The Purpose of Life
What is the purpose of life? This question has been asked by Christians and non-Christians alike for centuries. Countless books have been written to answer this existential question and even for Christians this quest for purpose never seems to end. Why is that? I would suggest it’s because we’re trying to answer this question from the wrong direction. We have tried to take God’s purposes and retrofit it to the individual. Well-meaning Christian authors write about personal fulfillment, they ask “what are you most passionate about?” and they advise us to find some way to shoehorn our own personal desires and ambitions into the wider purposes of God. We have it exactly backwards. We need a new approach. We need to answer this question of purpose from the right direction.
Viktor Frankl, though he was a non-Christian, gives to us a key insight into how to do this. His was a wisdom born of deprivation and he found the right perspective on how to answer the question of purpose when his life was stripped down to its bare minimum and when he was forced to face the reality of his own mortality every single moment of every single day. Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor who spent three years in four different concentration camps, and he recounted his experience in his famous book Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote this, “We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and right conduct.”
For Christians, at the end of our lives it will matter very little whether or not we ultimately got what we wanted out of life. What will be of infinitely greater importance is whether or not God got everything He wanted out of us. And so we need to think of ourselves as those who are being questioned by God – daily and hourly. Our answer, moment by moment, must consist in right action and in right conduct. God does have a purpose for His people and we need to align ourselves to that purpose. In order to do that, we first need to know what that is. Thankfully, God has already told us. He has shown us a glimpse into the future and to the end of all things – His ideal world and what it is you and I will be doing there.
Revelation 22:3-5 beginning with the latter half of verse 3: “But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it (speaking of the New Jerusalem) and his servants will worship him. They will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun for the Lord God will be their light and they will reign forever and ever.”
We see our purpose here in three things.
1. We are Made to Worship Him
Revelation 22:3: “But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him.” The word for worship here in the text is the Greek word latreuo and it can actually be translated as either “to serve” or “to worship.” Modern translations and commentaries are fairly evenly split as to which is most appropriate here. So the question is which is it? “To serve” or “to worship”? Latreuo in Revelation 22:3 means “to worship.”
How do we know this? Because John uses this Greek word latreuo only one other time in the book of Revelation – Revelation 7:15 – and in that passage it is collocated with another Greek word proskuneo which means “to worship” and based upon what is occurring in Revelation 7 it is clear that John uses both words synonymously to indicate worship. Revelation 7:9-12: “After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped (proskuneo) God saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’” Just three verses later in Revelation 7:15, that great multitude is seen before the throne of God and they latreuo Him day and night. Likewise, in Revelation 22:3 our final destiny is to stand before the throne of God and worship Him forever. What we are destined to then, we are called to now.
What does it mean to worship? N.T. Wright correctly defines worship this way: “It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the Creator and God the Rescuer from the creation that recognizes its Maker, the creation that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb. That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God’s dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in.”
2. We are to be His Personal Possession
Revelation 22:4: “His name will be on their foreheads.” The Greek word for forehead here is metopon and in extrabiblical literature it is used to refer to the branding of a slave. This Greek word only appears eight times in the New Testament and it only ever appears in the book of Revelation. Seven out of the eight times this word appears in the book of Revelation it has precisely this connotation – this idea of the branding of a slave. And there are only two mentions of God’s name being explicitly written on the foreheads of His servants – in Revelation 22:4 and in Revelation 14:1.
Revelation 14:1: “Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.” Revelation 14:4-5: “It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.” Without getting into the controversy regarding the identity of the 144,000, it is instructive for us to understand and to emulate the characteristics of those who God brands as His own. They are those who have not defiled themselves with women – they are sexually pure. They are those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes – they are without guile and they are blameless. In short, they are holy and they are entirely devoted to Christ no matter the cost.
As Christians, we bear His name for now and for all of eternity, we are to be His personal possession and so we are called to holiness and to an allegiance that is total. But, unfortunately, far too many Christians bear the name, but not the responsibility. This is tragic and perhaps the single most damaging reality to the cause of Christ. Because what a lost and skeptical world sees has an impact orders of magnitude greater than what it hears and if our lives do not live up to our profession, the world sees in our proclamations a vanity and a hypocrisy that is repellent. Such hypocrisy must never even be named among us. If there is a sin that we harbor, we have to get rid of it. If there is a hobby, a relationship, a form of entertainment that vies for our affection we need to cut it off knowing that we are called to a higher standard and set apart for a singular devotion to a God who is infinitely better.
Alexander the Great had a soldier serving in his army who bore the same name – Alexander – and this man was a notorious coward. Alexander the Great stood before this soldier and stated very plainly, “Drop the cowardice, or drop the name.” As Christians, we need to drop the sin or drop the name because it is not just our reputation that is at stake. The name of Christ has been stained by far too much scandal recently and the church has ceded far too much ground because we are engaged in a battle with the enemies of Christ while simultaneously providing them with ammunition. And we simply cannot win a war that way.
3. We are to Live for His Glory
Revelation 22:4-5: “They will see his face … and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun; for the Lord God will be their light.” In Scripture, the glory of God is equated with two things primarily and we see both in our text.
First, the glory of God is equated with the face of God. In Exodus 33:18, Moses begs the Lord saying, “Please show me your glory.” To which God responds in Exodus 33:20, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And yet, Revelation 22:4 declares we will see His face. I want you to consider for a moment just how astounding that is.
