We all live and then we all die. Is there any purpose in life?
If in the end life signifies nothing, why bother doing anything?
Thom Yorke, frontman of the band Radiohead, gives a blunt but resounding answer: “It’s filling the hole . . . that’s all anyone does.” Asked by his interviewer what then happens to the hole, Yorke replied, “It’s still there.”4
It’s a sobering thought. Everything we do—all the holidays, the conversations, the achievements, falling in love, choosing where to live and who to marry and what to wear and what to eat and how to bring up the children—is an unloved magazine in a doctor’s waiting room. It’s nothing more than a vacuous distraction until the moment our name is called and we receive the news we’ve been dreading all along.
The Bible surveys this pageant and agrees. If death is the ultimate fact of the universe, this must be our conclusion: “Meaningless! Meaningless. . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. . . . What do people gain from all their labors? . . . No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.”5
Death certainly cures us of the delusion that we are the centre of the universe or have ultimate control over our lives.
But it’s still a legitimate question to ask: What should we do with the short time we have? If a spade is for digging and scissors are for cutting, what are human beings for?
BORN TO . . . WHAT?
Our answer to this question is very important. Getting it wrong could be catastrophic. If you saw someone using a priceless Stradivarius violin to whack tent pegs into the ground, you’d rightly think it was a tragic waste of a good violin—and one expensive way to put up a tent.
By not recognising the violin’s purpose or suggesting that it has no purpose, we stand to lose a very great deal. Valuable things will be decimated. And the world will be denied the joyous sound of something doing what it was made to do.
So then: What are we human beings for? What is our purpose?
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING
The Bible’s answer to that question begins to unfold in its very first chapter, where we read that you and I were created “in God’s image”: “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”6
We were made to reflect God’s staggering beauty and goodness so that the world can enjoy its Creator even more. That is our purpose in life. And when we discover that purpose—like the Stradivarius being played rather than smashed—our hearts truly sing.
AN EGOCENTRIC GOD?
At this point, I should address a possible objection. If the ultimate purpose of God’s creation—and especially the ultimate purpose of human beings—is to bring glory to God, doesn’t that imply that God is rather selfish and egocentric?
First, the God of the Bible reveals something extremely unexpected about himself. He is a Trinity. This is a word that scares and confuses people. But it simply means that he is a “tri-unity”: three distinct persons united in one divine nature.11
Each of these persons—Father, Son, and Spirit—is endlessly self-giving to the others. The Father glorifies the Son, the Son glorifies the Father, and the Spirit brings glory to the Son, who in turn glorifies the Father.12
Secondly, as the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards pointed out, seeking one’s own glory is only a problem if the person doing it is not absolutely worthy of glory.14 In light of this, it’s very good news for us that God glorifies himself. In doing so, he is graciously pointing us to the source of all joy.
THE GOD OF ALL HAPPINESS
We don’t have to sacrifice our pleasure in life in order to image God. On the contrary, we image him best when we enjoy him most. The purpose of your life, then, is to enjoy God.
It’s in our best interests that we do, because all of us want to be as happy as we can be, after all. And it’s in God’s best interests that we do, because nothing glorifies God more than our happiness in him.
TURNING THE MIRROR AWAY
But in reality, as we know, that isn’t how we live. We live as if real happiness is found apart from God, and therefore we don’t glorify him.
We spend our time glorifying something or someone other than God. We can’t help ourselves. Because human beings were made in the image of God, we were made to glorify. So we seek out “lesser glories.”
When a mirror is “turned away” from someone, it no longer reflects them. And that is where we find ourselves: turned away from our Maker, estranged from him, deserving his condemnation, unable to enjoy the purpose for which we were made.
So what hope is there?
THE PERFECT “IMAGE OF GOD”
As you read the New Testament, you may start to notice something breathtaking. Jesus Christ is described as being and doing exactly what you and I were intended to be and do. He’s described as “the image of God” and “the image of the invisible God.”17 In other words, he perfectly reflects God’s character in every way.
In John 17:4, Jesus prays to his Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.” What was this work that God the Father gave his Son to do? It was to live a life that perfectly imaged God, a life that perfectly glorified him. In other words, Jesus came to do what you and I have failed to do. He perfectly mirrored the complete goodness, grace, justice, mercy, love, and overwhelming beauty of God.
TURNING THE MIRROR BACK
But of course, it’s not enough simply to recognise that Jesus imaged God perfectly. If we’re to live out our true purpose, we actually need to be transformed so that we become more like Jesus ourselves. As mirrors, we need to be “turned back” so that we can once again reflect our Maker.
And that is exactly what God does for all those who come to him. How do we come to him? Jesus gives us the answer: he tells us to “repent and believe” in him.19
It’s about recognising our complete dependence on the one who gives us “life and breath and everything else.”22 It’s about asking Jesus to do for us what only he can do. It’s about asking for forgiveness and repenting. It’s about asking him to send you his Spirit, so that you can live a life that begins to image the beauty of God’s character.
And may your heart begin to sing sweetly as it remembers what it was born to do.