The Purpose of Life

The Purpose of Life
What is the meaning of life? This is the question that has plagued generation after generation. Isaiah 43:7 gives it to us. “…Whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Here the prophet speaking the words of God says we (that is all of mankind) were made for the display of God’s glory, and to bring Him glory. Certainly we are only awakened to that truth after we believe in Jesus Christ and the cross, but it is none-the-less true. All men were created to glorify God. Both the sinner and the saint were created with that purpose, and all men will fulfill that purpose eventually. Romans 14:11 says, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So man either glorifies God starting now in this life and leading into eternity, or he does so on the Day of Judgment. God will either be glorified in your praise and worship of Him or in the just punishment of you for your sins. The question to ask practically is: “What does it mean to glorify God?” This question is much easier to ask than it is to answer.

What is Glory?
The first step is to define “glory.” What is the “glory of God?” Al Mohler says, “In the scripture the glory of God is, in the Old Testament and in the New, and in the language that is used, associated directly with the idea of heaviness. With weight.” C.S. Lewis spoke of the “Weight of Glory!” Mohler continues, “And in the scripture that is expanded to mean fame, and renown, and praise. God’s glory is the fame that is rightly His. It is the value of His name, it is the display of His character, it is the weight of His awesome and infinite being[1].” John Piper adds, “God’s glory is the beauty of His manifold perfections[2].” God’s glory speaks of His perfection, His “infinite greatness and worth[3].” So now that we’ve explained what God’s “glory” is we wonder, “what do I have to do with that?”

God’s command in scripture is that we glorify Him; that is that we praise Him. We are called to reflect His glory on earth, to point people to Him, and to magnify His name. Let me clarify this statement. We have already seen that God’s glory is His infinite greatness and worth, and the beauty of His perfections so how can I magnify what is already infinitely great, worthy, and perfect? Piper aids us here by stating that there are two ways to magnify. “You can magnify with a microscope or with a telescope. A microscope magnifies by making tiny things look bigger than they are. A telescope magnifies by making gigantic things (like stars), which look tiny, appear more as they really are. God created the universe to magnify His glory the way a telescope magnifies stars. Everything He does in our salvation is designed to magnify the glory of His grace like this[4].” It is our duty, not to make God more glorious, but to know God as He really is (which is infinitely glorious) and to make His glory known. This is our task, and what a difficult task it is. Thankfully God gives us specific ways to do this.

The Ways We Glorify
We are called to glorify God in a multitude of ways, each of which will be detailed in upcoming chapters. For starters it will suffice to list a few key ways we glorify God here. We glorify God in ruling over His creation (Genesis 1:28). We glorify God by doing good works (1 Peter 2:12). We are commanded to glorify God in our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We are commanded, both husbands and wives, to glorify God in our marriages (Ephesians 5:22-33). Also, we glorify God in loving others (1 John 3:16) and through a Biblical Church (Ephesians 3:21). Finally, the point we will focus on in the remainder of this chapter, we glorify God by enjoying Him forever.

Desiring and Enjoying God is Glorifying God
It is found in the old Westminster Catechism. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever[5].” John Piper has wonderfully changed the wording here to better represent precisely what the authors intended, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever[6].” He says, “Evidently, the old theologians didn’t think they were talking about two things. They said ‘chief end’ not ‘chief ends.’ Glorifying God and enjoying Him were one end in their minds, not two[7].” The common idea floating among the minds of Christians today is that enjoying God is really just an option, the icing on the cake or the caboose on the train. If we do get joy, good for us, if we don’t, oh well. This idea stems from a philosophy that states it is merely our duty to serve God! C.S. Lewis spoke of this problem earlier in history. In a sermon preached back in the mid 1960s, called “The Weight of Glory,” he said the following:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak[8].

What a mind blowing thought! We have weak desire. Lewis continues with what may be one of my favorite quotes of all time.

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[9].

