webdog said:
I don't know. Does God have to be God centered to be "God centered"? He's God...He knows that. What is the need to be "centered" on that?
If I'm a CEO of a company, have all of the money and power I need, and I know this...there's no reason to be centered on that fact. I can show grace to my employees out of a genuine love and care for them without being centered on myself. The result of grace ultimately leads back to the focus being on me, though.
We're not thinking so much about what God knows, or what the facts are, but rather what God
values most or what's most important to him. Sure, he genuinely loves his creatures, but does he value them more than he does himself?
I'd say he values himself more than he does them because he magnifies his name above all other names. The commandments reflect God's character, and the foundational commandment has to do with God's passion to defend his honor:
I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God.
This is more than just knowing the fact that he is the most important thing in the universe--it's being passionate to defend that. It's "centering" or focusing on his own glory, and getting "the glory due unto his name."
And what is the value he finds in humankind that separates them from the rest of creation? Is it not that they are in
his image? In other words, isn't it that they are like
him in some way that give them their significance?
And of course, like your example of the CEO, God's love for his creatures ultimately puts the focus back on him, but is that merely a side effect of his saving work, or is his saving worked designed to do that? I'd say, on the basis of all those places where God's saving or delivering work is said to be so that one or the other of his attributes or his name is magnified or praised or whatever, that it's
designed to do that, and that is, in the end, the ultimate purpose of his saving work--to show how loving he is, or to show how gracious he is.
