Everyone has something in his life of perceived infinite value; the chief of his affections, for which he would give everything. Typically, it is something beautiful and excellent, bringing both peace and joy: the blessing of finding true and lasting romantic love, a sense of accomplishment at vocational achievement, or even the financial stability to retire in luxury. For many, this is something physical, finite, and fleeting, but what could be more desirable, more excellent, and more good than the infinite God? When our affections and adoration ultimately cling to anything above God, we are settling for something infinitely less excellent and good. Why? The blessedness of God is the reason. God is infinitely perfect and worthy of all our affection, for all joy, peace, and beauty are found in Him.
But how do we understand this somewhat vague topic of “blessedness”? This article will seek to understand God’s blessedness in four stages: His infinite perfection, joy, peace, and beauty. First, God is blessed because He is infinitely perfect. In fact, His very nature is blessedness and perfection.1 Second, God is joy because He delights in His blessedness. Third, God is peace because He rests in His blessedness. Fourth and lastly, God is beauty because of the allure and supreme desirability of His blessedness. Seeing God’s blessedness in all of its aspects will only fuel our affection for Him Who is the most blessed.
1. God’s being is identical with His blessedness, and thus identical with His joy, peace, and beauty. See Knox Brown, “God Is Himself: Why God Is More Than His Attributes,” Christ Over All, February 13, 2026.
God is Blessed: Infinite Perfection
Scripture recognizes God as the blessed one (1 Tim. 1:11; 6:15). He is infinite perfection; the summary of all of God’s perfections. God is infinitely perfect because He is beyond any limitation and cannot be measured. God is not simply maximal. He is more than the maximum of His attributes (love, justice, etc.). While you and I can become better, God cannot become a better version of Himself; He is infinitely blessed and supreme. There is nothing more blessed than God. This is why theologians understand God to be the chief and supreme good.2 Thomas Aquinas3 (ca. 1225–1274) rightly describes God as “the supreme good simply . . . inasmuch as all desired perfections flow from Him as from the first cause.”4 This is also why Aquinas keenly treats blessedness as a summary attribute. He writes, “the divine beatitude embraces all other beatitudes.”5
2. The Latin term for “supreme good” is summum bonum. You will often encounter the Latin, rather than the English, in scholarly theology books, especially older works.
3. It is essential for evangelicals to approach Thomas Aquinas with spiritual maturity and discernment. See Leonardo De Chirico’s helpful article on this: Leonardo De Chirico, “Excerpt from Engaging with Thomas Aquinas: How Ought Evangelicals to Engage with Him?,” Christ Over All, August 16, 2024.
4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, (New York, NY: Benziger Bros, 1948), Q.6, A.2.
5. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q.26, A. 4.
Another important element of God’s blessedness is His self-sufficiency. John Owen (1616–1683) highlights this, “Self-existence in its own immense being—thence self-sufficiency unto itself in all things—and thereon self-satisfaction—is the principal notion we have of divine blessedness.”6 God’s blessedness is located within His being, independent of any creation. God does not depend on anyone or anything to be blessed. Therefore, God’s blessedness is ultimately tied to His independence. In more technical language, God’s blessedness is tied to His aseity. Aseity is a Latin word which means that God is of Himself (a se). It speaks to God’s utter self-sufficiency; His life comes from no one outside of Himself—He is, and has, life in Himself (John 5:26), and therefore He is eternally, independently, and immutably (that is, unchangeably) blessed.
6. John Owen, Christologia: or a Declaration of the Glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ—God and Man (1679), 45.
Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) helpfully details God’s blessedness in a similar fashion to both Aquinas and Owen with three components: His completeness, His delight in Himself, and His rest in His own self-sufficiency:
1. God is absolute perfection, for blessedness is the mark of every being that is, and to that extent it is complete; in other words, blessedness is the mark of every being that lives and in living is not hampered or disturbed by anything from within or without
2. [I]mplied in the words ‘blessed God’ is that God knows and delights in his absolute perfection
3. [T]he term ‘the blessed God’ also implies, in the third place, that God absolutely delights in himself, absolutely rests in himself, and is absolutely self-sufficient.7
7. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, vol. 2, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), 251.
Here we see the summation that blessedness brings. Bavinck describes features of blessedness as completion, delight, rest, and sufficiency, which we see as joy (delight), and peace (completion, rest, and sufficiency). Joy is the act of delight in His blessedness and peace is the rest God has in His own blessedness.
God is Joy: The Delight of Blessedness
While often conflated with happiness, God’s joy is distinct. Unlike the passion of happiness, joy is a posture God has towards His own blessedness. God’s joy is not an emotion that fluctuates from static to elated; it is God’s eternal and immutably unchanging posture towards Himself. God is pure act: He never moves from a neutral state to a state of joy, rather His joy is always who He is. His joy is His eternal and maximal delight in His perfection found in His immutable satisfaction of Himself. Thus, like a boundless ocean that never runs dry nor ends, so God’s joy never changes nor ceases.8 The Puritan Stephen Charnock (1628–1680) details God’s posture of joy in The Existence and Attributes of God. There he writes, “God hath the highest enjoyment of himself, of all things he hath created, of all the glory that accrues to him by them; nothing of perfection and blessedness can be wanting to him.”9 As the subject of perfect goodness, God’s eternal posture is towards Himself as the object of His delight. But just as His blessedness is never changing, so too His delight in His blessedness is never changing. Charnock then continues by emphasizing the immutability of God’s joy, “The enjoyment of God will be as fresh and glorious after many ages as it was at first.”10 Unlike the human experience of happiness, God’s joy does not go up and down but remains constant, because joy is who He is eternally.