Speaking of God’s holiness and glory, John Calvin wrote this in his Institutes, “Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God." Every instance in Scripture when men and women saw just a glimpse of the refracted glory of God, it absolutely wrecked them.
Moses, hidden in the cleft of the rock, saw the afterglow of the backside of Yahweh and it irradiated his face. Paul, on the road to Damascus, saw the incandescent glory of the risen Christ and he fell on the ground and was blind for three days. John, in Revelation 1:17, saw the risen Christ in His majesty and he fell into a coma. In Isaiah 6:1-5, Isaiah writes this, “In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims, each one had six wings – with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts the whole earth is full of his glory.’ And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, ‘Woe is me! For I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’” Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up and he cursed himself and completely unraveled. In that same passage, we see seraphim surrounding the throne of God singing in antiphonal praise, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” and with two wings they flew, with two wings they covered their feet and with two wings they shielded their faces. These are angelic beings specifically designed and created to worship in the presence of the Almighty and even they simply cannot handle the glory of God. God’s glory is much too much.
Second, the glory of God is equated with light. In Ezekiel 10:4, when the Shekinah glory of God filled the temple of God it was described as “the brightness of the glory of the Lord.” Revelation 22:5 tells us that it is this Shekinah glory that will illuminate heaven. Which means that when we get there, everywhere we look we will see nothing but the glory of God. Everywhere we turn we will be engulfed in His refulgence. And the realities of heaven have a very practical application for you and me, here and now, and it is this: When we have been there for ten thousand years basking in the matchless glory of God, nobody will be looking at you. Nobody will be looking at me. And it will not matter how much glory, wealth, and fame we accumulated in this lifetime. Even if we were somehow able to gather together all of the acclaim and notoriety of all of collective humanity throughout all of human history and set it in one place and then compare that with the glory of God, we would be holding a candle to the sun.
Ten thousand years from now, nobody is going to care about what this world cares about. Nobody will even remember any of the things this world holds so dear and values so highly. When we get to heaven, I promise you nobody is going to care what we did for a living, or how much money we made, or how high up the corporate ladder we happened to climb. Ten thousand years from now, nobody is going to ask us how many followers we had on social media, or how many exotic vacations we went on, or how long and luxurious our retirement was. Nobody is going to ask because nobody is going to care. It will not matter one whit how big our houses were, or how nice our cars, or how large our investment portfolios. None of that will matter. All of it will burn.
There is only one thing that will matter for all of eternity: How we lived for God’s glory. His glory is all that we will ever see or care to. His glory alone will endure for all of eternity. Which means that a life lived for His glory is never wasted, it’s the only one that counts.
On May 20, 2000, John Piper preached a sermon to a crowd of approximately 40,000 college students and it is this sermon perhaps more than any other that ultimately defined a generation of preachers. And this is what he said at the end of that sermon: “Three weeks ago, we got news at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby Eliason – over 80, single all her life, a nurse. Poured her life out for one thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the sick and the poor in the hardest and most unreached places. Laura Edwards, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities, and in her retirement, partnering up with Ruby. [She was] also pushing 80 and going from village to village in Cameroon. The brakes give way, over a cliff they go, and they’re dead instantly. And I asked my people, ‘Is this a tragedy?’ Two women, in their 80s almost, a whole life devoted to one idea – Jesus Christ magnified among the poor and the sick in the hardest places. And 20 years after most of their American counterparts had begun to throw their lives away on trivialities in Florida and New Mexico, [they] fly into eternity in a moment. Is this a tragedy? It is not a tragedy. I’ll read you what a tragedy is [quoting from a Reader’s Digest article] ‘Bob and Penny . . . took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball, and collect shells.’ That’s a tragedy. And there are people in this country that are spending billions of dollars to get you to buy it. And I get 40 minutes to plead with you—don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you – don’t buy that dream. . . . As the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account with what you did: ‘Here it is, Lord – my shell collection. And I’ve got a good swing. And look at my boat.’ Don’t waste your life.”
John Piper then ended his sermon with a line from a poem by C.T. Studd, "Only one life, 'twill soon be past / Only what's done for Christ will last."
One Last Thing…
We are made to worship Him. We are to be His personal possession. We are to live for His glory. And we win in the end.
Revelation 22:5: “And they shall reign forever and ever.”
If we choose to fulfill our God given purpose. If we decide to live a life of worship, if we determine to live a life that is holy and entirely devoted to Christ, and if we choose to live a life in relentless pursuit of His glory then the world is going to hate us for it. Being a Christian is hard. It is not for the faint of heart. And it will only get harder from here.
Because we live in a post-Christian culture. Relativism and the tolerance of sin, once on the margins, now reside in the mainstream as aspirational virtues. Truth has been so degraded that even gender now is relative. In this climate, when we live out our Christian faith, when we speak out for the truth, we will be reviled for it. It is because I firmly believe that eternity is in the offing. We are not long for this world surely you have sensed this by now. We are living in the last days. Intense persecution is coming and convictions will be tested.
But, no matter what comes, no matter how hard it gets we can endure with courage and hope, even joy knowing that our victory is assured. And we can live out our God given purpose come what may because in the end, we live happily ever after.