Man’s chief end

I’ve been thinking a little about the phrase from the Westminster Catechism that says “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever”. Not that I’m trying to disagree with a well formed statement, but I’m not sure it quite says everything it needs to.

In the beginning there was nothing but God. All three parts of Him. The Father, source of wisdom, power, knowledge and love; the Word - the spoken expression of who God is, declaring His greatness, His wonder, His majesty; and the Spirit - the guide, the conscience, the breath of God.

Who knows how long the trinity existed before they decided to create everything - it probably can’t even be measured as time was yet to exist! Together the three members of the God head existed as a perfect, beautiful community - each displaying love to the others, and submitting in beautiful reverence to the other roles within the community. Some use the word ‘perikinesis’ to describe this communion - the dance of the Godhead. What a beautiful representation of how community is to work - a dance, a free flowing creative expression of life.

At some point the Godhead decided that the love they had for each other, the community they shared, was overflowing. It is in God’s nature to express creativity, and so using that creativity they created the universe. Out of the very mouth of God all that we know and see - all that we can’t yet see even with our technology and science - was created.

At the pinnacle of creation, after 5 days of God creating and seeing that “it was good” - God formed some dust into a body, breathed life into it and created man. No longer was “good” enough to express creation, no no. Creation was now “very good”. The creation of one man, one life, one flesh took creation from “good” to “very good”. The Godhead had created the purpose of creation - mankind.

But why?

Simple. God wanted to express his love.

Man’s chief end is not just to enjoy God and glorify Him. That is far too one sided. That discounts the entire purpose of creation. Yes we are to bring Him Glory. Yes we are to enjoy Him. But those are side effects - not the core reason.

The purpose of creation was… so that He could love us. Let that sink in.

God created

everything

so that He

could love

You.

How does that make you feel? Does that change how you look at yourself? It should!

Don’t get bogged down in all the wrong, all the sin, all the imperfection you see in yourself. Those things are there, those things are real and need to be said sorry for. But…

God created everything so that He could love you.

So don’t you think he can get past the other stuff, which is pretty small in comparison to the universe, to still love You despite your sin, your wrongdoing, your imperfection?

It gets better still… stay with me.

The Hebrew writers of the Old Testament had no concept of the word perfection. It wasn’t a thought that even existed in their mindset. The progression of God saying things were good, until man came and it became very good was meant to continue. There is no doubt in Hebrew scolars’ mind that things could have become very very good, or very very very good. God’s intention was that in community with man, as he already expressed in the trinity, creation would get even better. So you could say that…

God created everything so that He could love you, and be in communion with you.

That’s why heaven isn’t going to just be a worship party. If we’re going to get back to the restoration of the original plan for humanity, then God has so much more in mind. We’re going to create an ever increasingly more wonderful, more God worshipping, more mind-blowing creation through the expression of our communion with God.

Amazing.

God wants relationship with you. He wants you to be part of his trinity-community. You could say when you join in it becomes a quad-rinity - isn’t that amazing?

He wants this so much, that one of the God-head chose to be human, chose to take upon himself all the frailty and fragility that came with the sinful path chosen by Adam, chose to succumb to death despite living a perfect life, so that He could say sorry for our sin and become the sacrifice that means God no longer sees any sin in us. If we believe in him and what he has done for us, then we are ‘in Christ’ - meaning God looks at us and sees Christ in our place. He sees perfection instead of sin. He sees obedience instead of disobedience. He sees love instead of hate. He sees acceptance rather than rejection…

Jesus didn’t become human for a season, he chose it for eternity. When we see him in heaven we will see the scars that he bore for us, we will see his humanity. God scarred himself forever, so that we can be part of his community. That is how much he loves us. That is how much he wants us to be in communion with him.

God created everything, became human, chose pain and death for himself, so that He could love you, and to be in communion with you.

Please receive that truth. Please let it sink it.

It is freeing. It is liberating. Its is something worth rejoicing over and living for.

God wants to be in relationship with you. Whatever excuse you can think of to argue against that is meaningless in the light of what he has done for you. Nothing you can ever do can take away from the sacrifice he made just to be available to you.

It is totally unfair, it is totally one sided, but that is the expression of God’s love for you.

Your part is to just say yes, accept him - that really is all it takes…

My head is still spinning a bit from Martin and the guys coming over, but life continues. Here’s what I feel most challenged by at the moment…

They talked a lot about availability - making and keeping yourself available to God. That means lots of different things - but mainly it means constantly challenging yourself in situations where if God doesn’t do something you will probably end up looking silly. It means things like walking across the pub to prophesy to someone without yet knowing what you are about to say. As I’m a planner I find this whole concept a bit scary and difficult - but I’m willing to try.

I think the other challenge was just to make more time for actually engaging with people - I’ve been guilty of letting life get a bit cluttered with things that aren’t important, and I need to refocus my attention on the Shankill and what God has us here for. As summer is approaching it means I can make a natural break with some committments, and so have more time available (which I still have to intentionally use properly).

More to come as it continues to sink in

Jonny, Laurie and Sofia are off on hols this week (we’re all jealous), so Christina and I have been looking after their little dog called Tico. Christina thinks this will mean we’ll get a dog of our own soon; she’s wrong. Oh the intricacies of married life!

Anyways, I’ve never had a dog before, and even though its only been 2 days its been an experience. I was rudely woken this morning at 7am by him jumping on my head. Lovely. Yesterday, I was walking him and I felt like God was trying to say something to me, so I did my best to listen.

As we walked along, Tico pulled on the lead to the left, and to the right, sometimes he stopped to pee on a lamp-post, sometimes he tried to run ahead of me; but all the while I had the leash and decided the way to go. When other dogs came along I had to see him round the danger (he is a woose, but thinks he’s hard).

I felt like God was trying to show me this is how we can be with Him; we want to go in the right direction, but we chase all over the place following where we think is best to go, sometimes we run too fast, sometimes we go too slow; more often than not we don’t go in the right direction. But in the end, God has the leash - he directs our paths, he makes all things work for our good, he corrects us and encourages us.

Maybe its time for us to relax a little, and trust that God has it all covered, to really believe and live like He knows best, and will get us to where He wants us to be? Maybe we need to stop pulling at the leash and just go at the pace He wants us to go at?

It certainly seems that walking a dog is much easier when the dog lets you take control.