8. See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:151.
9. Stephen Charnock, Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), 462.
10. Charnock, Attributes of God, 298.
As the Triune One, God’s eternal joy is found in Himself (Ps. 16:11). God’s joy is fundamentally trinitarian, for the persons of the Trinity have delighted in each other before the foundation of the world (John 17:5, 24). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit delight in one another in perfect, independent, and immutable unity. The Triune God is both the blessed subject (the one who delights) and the perfect object (the one delighted in) of His own joy. God’s own blessed being is the primary object and goal of His will. Since God is the source of all blessedness in infinite perfection, His will is directed towards Himself. Thus, God is good, He purposes His own goodness, and He purposes above all to delight in His own goodness. Yet this eternal joy is also the source of all joy that humanity experiences (Ps. 43:4). Because God’s joy is unshakable, we can find an everlasting joy in Him. This is why the apostle Paul can find joy even in his suffering, because his joy is in the God who never lessens in joy.
God is Peace: The Rest and Order of Blessedness
Because God’s joy and blessedness never change, God has perfect peace. God’s peace is His rest in His blessedness. Since God is complete and not lacking; having all self-sufficiency in Himself, He can rest in Himself. Rest is a result of order and completion. God is a God of peace and order (Rom. 15:33) and is void of confusion (1 Cor. 14:33). There is no hostility, chaos, or conflict within His being. He is called the Lord of Peace (2 Thess. 3:16) and the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6). Thus, He is the God who is ordered, complete, and has perfect rest in Himself.
Augustine (354–430) in City of God writes at length on peace. He contrasts the chaos of the earthly city to the peace of the celestial city with God. Augustine notes that “the peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquility of order. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place.”11 In the blessed state of glorification, believers shall have an everlasting joy in God in the celestial city. There, everyone and everything will be marked by perfect order, unity, rest, and peace in God. There will be peace forever with God in heaven because there is perfect peace in God Himself.
11. Augustine of Hippo, “The City of God,” in St. Augustin’s City of God and Christian Doctrine, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Marcus Dods, vol. 2, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, First Series (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1887), 409.
God is Beauty: The Desirable Radiance of Blessedness
Beauty is the allure towards God’s blessedness and the splendor of His goodness. Think of beauty as the loveliness, radiance, and glory of His infinite perfection. Theologically speaking then, beauty is primarily a matter of internal characteristics, but all physical beauty exists because of God who is beautiful. To call God beautiful is to say that He is the most desirable, the One who is worthy of all affection and worship. Therefore, God’s beauty is the desirability of His blessed and infinite perfection.
Aquinas rightly lists three conditions for beauty: (1) “integrity or perfection,” (2) “proportion or harmony;” and (3) “brightness or clarity.”12 God is beautiful in all three of these ways. He is infinitely perfect, with no flaws; He is perfectly in harmony with Himself (for He is identical with Himself!) and He is radiant with glory. Not only that, but God is beautiful because He is good—and as the chief good, He is supremely desirable. Aquinas perceived this link between beauty and goodness. He writes, “Thus it is evident that beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that good means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the beautiful is something pleasant to apprehend.”13 Beauty is the pleasantness of God’s blessed goodness.
12. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q.39, A.8.
13. Aquinas, Summa Theologica I–II, Q.27, A.1.
With such beauty witnessing the goodness of God, it is no wonder that the prophet Zechariah exclaims in wonderful praise to the blessed God saying, “[H]ow great is His goodness, and how great his beauty!” (Zech. 9:17). Considering this verse, Charnock describes God as “the most amiable object” and as “infinitely excellent and desirable.”14 Charnock then masterfully contemplates the beauty of God,
14. Charnock, Attributes of God, 169.
There is nothing in him but what may ravish our affections; none that knows him but finds attractive to keep them with him; He hath nothing in him which can be a proper object of contempt, no defects or shadow of evil; there is infinite excellency to charm us, and infinite goodness to allure us,—the Author of our being, the Benefactor of our lives.15
15. Charnock, Attributes of God, 170.
God’s infinite excellency ought to be a magnet to our hearts, drawing us in to His goodness because He is the supreme delight of knowing Him.
Eternal Joy and Peace with the Blessed God
The blessedness of God is far too wonderful for our words and thoughts to grasp. But one thing we can grasp: the triune God is the most blessed and desirable Being in the entire universe. Every other blessed thing that we could pursue in this life is a low-battery flashlight compared to the blazing sun of God’s worth. And this is true even though we only have a clouded picture of Who God is in this earthly life (1 Cor. 13:12)! The Lord Jesus promises believers that they shall one day see God through Christ (1 John 3:2),16 looking upon His beauty and glory in the beatific vision (visio Dei). In that day, our blessed but obscured present hope will become a seen reality, bringing us to all fullness of joy and peace and blessing in His presence. It is because God is blessed forever that we can be blessed now, and can have such a blessed future hope. One day we will be with Him forever, seeing the blessed face of our Lord and Savior. Hallelujah!
