The Chief End of Man

A college professor once told a pompous student, “Young man, I suggest you plunge your finger into a bowl of water and remove it—the hole that remains will show you how significant you really are.” Our world is driven by the fleeting and superficial—people, ideas and things that pave the way to human insignificance, but it was never meant to be that way. Francis Schaeffer put it like this…

“The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”* It would be scripturally false to leave out the second phrase, “and to enjoy Him forever.” The men who formulated this showed great wisdom and insight is saying, “and to enjoy Him forever.” Nevertheless, the first phrase is the first phrase: “The chief end of man is to glorify God.” And in Christianity we have a non-determined God who did not need to create because there was love and communication within the Trinity, and yet having been created, we as men can glorify God. If we fail to emphasize that we can glorify God, we raise the question of whether men are significant at all. We begin to lose our humanity as soon as we begin to lose the emphasis that what we do makes a difference. We can glorify God, and both the Old and New Testament say that we can even make God sad. That is tremendous.”

Yes, it is.
Have a significant day.

—j

*Quoted from The Westminster Shorter Catechism