What is your Purpose?
Have you ever wondered what your purpose is? What your goal in life is? Why you are on the planet? The Bible has an answer for you. You don’t need to figure this out on your own.
In Genesis 1:27, it says:
God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
We were created in God’s image, which means that we were made to love.
In 1 John 4:7-8 we read, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it:
“Love your neighbour as yourself.”
All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’
That last line about all the Law and the Prophets hanging on these two commandments was Jesus’ way of saying that all of the Old Testament laws and rules and directions could be summarized as “Love God,” and “Love your neighbour.”
Of course that is what we need to do! We were created in God’s image… and God is love, so of course we need to love. Primarily, we are to love God, but of course, our love for him will overflow to our neighbours… who are made in the image of God, the same as us, and still reflect his glory and majesty and character in various ways, despite the corrupting influences of sin. Primarily though, our neighbour is worth loving because God loves our neighbour, and if we love God, then we will love the things (and people!) whom he loves.
The magnificent thing is that we are not being asked to do something which is morally wrong – which is wicked or repulsive or contrary to our deepest instincts. God made humanity for relationship with him at the dawn of time… he made us to love him, and to love each other. We are instructed by the Bible to the the very things which we were made to do. The things which satisfy us. The things which give us joy.
The Westminster Catechism, which is an ancient and brilliant Christian document says, “The chief purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
John Piper, who is my favourite preacher, likes to refine that statement by saying that our chief purpose is to glorify God BY enjoying him forever.
We were made to enjoy him. To love him. When we do that, of course we glorify him. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t God so good to us? We are invited to find everlasting joy…… by doing the very thing that we were made to do.
This is all the richer, because it is a reciprocal kind of love that we are invited into. God demonstrated how outrageously massive his love is for us by sending his own son to earth do die in order that we might be restored to right relationship with him. So that we might be enabled by Jesus to experience the love for him and for each other that we were designed to experience. Our God is so good.
So! Make time to revel in your God. Celebrate (and notice) his gifts to you. Rejoice in the world he has created for us to enjoy. Enjoy him. Satisfy yourself with living water which will eternally satisfy you. LOVE him.
And… love your neighbour, who, despite the fall, is still created in God’s image, and still reflects his glory. Celebrate the ways that they reflect the God who made them.
Revel in the fact that your God is a good God… who is the very definition of love, and spend your life glorifying him by enjoying him.
-Jesse
-Oasis Ministry Apprentice
