An all powerful, absolutely sovereign, creator God unconditionally loved His d
epraved, rebellious creatures and came to earth to save them, even though they rejected Him and His leadership to follow God’s mortal enemy, Satan.
That statement above encapsulates the answers to the first three questions which define our biblical worldview so far: 1.) Who is God? 2.) Who am I? 3.) How does God relate to me? In this blog posting, let’s investigate the answer to #4: Why am I here?
Because of that great love God has for us, God came to earth Himself in the form of a man. Laying aside His right to use His divine power as God for 33 years, He did a job only a God-man could do—live a perfect life and die as a man to satisfy the demands of the judgment earned by all mankind. He was crucified as a common criminal on a Roman cross 2,000 years ago to redeem us in the court of cosmic, divine justice.
Not only was the debt for our sin that we owed to God forever cancelled at that cross, but Satan was defeated and stripped of all His former power there as well. He is now a roaring, toothless tiger who is currently waging desperate, guerilla warfare against God and His people. He is using the only weapon that remains to him—lies and deceit—as he attempts to fight off His inevitable demise.
This is the situation into which we have been born, the setting in which our lives will be lived—in the middle of a universal spiritual battle that is currently taking place all around us.
Mankind has traveled the detour we took at the Tree in the Garden and is now, since the cross, back on the highway to God’s original purpose for man from which we fell. As we become aware of the fullness and finality of what He did at that cross (It is finished!), and self-consciously join with Him in that eternal purpose, He equips and empowers us with His Spirit within to fulfill it. We are now ready to ignore Satan’s lies and deceit and discover the answer to our fourth biblical worldview question: 4.) Why am I here?
The summary answer to that question is “to join with our Father in His eternal purpose, His ultimate intention, for man,” what I like to call, “the family business.” Until we see and experience the first three elements of our biblical worldview, we are not ready for #4, and rightfully so. Young children are neither interested in, nor have they even yet thought about, “a purpose for living,” or “making my life count.”
Children simply enjoy life and all the pleasures that come from being loved, cared for, and having all their needs met—or they experience the trauma from not having such a home. In either case, their concern is only themselves, and that is exactly as it should be. But there comes a time, when they approach adulthood, that they raise their vision up and out from themselves and their personal struggles and desires and realize they are made for something more. That is when Daddy says, “I would love to have you come into business with me.”
This time cannot be rushed. Daddy loves, woos and invites us to join Him at work at just the right time—when we have come to the Lord and experienced the answers to the first three questions that make up our biblical worldview. Then we are ready for real work!
We are not discussing vocation. Joining God’s family business has nothing to do with the particular job I am pursuing, nor does it have to do with how successful in the eyes of the world I become, how much money I make, nor the fame I acquire. Those may all follow me, but they are entirely incidental.
All who join Daddy in His family business are engaged in the same three activities. These are expressed in the foundational Scripture for everything else the Bible tells us about man. It is difficult to even talk about the Christian life without first discussing God’s plan for man as revealed clearly in this passage in Genesis 1:26-28:
“Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. . . Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
From these verses, there are three aspects to God’s plan for man: 1.) to bear God’s image, i.e., to look like HIm. We saw that in the answer to the question, “How does God relate to me?” It is His job to sanctify us, “to conform us to the image of Christ,” and He is busily going about that job every day.
The second aspect to our purpose in life is 2.) to have “dominion” over the earth and all it contains. We are His emissaries, ruling for Him over whatever responsibility He has given us in His creation—His “Kingdom.” This means that, wherever we go and whatever we do, we are standing for His law—His truth.
Finally, 3.) He has commissioned us to reproduce others—both physically and spiritually—who will in turn be equipped with this biblical worldview to rule for God when we are gone. Physically, his family is a man’s primary responsibility, and it is a woman’s highest calling. Spiritually, the family forms the basis from which spiritual reproduction occurs, as it produces young men and women with the vision of the kingdom that they naturally spread as they move out into the world!
There you have it. We have answered our four questions that define a biblical worldview. The answer to question #4, “Why am I here?” is: 1.) to reflect the image of God to all I meet; 2.) to rule for Him in all I do; 3.) to reproduce others who will reflect, rule, and reproduce as well. As the church awakens to this great eternal purpose and begins to pursue it, the Lord’s prayer will be answered—”Your kingdom come, Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).
