Why was man created? What is our purpose in life?
"Since God has spoken so clearly and saved so finally, the believer is free to worship, serve, and glorify God and to enjoy him forever, beginning now. What is the ambition of the evangelical movement? Is it to please God or to please men? Is our happiness and joy found in God or in someone or something else? Is our worship entertainment or worship? Is God's glory or our self-fulfillment the goal of our lives? Do we see God's grace as the only basis for our salvation, or are we still seeking some of the credit for ourselves? These questions reveal a glaring human-centeredness in the evangelical churches and the general witness of our day." (Michael Horton)
By the 1500's the Roman Catholic Church had become man centred. It commonly exalted what it deemed to be the Saints as well church hierarchy. The focus was placed on what glorious things the "Saints" had done and how important it was to pray to them. There was also a division in society where priests and the pope were seen as closer to God, and therefore were esteemed far above the common man. Consequently the scales were tipped towards giving man undue glory. The bible clearly states that through the fall, man, who had his value and dignity through being God's image bearer, has drastically become corrupted. Having lost his original moral uprightness, man is dead in sin and no longer morally praiseworthy or good. The totality of our rebellion is seen in Romans 3:9-10 and 18. "I have already charged that all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, as it is written: None is righteous, no not one; no one seeks for God....There is no fear of God before their eyes." God's purpose for man is to glorify himself as Ephesians 1:5-6 explains clearly "In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved." The Reformers saw drastic need to draw the church back to man's wretchedness, and God's infinite goodness, glory and majesty. It is with this clear doctrine from scripture that all the rest of the 5 solas make sense, for each point, grace alone, Christ alone, faith alone, scripture alone all ultimately strips all merit and boasting from man leaving God alone as the sole source of our salvation and all that is good.
God did not need to create man, yet he created us for his own glory.
God did not create us because of his need for us, for we can give nothing to God that he already does not have within his perfect character. Acts 17:24-25 says this clearly when Paul speaking at the areopagus exclaims "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth,does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything." Nor is he lonely and in need of companionship, as He himself, For all eternity, has always existed in perfect and love relationship within the persons of the trinity (John 17:5, 24).
God created us and the rest of creation to glorify Him and to bring him glory. God speaks of his sons and daughters from the ends of the earth as those "whome I created for my glory" (Isa. 43:7, cf, Eph. 1:11-12). Therefore, we are to "do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). This fact guarantees that our lives are significant. Of our own independent value, we could conclude, seeing as God did not need to create us, and does not need us for anything, that we are of no imporance. However, Scripture makes ut clear that, because we were created to glorify God, through imaging his character, we are of importance to God himself. "This is the final definition of genuine importance or significance to our lives: If we are truly important to God for all eternity, then what greater measure of importance or significance could we want?" (Wayne Grudem, Doctrine: Essential teachings of the Christian faith. Intervarsity Press, 1999)
Therefore we pray along with the angels in John apocolyptic vision, as they worship the Lamb who was slaid before the creation of the world:
"Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honour and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen." -Rev 7:12
Our purpose in life is to glorify God
Augustine said "If I were to ask you why you have believed in Christ, why you have become a Christian, every man will surely answer, "for the sake of happiness."" Is our happiness, a selfish desire or one grounded in God's good purpose for us? And how does it relate to our glorifying of Him? The Wesminster Confession, the most exhaustive and most well known of the many reformed confessions begins with these words:
"The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
Our purpose is to fulfill that reason for which God created us: namely, to glorify God. God creates us glorify Him, knowing that in him we find our greatest good, the source and fountain of happiness. Worshipping and praising God is an end in itself as it fulfills that happiness in God that is the end of all our seeking. John Calvin says:
"If God contains the fullness of all good things in himself like an inexhaustible fountain, nothing beyond him is to be sought by those who strike after the highest good and all the elements of happiness." (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559)
Jesus explains the goal of his laying down his life for his sheep saying "I have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10. David tells God, "in your presence there is fulness of joy, in your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Ps. 16:11). He longs to dwell in the house of the Lord forever, "to behold the beauty of the LORD" (Ps. 27:4)
John Piper sees summarizes the bibles commands and goals for our lives in the statement, God is most glorifies in us when we are most satisfied in Him. He understands the truth of the bible being "that God's passion to be glorified and our passion to be satisfied are one experience in the Christ-exalting act of worship." (Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, 1986, pg 13)
Puritan Richard Baxter (who died in 1691), understood that the giving and receiving of mercy and happiness unto the saints and the grateful response of praise in Giving God glory and honour are always held together, saying:
"[God's] glorifying himself and the saving of his people are not two decrees with God, but one decree, to glorify his mercy in their salvation, though we may say that one is the end of the other: so I think they should be with us together indeed. "
Jonathan Edwards shows us that this notion is not as abstract as we might think it is:
"In some sense the most behevolent, generous person in the world seeks his own happiness in doing good to others, because he places his happiness in their good. His mind is so enlarged as to take them, as it were, into himself. Thus when they are happy, he feels it; he partakes with them, and is happy in their happiness. This is so far from being inconsistent with the freeness of beneficience, that, on thecontrary, free benevolence and kindness consists in it"
Therefore the highest good, Augustine says, is "that which will leave us nothing further to seek in order to be happy, if only we make all our actions refer to it, and seek it not for the sake of something else, but for its own sake." (The city of God)
Enjoying God is the antidote to our idolatry
C. S. Lewis famously described our sinful selfish appetites when He said:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (Weight of glory)
Puritan Richard Baxter prayed, "May the Living God, who is the portion and rest of the saints, make these our carnal minds so spiritual, and our earthly hearts so heavenly, that loving Him, and delighting in Him, may be the work of our lives". (The Saints Everlasting Rest). His words echo that of Nehemiah who exclaims "The joy of the Lord is our Strength" ( Nehemiah 8:10).They are our strength in breaking the power of sin and enabling us to strive for and desire holiness. Matthew henry, another Puritan pastor, put it this way, saying "the joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks. (Commentary on the Whole bible, vol. 2, 1708, pg 1096).
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