If eternity were an apartment, God did not need a pet to keep him company. The triune God needed nothing upon which to dote or depend. His golden existence never borrows from other suns.
Yet we read, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) — why? If he is so happy and blessed, why create anything at all? Because God delights to share his fullness, his happiness, his life, his love, his glory — not to complete that fullness, but to extend it to others.
“There is an expansive quality to his joy,” writes Piper. “It wants to share itself. The impulse to create the world was not from weakness, as though God were lacking in some perfection that creation could supply.” To quote Jonathan Edwards, “It is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain, that it is inclined to overflow.” Again, Piper writes, “All his works are simply the spillover of his infinite exuberance for his own excellence” (Works, 49).
In the beginning, then, God created the heavens and the earth freely, bountifully, happily. He looked down as an artist painting — stars, fish, mountains, man — “Oh, that is good!” He creates and admires and gives and fills and blesses from a full cupboard.
Persecution Live 