We are far too easily pleased! What truth there is in that statement. You and I settle for the lesser joys, the fleeting pleasures of this world. But God has offered us infinite joy in Him. “You have made known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11). Where is there fullness of joy? In God’s presence. Where are the pleasures forevermore? At God’s right hand. There may be fleeting joy here and there in our earthly life but it is a mere shadow of the “fullness of joy” that is in God’s presence! Joy is not merely an option for the Christian. The scripture command us to have joy in God. Here are a few:

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4).

“Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

“Serve the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2)

“Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, Rejoice” (Philippians 4:4).

Perhaps one of the most terrifying scriptures on the command to enjoy God is found in the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you…” (Deuteronomy 28:47-48). What was the cause of Israel’s punishment? Punishment came because they did not serve the Lord with “joyfulness and gladness of heart.” Piper quotes Jeremy Taylor saying, “God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy[10].”

If we will take time to notice we will see that all those verses begin with imperatives: “Delight…”, “Enter…”, “Serve…”, “Rejoice […].” They are all commands to do something, and they all contain some appeal to our joy. We aren’t merely to serve, but we are to serve with gladness!

In his most classic work Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, John Piper argues that the “effort to achieve worship [of God] with no self-interest in it [proves] to be a contradiction in terms[11].” C.S. Lewis, however, had a struggle with praise just before his conversion to Christ; maybe you have this same struggle. In his work Reflections on the Psalms, Lewis writes:

When I first began to draw near to belief in God and even for some time after it had been given to me, I found a stumbling block in the demand so clamorously made by all religious people that we should ‘praise’ God; still more in the suggestion that God Himself demanded it[12].

What a hard truth to grasp, God demands to be praised. It seems so selfish for God and so undesirable for us. But Lewis continues:

But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game…I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation[13].

So in regards to our joy: God’s demanding that we praise Him is the demand that we complete our enjoyment in Him! What a gift! Could there be any sweeter command? Is there any more wonderful duty? As the back of Piper’s book says, “Delight is our duty.” We do not fulfill our duty to God until we have enjoyed Him. That is the testimony of scripture. The commands “Delight yourself in the Lord” and “serve the Lord with gladness,” are part of our duty. The delight and the gladness are not options and suggestions they are commands. We do not complete our duty until we have joy in it.

A man who most helped John Piper in the development of his theology, a man that (if read) impacts most of us, was Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an American Puritan preacher/theologian in the 1700s. His most famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is still being examined in high school English classes across America[14]. Edwards’ own words are most helpful in uncovering the truth of our enjoyment in God as part of our fulfilling our duty to Him.

God glorifies Himself toward the creatures also in two ways: 1. By appearing to…their understanding. 2. In communicating Himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which He makes of Himself…God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it…He that testifies his idea of God’s glory [doesn’t] glorify God so much as he that testifies also to his approbation of it and his delight in it.[15]

Knowing that God is glorious is not quite the same as delighting in God’s gloriousness. People everyday, everywhere, see God’s glory. It is in the trees, the birds, the sunshine, the rain, indeed in the whole created world. But God is not glorified in man simply by man’s seeing this. For, as I said, all men see it. God wants us to delight in His glory! The saying of John Piper’s that is most frequently quoted is a truth that is applicable here: “God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.” Enjoying God is our duty, and anything less than that is a failure of full duty.

God’s Passion for God’s Glory
So that settles the issue, for me at least, of how God’s command for us to glorify Him is good for us. Our glorifying Him is the consummation of our enjoyment in Him! God’s command for us to glorify Him is His command for us to be joyful. But there is still this nagging feeling that God’s command for us to glorify Him is selfishness on His own part. How do we settle this issue? Certainly God is seeking our joy in His demand for worship, but couldn’t He have devised another method of giving us joy? Isn’t this somehow a vanity on God’s part? Does He merely want His divine ego stroked? The answer to that is a resounding no!

