MONDAY
A couple of weeks ago we talked about our ultimate purpose in life. The New City Catechism asks the question: “How and why did God create us?” Answer: “God created us male and female in his own image to know him, love him, live with him, and to glorify him. And it is right that we who were created by God should live to his glory.” I think this is right in describing our high level, ultimate, core purpose. It’s important for us to know this purpose and live like it’s true because any other purpose stops short of God’s true purpose for humanity. If we make any other purpose our ultimate purpose we will inevitably find ourselves wanting more. We will find ourselves living through situations in life that leave us without purpose. Any other purpose just isn’t big enough to encompass all of life in a comprehensive and satisfactory fashion. This ultimate purpose is a major part of what makes the gospel simply irresistible.
However, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, we don’t often operate in our day to day on this high of a theological and philosophical level. We can’t. When you ask yourself why you get up and go to work in the morning, there are a lot of answers (layers or steps) between the first answer to that question and your ultimate purpose (the core, or the top). I think we would be better off in our faith if we did think about the ultimate answer more but that’s not easy to do in the day to day grind.
Instead, in the day to day we should operate in the important, but not ultimate, layers of meaning. These are some of the alternatives that we talked about a couple of weeks ago: happiness, achievement and love. So for the rest of this week we will explore these three spheres that give us meaning in life.
We must keep a couple of things in mind here as we go through this week:
- These are not our ultimate purpose. Without knowing, loving, living with God and glorifying God as our ultimate purpose we will easily lose our way. I think I’ve belabored this point long enough.
- These are not self-determined but revealed to us by God. We will explore the significance of this in the revelation of Scripture as we go throughout our week.
1 Corinthians 10:31 31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Romans 1 1:36 36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Additional Content
Reflection
For today just spend some time in worship, glorifying God and declaring your desire to know him, love him and live with him forever.