“Three things must be considered when it comes to the supreme and unsurpassable happiness of the people whose God is the triune Lord: (1) the supreme good that will constitute our supreme happiness, (2) the manner in which we will possess our supreme happiness, and (3) the context within which we will enjoy our supreme happiness.”

Christian theology has a deep and abiding interest in the topic of happiness because it has a deep and abiding interest in “the happy God” (1 Timothy 1:11) and in the happiness of the people whose God is the Lord (Psalm 144:15). In our first installment in a Christian theology of happiness, we considered the supreme form of happiness that rules and governs all things, the happiness of the triune God, the blessed Trinity. We also considered how the triune God communicates a share of his happiness to us through his works of creation and redemption.

In our second installment, we considered biblical teaching regarding the fact that our happiness has not yet fully arrived. While Christ has done all that is required to secure our happiness in God through his incarnation, death, resurrection, and enthronement at the Father’s right hand, the Spirit’s work of applying this happiness to us has only begun. Furthermore, having been reconciled to the happy God through Jesus Christ, we have been brought into conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil. For these reasons, the Christian experience of happiness in this age must always be characterized by a mixture of sorrow and rejoicing (2 Corinthians 6:10).

We conclude our survey of a Christian theology of happiness with a few brief comments on the character of the happiness that lies before us in God’s eternal kingdom. Three things must be considered when it comes to the supreme and unsurpassable happiness of the people whose God is the triune Lord: (1) the supreme good that will constitute our supreme happiness, (2) the manner in which we will possess our supreme happiness, and (3) the context within which we will enjoy our supreme happiness.¹

Isaiah 33:17 captures the first two elements of our blessed hope: “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty.” Isaiah 33:23–24 captures the third: “Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will take the prey. And no inhabitant will say, ‘I am sick’; the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity.” Let us consider these three elements in order.

King of Glory

“The king in his beauty” is the supreme good that will constitute our supreme happiness in God’s eternal kingdom: the incarnate Son of God, sitting at the right hand of his Father, the source of the river of the water of life that flows from the throne of God. The triune King is the supreme good, the supreme beatitude in the order of beatitude. In the eternal kingdom, the triune King will present himself to us in unmediated splendor, as a bridegroom unveils himself before his bride.

No longer through a glass darkly, no longer in part, he will present himself to us there face to face, to be fully known (1 Corinthians 13:12). No longer will the light of the sun and the moon shine upon us, for the glory of God will be our light and the Lamb will be our lamp (Revelation 21:23; 22:5). “There the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams” (Isaiah 33:21). From the throne of God and of the Lamb, the Spirit will flow, opening to us an infinite ocean of beatitude (Revelation 22:2).

When the blessed Trinity makes his habitation with men in the fullness of his being, beauty, and beatitude, God will be the object of our unsurpassable interest and satisfaction, the good greater than which and beyond which nothing else can be desired. “God himself . . . shall there be its [i.e., the soul’s] reward; for, as there is nothing greater or better, he has promised himself. What else was meant by his word through the prophet, ‘I will be your God, and ye shall be my people,’ than, I shall be their satisfaction, I shall be all that men honorably desire — life, and health, and nourishment, and plenty, and glory, and honor, and peace, and all good things?”² Made for him, our hearts will find their rest in him.³

We Will See His Face

What is the manner in which we will possess our supreme good, the object of our supreme happiness? “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty.” The blessed Trinity is an intrinsically luminous, intrinsically intelligible good. “The blessed and only Sovereign” dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16; 1 John 1:5). The being of God is “unapproachable” to flesh and blood, not because it is dark or blind, but because we are unclean (Isaiah 6:5) and because we are not yet glorified (1 Corinthians 15:50).

In God’s eternal kingdom, when we have been fully and finally cleansed of sin’s corrupting stain, and when we have been fully and finally glorified, we will attain the “one thing” for which the saints have always longed: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

We will possess God as our supreme good and our supreme happiness by beholding the King in his beauty, and that by means of a twofold vision. We will see the invisible God — the divine essence in its tripersonal manner of existence — by means of spiritual perception, “with clarity, directness, and completeness.”⁴ Furthermore, we will see the incarnate Lamb of God by means of glorified physical eyes: “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25–26). In this “beatific vision,” “the completion and crown” of our happiness will be “the delight experienced in the enjoyment of God.”⁵ We will see him and we will thereby be satisfied in him.

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