What Purpose Did God Make Us For?
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This is a great question. The Bible tells us that God has many purposes for us. We don’t just have one purpose. Let’s discuss a few of them.
People have the overall purpose of glorifying God. This is the purpose of all created things. Psalm 19:1 says, “the heavens declare the glory of God….” In 1 Cor.10:31, Paul wrote, “Do all to the glory of God.” Psalm 148 teaches us that all things “Praise the Lord.”
As humans, our purpose is to love God and love one another. In Deut.6:4-5, Moses taught that we are to love God supremely. Leviticus 19:18 teaches us to love our neighbor. Jesus combined these two together when he was asked the question, “What is the greatest commandment.” Matthew 22:37-40 – Love God and one another.
The church also has a purpose. It is to unite mankind in one body under Christ. “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:20-21). Ephesians 3:11 says that uniting mankind into the one body of Christ is God’s eternal purpose.
God has a purpose for marriage, and so also for husbands and wives. In Gen.1:28, God told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply.” The prophet Malachi clarifies this for us. God wanted them to produce godly offspring (Malachi 2:15).
Children have the purpose of obeying their parents until they have grown enough to be responsible for themselves. “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: ‘that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth’” (Ephesians 6:1-3). Parents also have a purpose. “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).
God wants us to fulfill His purposes for us by living for Him every day. In this way, we can grow to be the kind of people that God wants us to be. Ultimately, God wants every single person to grow into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 8:29 says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Why did God create mankind?
Why do parents have children? Children are a blessing to the parents who then get to demonstrate their love to another, one who is helpless and completely dependent upon them.
One of the key differences is that a lot of what God does, He does for His own sake, that is, out of His own internal motivations founded by Who He is as a Being. For example in Isaiah 43:25, we read, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; And I will not remember your sins.” Notice why God does what He does—for His own sake. That is, God acts based upon the goodness of His own character. He doesn’t do these things to receive a reward from anyone. He doesn’t do it out of some kind of external need that He has to be attached to others. God is motivated by His own holy character.
This is basically what the apostle Paul states in Romans 3:23-26:
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 5:6-8 says: For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The only reason that I know that God created mankind was because He wanted to demonstrate His love and goodness toward all, and He must have thought that this was worth demonstrating for His own character’s sake.