Piper has written another book, well worth reading, titled God’s Passion for His Glory. This book, while containing a more biographical sketch of the development of Piper’s Theology, includes in it one of the most profoundly influential works on this subject of God’s demand for praise. It is a work by Jonathan Edwards called, The End for Which God Created the World. In this book both Piper’s words and the re-printed words of Edwards tell us that God is uppermost in His own affections. Edwards’ writes:

Whatever that be which is in itself most valuable, and was so originally, prior to the creation of the world, and which is attainable by the creation, if there be anything which was superior in value to all others, that must be worthy to be God’s last end in the creation; and also worthy to be his highest end[16].

That if God himself be, in any respect, properly capable of being his own end in the creation of the world, then it is reasonable to suppose that he had respect to himself, as his last and highest end, in this work; because he is worthy in himself to be so, being infinitely the greatest and best of beings. All things else, with regard to worthiness, importance, and excellence, are perfectly as nothing in comparison of him. And therefore, if God has respect to things according to their nature and proportions, he must necessarily have the greatest respect to himself. It would be against the perfection of his nature, his wisdom, holiness, and perfect rectitude, whereby he is disposed to do every thing that is fit to be done, to suppose otherwise[17].

God would be unjust to love anything less than what is supremely valuable, and He is supremely valuable. He must love His glory first and foremost because His glory alone is worthy of His affections. It is proper and right to love something in accordance with that objects worthiness, and God’s glory is above all things worthy. He must love what is worthy of love! God is not being selfish when He demands that we glorify Him, He is being true to His nature! If He denied glory to what was worthy of glory, then He is being unjust. So He demands that we bring Him glory because He is worthy to be glorified. John Piper says it, perhaps, better than I do, “If God should turn away from Himself as the source of infinite joy, He would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of His own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside Himself. He would commit idolatry[18].”

What’s the Bible Say?
The question we must consider is do the Scriptures, God’s own words, echo this teaching or is it man made theory? Let’s look at Isaiah 48:11, “For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it, for how should my name be profaned? My glory I will not give to another.” What God does, is ultimately for His “own sake.” Whatever God does is to bring Him glory. Here in this particular text God says that it is “For my name’s sake I defer my anger” (v.9). One might also consider the text of Ezekiel 20: 8b-9, “Then I said I would pour out my wrath upon them and spend my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt. But I acted for the sake of my name, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations among whom they lived, in whose sight I made myself known to them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt.” Here again God says He will not pour out His just wrath upon the Israelites, not for their sake, but for His “name’s sake.” What God does is ultimately for His glory. We turn again to the Psalms, “Yet He saved them for His name’s sake, that He might make known His mighty power” (Psalm 106:8). God saved the Israelites from the Egyptian oppressors by parting the Red Sea; and He did this not for their sake but for His sake, that He might make known His “mighty power.” God is first and foremost for the display of His glory. He loves His glory and loves to be glorified! Even salvation is ultimately for His sake, His glory. God loves God’s glory!

There are a multitude of other texts that echo these same truths (Exodus 14:4, 18; Psalm 23:3; 2 Kings 19:34; 2 Kings 20:6; Ezekiel 36:22-23, 32). The New Testament as well promotes this truth. Specifically in the revelation of Jesus Christ is God glorified. God delights in the Glory of His Son. Hebrews 1:3 says, “He [Jesus] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…” When God delights in the glory of the Son He is delighting in His own glory, for the Jesus is God (John 1:1). John 17:4 testifies to Jesus’ chief duty in His incarnation, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” Jesus came to glorify the Father, and we praise God that the means of glorifying the Father was by redeeming lost sinners.

That God has a passion for His glory is not a man made theory, it is the very teaching of the scriptures. We believe it because the Bible says it, not because John Piper or anyone else has stated it. God’s word says that He is for His glory. “The chief end of God is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever[19].”

