The Ultimate Goal

Question 1 of the Shorter Westminster Catechism: What is the chief end of man?
Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

Reflection:  When I read this a few years ago I honestly thought it was one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever heard. How could that be the chief end of man? Rubbish! I scoffed and went my merry way thinking I would discover the real truth about the chief end of man and prove whoever came up with that silly answer wrong! What an idiot I was.     

Fast forward to now. Reading these words causes my heart to leap with joy at the simple and evident truth of it. I completely owe this change of heart to the Holy Spirit who God gifted to me when Jesus found me, called me, and transformed my disbelief–with His help my thoughts ascend out of the fog so that I see more clearly now.     

Part of my original issue in understanding this Truth was that I didn’t have the right idea about this “God” we were supposed to glorify, and for that matter I was just as ignorant about what glorifying Him meant. But as I studied the Triune Christian God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and got to know His multifaceted and personal character, my understanding of who God is became less cloudy; it was as if I had been driving through an unknown landscape on moonless night–I was on a road with a glimmer of light shining and the road before me was all I could see; I was in the dark. As the Son rose (pun intended), a clearer picture started forming about this God whose presence I had entered until the Light shone bright enough to make the scene around me begin to crystalize. Most of my life I had been on the wrong road, but God through His infinite wisdom used my wrong turns to put me right where I needed to be so that He would win me over even as I was fleeing. He replaced my faulty directions and took a seat beside me as my Navigator.     

Throughout History, as various people got to know God, they recorded their findings and left a wealth of information to help us better know God, they left us maps they created along their journeys. The Presbyterian heritage has developed its own God GPS and roadmaps. One element of that system is the Book of Confessions. The 2019 Study Edition offers a wealth of guidance in helping us know God (including the Westminster Shorter Catechism with historical background and other notes for increased understanding.) These guides are useful but we should only rely on them as secondary sources while spending a liberal amount of time getting to know God and being in relationship with Him by direct reading of the Bible (it’s like traversing the Mountain rather than reading about it in a travel book).     

The character of God which He revealed to me began with His love, joy and peace then developed into a deeper understanding of His holiness, forgiveness, and mercy which led to my dependence on Him as Healer, Restorer and Savior. Through the Bible I learned that God is: Love (1 John 4:16); the Personification of righteous love (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) the Source of complete joy  (John 15:11); the Provider of transcendent peace (Philippians 4:7); merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness (Exodus 34:6), the One who satisfies our deepest needs and desires (John 4:14); our Divine healer who makes us whole by restoring our relationship to God (1 Peter 2:24-25). How could a Being of this character not win my soul?     

So now that I knew God, what would it mean to glorify Him? As I regularly studied the Bible new things jumped from the pages and got my attention. Romans 8:30 tells us that God chooses us and gives us His glory. When that verse caught my attention, I realized I didn’t know what glory meant so I went to secondary sources to learn more about “God’s glory”. One thing I learned is that God’s glory is His goodness and love. As I studied, I thought about my teenage years listening to filthy music and how my favorite rappers glorified drugs, money, violence and sex. So, I came to the understanding that to glorify something is to give it ultimate focus, to magnify it, to shine light on it, to put it on a pedestal and make it supreme.     

So how does one glorify God? A website I visit often, gotquestions.org, summarizes what it means to glorify God: “To glorify God is to extol His attributes—His holiness, faithfulness, mercy, grace, love, majesty, sovereignty, power, and omniscience, to name a few—rehearsing them over and over in our minds and telling others about the singular nature of the salvation only He offers.” This constant rehearsal transforms us into carriers of His character.     In summary, in order to glorify God we must know what He is like. We get this understanding by giving Him our highest focus. Just as good dental health requires twice a day brushing, good Godly health requires daily communion with God through dwelling in His Word and studying about Him. But just knowing about Him isn’t enough, we must also magnify His character by becoming living examples of His qualities, such as His goodness and love. Our study of Him should result in us becoming more and more like Him, it should restore the Divine image within us. When the Divine image pours through our being it brings Him the glory that is the chief end of man.      

Then, when we are in tune with Him we will enjoy Him forever. But what does forever mean? The dictionary defines it as all future moments. But I think it means more, forever includes all moments past, present, and future. And when we follow God’s way, we can be healed of our anguished past by looking at all our bad and seeing the good that God is able to make from it. We can see a bright future as we trust God to fulfill his promises, especially the one that he will wipe away every tear and make all wrongs right (Rev 21:4-5). This trust will allow the Holy Spirit to lift every moment above the fog into God’s truth where we have strength to face all our challenges with confidence as we live out God’s plans for us as “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37). Every day as we don the Armor of God (Eph 6:10-20), every lie of Satan will be burned away as the truths of God replace corruption with righteousness and we enter His peace and are enabled to live in His joy.

Prayer:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our Triune God, thank You for Your work of Salvation and  giving us Your glory so we are able to live in the Spirit, dead to our sin which You have washed away through Your work on the Cross. Please magnify Yourself through us until no one is able to escape the illumination of Your goodness and love.