There’s an old hymn that goes like this:
Soul, then know thy full salvation . . .
Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
Think what Father’s smiles are thine,
Think that Jesus died to win thee,
Child of heaven, canst thou repine?
How often do you consider the smile of God? “Think what Father’s smiles are thine,” the song implores us. How often do you bask in the blazing sunlight of our Father’s grin?
Now, it is true that God’s smile is an image, a metaphor for his fathomless felicity and fellowship. The Father does not have a physical smile (although Jesus does). But the reality is more real than the image, not less. And what an image it is.
Ancient Happiness
The looming promise of God’s smile hovers over the pages of the Old Testament. It is the enormous bliss of Eden. From the very beginning, we can hear it surge through God’s voice in his sevenfold approval of his world — good, good, good, good, good, good, very good. We see it — even now — in this wild wonderland of creation, in fall leaves and spring flowers, in the fantastic whimsy of clouds and sunrises that break with the bright joy of a bridegroom, in the frantic rumpus of squirrels and the long, slow oddity of cows, in snow and stone and stars. The beauty of the world is the divine smile in stuff. We feel this Father’s smile when he gives the stunning gift of the woman to the man and Adam erupts into poetry. God’s smile was a permanent fixture of the pre-fall world. It is the enormous bliss of Eden.
But as the world plunged into rebellion and ruin, God’s smile was clouded over. Oh, it was still there. The joy of the Triune God is infinite, independent, indomitable, unassailable as a mountain and bigger than the universe. But unrepentant sinners with unforgiven sin cannot enjoy God’s holy happiness. Yet even after the fall, God’s smile still glimmers in common grace. And even before he can finish pronouncing the curse, that frowning providence in Genesis 3, his hidden smile breaks through in the promise of a Son to come.
We glimpse the first inklings of this plan when God begins to make a way, through a priest and blood, for his people to again enjoy his presence and commands. Aaron, the first high priest, blesses the chosen with the promise of God’s smile: “Yahweh bless you and keep you; Yahweh make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you” (Numbers 6:24–25). A shining face is a smiling face. So the central hope of the Old Testament is that God’s people would again enjoy his felicity and fellowship.
This longing became a cherished refrain of the ancient saints, especially in their poetry:
Many say, “Who can show us anything good?”
Smile upon us, Lord!
You make me happier
than those who have abundant grain and wine. (Psalm 4:6–7 NET)
David hints that all that is good and beautiful — joy full of strength and pleasures undiluted — shines out in the smile of God. Man’s true happiness is found in that face.
Paternal Pleasure
When Jesus bursts onto the scene, we learn God’s smile is not the approval of some generic deity but the massive mirth of a glad dad. Can you imagine the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17), without a smile? Here is joy older than the world, an ocean of paternal pleasure.
And — may it leave us breathless — because of the Son, God is not just a father but our Father. Through the high priest and his own blood, God made a way for his smile to again be a permanent fixture over his people. Jesus bore the terrible tempest of divine wrath so that we might live forever in the sunlight of his smile. All those who are united to the Son become sons, co-heirs of the huge happiness of God. This is the glory of the gospel of the happy God (1 Timothy 1:11).
We are not yet alive enough to gaze into that sun’s full strength. We still sin and must confess. Triune joy is too big, and we are too shadowy, to handle that weight of glory. But it will not always be so. One day, when we taste the wild freedom of perfect holiness, we will be transfixed by God’s smile (Hebrews 12:14). The morning star will be given to us, and the gigantic bliss of the Lamb who was slain will light up a cosmos made new.
As Aslan says to his own, so our Father says to us: You are not yet so happy as I mean you to be — not yet as happy as me. Enter into the joy of your Maker.
Enter into Joy
So, child of heaven, think what Father’s smiles are thine!
In the Son of his pleasure and by the Spirit of his joy, our heavenly Father pours out his gladness on his chosen people. There is no one to compel his joy or constrain his delight. He is utterly free. His smile is as sure as the rising sun because everything he does erupts from the eternal happiness of the Trinity. Overflowing from that thrilled freedom, he delights in giving his children everything they need to increasingly enjoy the beauty of his smile.
And it is from that impulse to share his own triune joy, to shed light and love on his people, that God made a world and gave his word to reveal his glory. Jonathan Edwards puts it like this:
It is such a delight in his own internal fullness and glory that disposes him to an abundant effusion and emanation of that glory. The same disposition that inclines him to delight in his glory causes him to delight in the exhibitions, expressions, and communications of it. (God’s Passion for His Glory, 170)
In other words, God’s eternal happiness in being God overflows in the revelation of that happiness to creatures. He invites us to enter into his own indomitable joy — to know and delight in God as God does. This month at Desiring God, we will revel in the resplendent smile of our God as we explore the expressions and attributes of his fierce happiness. Won’t you join us?