Enjoying and Desiring God: The Practical Means of Fulfilling Our Purpose
If we are commanded to “Delight in the Lord,” then we had better do it. But how? Being satisfied in God is not so simple. We find ourselves, as C.S. Lewis put it, “too easily satisfied.” We find ourselves delighting instead in TV, cars, money, jobs, family, friends, food, and all these things steal our joy and praise and rob God of His glory. How do we fight for joy in God? What are the practical ways to “delight yourself in the Lord?” The Bible is practical theology, it does not merely say “delight yourself in the Lord,” but it shows the actions taken by individuals to fulfill such a command.

The Psalmist wrote, “For He [God] satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things” (Psalm 107:9). This is the first truth that we must come to an understanding of: “Authentic joy in God is a gift[20].” Notice that in this text “He,” that is God, is doing the action: God “satisfies the longing soul,” and God “fills with good things.”

True joy in God cannot be conjured up. It is not something that we, initially or finally, generate within us. (1) Initially: It is God who saves, not man! “For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom…” (1 Corinthians. 1:21). “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not of your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). (2) Finally: It is God who gives us joy. As the Psalmist prayed, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation…” (Psalm 51:12). Paul writes that the fruits of the Spirit, notice not the fruits of man, are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” (Galatians 5:22-23).

Do not ever imagine that you are able to be joyful in God without His working it in you. Do not think that you can simply be joyful in God whenever you feel like it, or that you will when appropriate “feel” happy in God. It is a gift of the Spirit of God. So why does God punish us for not being joyful in Him? How can He command what we cannot do and then punish us for failure to do it? God can do so because our inability does no absolve us from moral responsibility. If I borrow 30,000 dollars from my neighbor and blow it all on gambling I have a moral responsibility to pay that money back, even though I am physically unable. Inability does not eradicate responsibility. Piper says, “It is not biblical to say that the only virtues God can require of me are the ones that I am good enough to perform[21].” Martin Luther said it this way in his arguments against Erasmus, “By the words of the law man is admonished and taught, not what he can do, but what he ought to do; that is, that he may know his sin, not that he may believe that he has any strength[22].” The commands of scripture teach us not what we are able to do but what we ought to do. We have a moral responsibility to God despite our inability.
But the fact that joy in God is a gift does not allow us to sit idly by waiting for God to make us happy in Him. For God not only pre-ordains that Christians will “delight in Him,” but He pre-determined the means by which we find that delight in Him as well. God has mediums that He works through, He does not arbitrarily bestow joy, but He does so through His pre-determined means. Thus it follows that we must learn what those means are and pursue them with all our might; for this is where the gift of joy is bestowed upon us.

The Pre-Ordained Means of Finding Joy in God
Piper argues “the fight for joy is first and always a fight to see. Seeing the glory of Jesus Christ in the gospels awakens joy[23].” To glorify God we must see God as He really is. Seeing God how He really is is what we fight for. We fight for a clear picture of Jesus; we fight to see His glory.
There is a danger here. It would be easy to assume that by simply seeing God as glorious we are glorifying Him. But the Bible talks of two ways of seeing. Jesus says in Matthew 13:13, “This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see…” So it is evident here that merely seeing with the eyes in our heads we do not glorify God. Paul prayed, however, for an illuminating of the eyes of our hearts. “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18). So there is a distinct difference between seeing with the eyes on our face and seeing with the eyes on our hearts. Piper showed me the difference; “Spiritual seeing is the act of the heart that corresponds to the revelation of the glory of God for the enjoyment of His people[24].” Piper was shown this through the Bible first, and through Jonathan Edwards’ writings second. Edwards, whom I heard about first through Piper, said, “God is glorified not only by His glory’s being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. When those that see it delight in it, God is more glorified than if they only see it[25].” This is spiritual seeing, not merely seeing it, but enjoying it. For Paul tells us that all people see God’s glory. “For what can be known about God is plain to them. For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Romans 1:19-20). But we suppress the truth in our unrighteousness (v.18) and seeing we do not see. Now comes the all-important question: how do we fight for this gift of spiritual sight?

