“There are two types of people - those who are man-centered and those who are God-centered. "
The Dislodging Truth of God’s God-Centeredness
From Pastor Chris
“There are two types of people—those who are man-centered and those who are God-centered. And of those who are God-centered there are two types of people—those who think God is man-centered and those who think God is God-centered.”
I could probably point you to the chair I was sitting in at the college lecture hall when I heard these words. I can’t remember much about the speaker other than the fact that his grandmother spoke these words to him when she was near death in the hospital. Her words simply and succinctly gave voice to the Copernican Revolution that was happening in my heart, the slow realization that the Bible, the Christian life, all of life, is about God, not me.
The Copernican Revolution was the shift in European astronomy from understanding Earth to be at the center of the universe to understanding the Sun to be at the center of the Solar System. In a similar way, whether we would actually say it out loud or not, many of us grow up believing that we are at the center of our universe and that everything else—even God—revolves around us. If you question this, just hang around children who haven’t yet learned to keep their self-centered thoughts inside their heads. Of the dozens of examples I’ve observed, my favorite comes from seven years ago when we were gearing up for our first trip to Disney World. Sophia was laser focused on our lunch with the princesses at Epcot and gushed, “The princesses are going to be excited to see me!”
We can excuse the hilarious, misguided assumptions of a six year-old. But when I get angry over a traffic jam on the beltway, when I value people for what they can do for me, when I question God’s goodness because my finances or health aren’t working out the way I wanted, it reveals that I still assume that I am at the center of the universe.
Our recent journey in the “United to Magnify God’s Reputation” series has taken us from creation of God’s image bearers to the deliverance of Hebrew slaves from Egypt to the dwelling of God in the Jerusalem Temple. Each step of the way has shown us a common truth: Yahweh loves his name, his reputation. The I AM values his glory more highly than he values anything else. God is a God-centered God.
This is a dislodging truth. If you recall from history, Galileo ended his years under house arrest and avoided execution only by recanting his radical assertion that Earth is not at the center of the universe. Similarly, our hearts can have a violent reaction against the suggestion that everything—even the heart of God—is centered not on us but on God.
Yet God’s radical orientation to God’s reputation is ultimately good news for us. For the children of Abraham it meant deliverance from Egypt for the sake of his name, God’s dwelling with his people for the sake of his name, and, after Israel’s rebellion and exile, a restoration to the Promised Land for the sake of his name. Yet these pointed to an even greater redemption that God would bring about through his own Son’s death and resurrection. In Ephesians 1 Paul writes that “In love [God] predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ…to the praise of his glorious grace,” that he gave us an inheritance “to the praise of his glory,” and that he sealed us with the Holy Spirit “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:5-14). God’s work of making us alive together with Christ was for his praise—“so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:7).
God’s God-centeredness drives his gracious redemption of us and loving inclusion into his eternal family, all to magnify his reputation.
The spiritual Copernican Revolution is rarely complete this side of Jesus’ return. Our sin-bent hearts always find a way to make things about us, not God. As we continue to walk through the Biblical story to see the central theme of God’s reputation, may the Spirit give us hearts that relinquish our lust for our own glory and rest in an all-satisfying delight in the God who loves his.