Do you know why you exist? Why do you–a personal being capable of having relationships, dreams, goals, and aspirations–exist? Knowing why something exists is the key to knowing the function of that thing and the pathway to flourishing according to its design. As a person you are no different. You exist for a reason,and knowing that reason and living out that reason have everything to do with flourishing in what you were designed to be. Do you randomly exist? Are you the result of spontaneous combustion? Is the game of existence seeking to escape existence? Is existence all about the here and now? Is there any one you must answer to?
God’s Answer for Why We Exist
The Word of God answers the question of why we exist with crystal clear clarity: We exist for God. Consider what God’s Word says:
“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Revelation 4:11).
“For from Him [God] and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen” (Romans 11:36).
This claim is the claim of the Bible. We were made by God and for God. You could say, “For in Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28). God is self-sufficient and therefore without need. He did not make this world and all that exists because He was lonely. He had eternal, perfect fellowship and love within Himself as the One God in three Persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). If God did not need to make us but chose to, we were made for His delight and His purposes alone. Just as jogging in wing-tips and driving a sedan on off-road trails is a violation of design that leads to destruction, so also living for anything or anyone other than God is a violation of design that leads to destruction. To live for anything or anyone other than God is like trying to run through a brick wall. Yes, you can attempt to do so, but you are the one who will come out bloodied, not the wall.
Our Inability to Live Out the Reason for Our Existence
Though made by and for God, ever since the first two human beings rebelled against God we have each been born sinners incapable of living according to our design. As humanity’s representative Adam failed to live out his reason for existence (Genesis 3:6-7). Rather than finding his significance in God he tried to find it in himself and thereby set humanity on a course of sin and suffering. As Romans 5:12says, “Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.” By nature we are all born enemies of the One we were made for, and all of us have mounting evidence in our daily practice that we are sinners by choice. To be a sinner is to be someone who has violated the character of God and therefore transgressed against His law. Simply put, sin is cosmic lawlessness (1 John 3:4).
“Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins”(Ecclesiastes 7:20).
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
God’s Plan to Redeem Us for Himself
Every human being is made by God and for God but is born with a sin nature. Additionally, we choose to be sinners who live for ourselves and what God has made rather than for God Himself (Romans 1:25). But because God is love (1 John 4:16), He enacted His eternal plan of redemption. All who would in faith trust in His way of salvation would be saved spiritually so that they might be what they were made to be.
We are all born enslaved to sin (John 8:34), but God sent His Son to become a man that we might be redeemed from our slavery and brought into a relationship with the God who we were made by and for. That plan to redeem a people for His name was provided for by God’s son Jesus, the promised Messiah. Jesus came to live out perfectly the reason for every single human being’s existence. The Son of God became a man such that as the God-Man He might live the sinless life that human beings are unable to live before God. He then went to the cross to die in the place of sinners who have lived their lives for anything and everything other than the One for Whom they were made. The Bible teaches that on the cross Jesus “was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him” (Isaiah 53:5-6).
The Claims of Jesus Verified
Jesus claimed to come from heaven as the Son of God who is one with God the Father (John 10:30), to have the authority to forgive the sins of people (Mark 2:10), and to have power to give eternal life to all those who believe in Him (John 3:15). Jesus also said this about Himself: “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day” (Luke 9:22). Such were the audacious claims of Jesus, but as audacious as those claims seem to be they were not the raving of a lunatic. Jesus did die on the cross and He did rise from the dead on the third day showing Himself to be the Son of God (Romans 1:4). When Jesus rose from the dead all that He said was validated, all that was said to have happened on the cross was confirmed. The call to turn from our sin and trust in Jesus alone for salvation must be taken seriously.
You were made by God and for God, and He sent Jesus to redeem you that you might be who you were made to be: someone who lives for and delights in God the Creator, in whose presence there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). So what must you do to be redeemed so that you might live out your reason for existence?
Your Necessary Response
First, you must acknowledge that you are a sinner in need of spiritual life and be willing to repent or turn from that sin, confessing your guilt before God. In other words, you must hate your sin rather than love it.
Second, you must acknowledge that Jesus is the only Savior and that He died in your place and rose again that you might be given spiritual life through faith in Him. Placing your faith in Jesus means to trust in Him alone for salvation knowing that there is nothing you can do to earn salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9). You must rely upon Jesus alone for your relationship with God and your eternal destination.
In other words, you must have “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21). If you desire to receive this gift of salvation you must simply “confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, [and] you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation (Romans 10:9-10).
Will you trust in Jesus today for your salvation? Will you stop living for yourself, others, or things rather than God for whom you were made? You can do so by simply talking to God with humble acknowledgement that you are a sinner in need of His grace. Will you turn to Jesus as the only way for salvation because of His death for you and resurrection from the grave? If you will trust in Jesus then you will be made by God and for God not simply by creation, but now also by redemption. Speaking of His children, God says they are “called by My name” and are those that “I have created for My glory, Whom I have formed, even whom I have made” (Isaiah 43:7). If you trust in Jesus today you will become one of God’s people whom He has formed for Himself so that you might declare His praise (Isaiah 43:21).
©2014 The Bible Church, Bible References NASB®