Well of course it starts with the cross. As I said in the last chapter, all things flow from or look back to the cross of Christ. First comes salvation by the cross and then comes a living in the shadow of that cross. It is in the Gospel first and foremost that we see God’s glory revealed. No one will see God’s glory until He looks to the cross. “The divine glory we have been redeemed to see is most beautifully shown in the redemption itself. The all-glorious Christ is both the means and the goal of our salvation from blindness[26].” The fight to see Christ is the same one that we fight to live in the gospel, because it is in the gospels that we see God’s glory most beautifully shown. Fighting for a Cross-Centered Life is fighting to see and enjoy God’s glory (spiritual sight). Remember our practical steps: Memorize the Gospel, Pray the Gospel, Sing the Gospel, Reflect on how the Gospel has Changed You, and Study the Gospel. These are the same practical steps we take to see God’s glory more fully; for it is in the Gospel that it is most beautifully shown. Piper adds, “The relationship between the word of God and the glory of God is remarkable, and we should grasp it firmly[27].” To see God’s glory with spiritual eyes we must go to the word of God, that is the Bible. We must fight with ourselves to be in the Bible daily; studying, reading, and saturating our minds in the truth of scripture and the glory of God as it is displayed there within. We fight for this spiritual sight of seeing and savoring (that is enjoying) God by meditating on the word of God. “I will praise you with an upright heart, when I learn your righteous rules” (Psalm 119).

Summary
We were made with the purpose of glorifying God; but in order to truly fulfill our duty to glorify Him we must enjoy Him. The command of scripture is to “Delight yourself in the Lord,” and to “Serve the Lord with gladness.” When God commands that we praise Him, He is commanding that we have fullness of joy. When He commands that we praise Him, He is commanding that what is worthy of glory be given glory, thereby maintaining His justice. We glorify God in a multitude of ways, in fact Paul tells us to glorify God in all that we do (1 Corinthians 10:31). To enjoy God we must, however, see God as glorious; this is seeing with the eyes of the heart. The place where this happens is in the gospel, where God’s glory is shown most beautifully. So the fight for a cross-centered life that we examined in the last chapter is the same fight we face to see Christ as glorious and to have joy in God.

We were made to glorify God. Glorifying God means enjoying God. Enjoying God means seeing Christ as He really is. Seeing Christ as He really is means living in the Gospel!

[1] Quoted from his sermon “The Glory of Christ The Redeemer,” preached at Capitol Hill Baptist Church.
[2] John Piper, Desiring God. (Sisters: Multnomah, 2003). p. 42.
[3] Ibid.
[4] John Piper, The Dangerous Duty of Delight. (Sisters: Multnomah, 2001). p. 17.
[5] Westminster Catechism. Question 1.
[6] John Piper, Desiring God. (Sisters: Multnomah, 2003). p. 18.
[7] Ibid. p. 17.
[8] C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory. (New York: Harper, 1980). p. 26.
[9] Ibid.
[10] John Piper, Desiring God. (Sisters: Multnomah, 2003). p. 9.
[11] Ibid. p. 22.
[12] C.S. Lewis, Reflection on the Psalms. (Orlando: Harcourt, 1958). p. 90.
[13] Ibid. p. 95.
[14] Though it is commonly used as a means of proving that the Puritans were a group of religious prudes and pessimists, which they indeed were not!
[15] As quoted from John Piper, Desiring God.
[16] Jonathan Edwards, The End for which God Created the World. (Chapter 1: Section 1. 3).
[17] Ibid. (Section 1.4).
[18] Desiring God. p. 47.
[19] Ibid. p. 321.
[20] Ibid. p. 352.
[21] John Piper, When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2004). p. 47.
[22] Martin Luther, Bondage of the Will. J.I. Packer, O.R. Johnston trans. (Grand Rapids: Revell, 1957). p. 159.
[23] When I Don’t Desire God. p. 43.
[24] Ibid. p. 58.
[25] Quoted from Jonathan Edwards, The End for which God Created the World. in John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory. (Wheaton: Crossway, 1998). p.242.
[26] When I Don’t Desire God. p. 62.
[27] Ibid. p. 65.