translates the creation account with the words, “And God was pleased.” From the beginning, the Father, His Son, and the Spirit have taken pleasure in this world. Revelation 4:11 spells it out plainly when it says, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (KJV). How about that? The reason you are and were created is for God’s pleasure.
From the beginning, God’s greatest pleasure has been the ones who bear His image. Think about what it even means to exist as the “image of God.” An image is a “picture” or “reflection.” We are pictures and reflections of the living God. And God, the Father who created His images, truly enjoys and takes pleasure in the work of His hands. To say, “God could never take pleasure in me,” is to spit on the heavenly hands who put you together.
Not even the ugliness of sin could stop Papa from delighting in us. David said God, “rescued me, because He delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19). God doesn’t rescue us and then delight in us, He rescues us because He has always delighted in us even in our weakness. One could accurately say, “For God so took pleasure in the world that He sent His one and only Son.” Because our Papa enjoys us, He sent His Son as our Savior.
If this sounds surprising, let me say with full confidence that this is the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul makes the most glaring statement about God’s pleasure in salvation in Ephesians 1 verses 5 and 9. Paul wrote, “Having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will to the praise of the glory of His grace” (NKJV). Paul says that it was God’s pleasure to adopt us as sons through Jesus, and that all we have left to do is praise Him for His glorious grace.
And then in verse 9-10, “Having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth – in Him.” Paul is amazingly saying that according to our Papa’s good pleasure, He is bringing all of heaven and earth into unity through Christ. We can be still and know that our Papa is working out the entire restoration of the world according to His good pleasure.
Psalm 149:4 reads, “The Lord takes pleasure in His people.” Today, know that God isn’t just tolerating you, and He doesn’t just love you because He has to. He actually takes pleasure in you, His work of art, His son or daughter. The Father in whom all things move and live and have their being takes great pleasure in you. You are a wonderful image of Him. Anything that alienated you from His pleasure was abolished at the cross of Jesus.