Does God Want Heaven Without Us?

 Lately I have been wondering, "Does God want heaven without us? Would He be lonely in heaven if He hadn't made a away for us to join Him? 

The question came a few weeks ago while we were singing the Hillsong "What a Beautiful Name it is".  There is a line in the song that says ‘You didn’t want heaven without us. So Jesus, you brought heaven down."  Now I've sung the song many times but it wasn't until this moment that I stopped and asked if this line was true.

Was God lonely without us? Does God need us? As I thought through that I realized the answer is no. God is not lonely. To say different is to say that somehow God is insufficient in and of Himself which we know to be false. Scripture says God is self-sufficient. That He doesn't need anything outside of Himself to exist.

God is in need of nothing. He doesn’t need our worship, our work or anything we might think to offer Him. As Paul says in Acts 17:25, “Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things”. 

If God does not need us, then why did He create us? The answer is simply “for His pleasure.” Revelation 4:11 says, “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” Colossians 1:16  also says,  “All things were created by him and for him.”  We were created for His pleasure. It gave God pleasure to create humans to have a relationship with them, not because He needed them. 

God made us in His image with an ability to know Him, to worship Him, to serve and to have fellowship with Him. We were created to bring glory and honor to God, not because He needed a friend. 

I came across this by John Piper and he expresses thoughts on this so much better than I can.