What Piper doesn’t realize is that, in being for Himself, He MUST be for us as well.
I’d probably not be the first to point out perhaps; that if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, then it would seem quite feasible to say that God in all of his magnificent perfection loves us (his neighbors, children, offspring) as he does himself.
We don’t love our neighbors our of sheer self-love, we don’t love our neighbor just because it is for ourselves only; but we love our neighbors because we love our neighbors as equally as we love ourselves.
I can’t help but feel that Piper insists that God is an omniessential Narcissus. Pining away only for himself in the Creation-Pool he created, but not intrinsically loving, or loving the intrinsic creatures he made that reflect him. God is very much in the business of expressing, defending, and raising up his own glory. But not at the cost or neglect of his “do” being in accordance to his “who”. He shall raise, express, and defend his glory by doing that which he is; Love, Justice, Truth, Life, Way, Grace, Humility, Creativity, Goodness, etc.
While I don’t have time and energy this week (on other projects) to look into this article, I can say I would want to see how much he connects his statements to the trinitarian self-existence of God.
(My initial expectation from past experience on this kind of topic is that he doesn’t much, if at all; but as I said I haven’t read the article. It makes all the difference in the world between his statements being equally applicable to the tyrannical rule of sheer power or not.)