What is the meaning of life? What is the purpose of the universe? Why were you born? What is the destiny of man? Why did God create man? All these are but different ways of asking the same question – what is God’s plan for man? All peoples at all times in all places have been seeking the answer to this question.
God is love[1] and he loves man.[2] God wants man to love him[3] and to be with him.[4] Therefore, God’s plan for man is for him to be with God in a loving relationship.
Secret Of Happiness
A sport car performs best when it is handled the way it is designed to. You load a Ferrari with goods and use it like a truck, you spoil it. Similarly, man is at his best when he lives as he is designed to. As man is made to be with God in a loving relationship, he is happy when he is with God in a loving relationship. Hence, by knowing why God made man, you discover the secret of happiness.
Origin Of Sin, Suffering And Death
Do you feel loved if someone performs an act of love for you because he is forced to do it, or he is tricked into doing it, or he is brainwashed to do it? Of course not. Therefore, love must be voluntary. Love that is forced is not love. So, God didn’t create man like a robot that is programmed only to love him. Instead God created man with the freedom to choose either to love him or not to love him. Love can only exist when there is such freedom.
One cannot be with another if they have contrasting behaviour and desires. So, for man to be with God, man must behave and desire the way God does.
Man chose to be away from God. Man chose to behave and desire as he wants.[5] The word to describe man living away from God is “sin”.[6] This is the origin of sin.
If loving God causes man to be with God and have happiness, then the consequences of not loving God must be the opposite. Hence, one consequence of sin is suffering (the opposite of happiness). Man suffers from violence, war and terrorism, broken family and child abuse, sickness and disease epidemic, suicide and depression, murder, rape and other crimes, poverty, starvation and other social problems. The other consequence of sin is death (the opposite of being with God).
Solution To Sin, Suffering And Death
God, who is love, does not wish man to suffer and die.[7] God wants man to go back to him and be with him.[8]
When God knows that a person or a group is seeking him to return to him, God will approach the person or the group.[9]
Can love exist in a vacuum? Is love only an idea? A thought? Is love merely a feeling? Without action, how can anyone know whether he loves someone? So, from time to time God approached different people at different times in different places and gave different commands to enable them to choose whether they really want to go back to God to love God no matter what. Throughout history, God has made approaches to people who sought him. Those who wanted to return to God to love God no matter what chose to obey the commands. This explains why despite the rebellion of man against God and the resultant suffering and death, God has allowed man to continue on earth and has not yet intervened to put an end to suffering and death. Through the ages, God has been collecting man who would love him no matter what to be with him.
In the beginning, one man sought God. He was Seth. He chose to be with God – to behaving according to the behaviour of God.[10] God entered into a loving relationship with Seth and his family. Prominent people who were with God in the bloodline of Seth were Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses. God approached them in the form of a human or an angel but the appearance was brief. God gave them specific commands to enable them to choose whether to love God and be with him no matter what.
Later, one nation sought God.[11] She was Israel. God approached this nation, and entered into a loving relationship with this nation. This time God related not only with one bloodline but with those who joined themselves with this bloodline.[12] God approached them as fire at Mount Sinai and there was smoke, thunders, lightnings, earthquake and thick cloud.[13] With them, God’s appearance lingered longer. God stayed with them for some time as the pillar of fire and cloud. God gave this nation laws as commands to enable them to choose whether to love God and be with him no matter what.
Eventually, man everywhere was seeking God.[14] God approached the world. God came as a human being named Jesus. This time God’s appearance was longest – for about 33 years. The laws which were meant for the nation of Israel living in the land of Israel were not suitable commands for people of different races with different cultures in different places and times. Jesus gave the world commands that would enable people to choose whether to love God and be with him. Jesus also taught people how to live a life of happiness, and he lived to show that it could be achieved. Because of his love for man, he suffered for man. He showed that by being with God suffering can be overcome. Because of his love for man, he died for man. He showed that by being with God death can be overcome through resurrection.
Those who are moved by his love will seek him, and God will bring them back to him. These are the commands of Jesus to enable man to choose whether to love God and be with him:
- Believe in Jesus
- Be baptised
- Have footwashing
- Receive the Holy Spirit
- Partake of the Lord’s supper
- Keep the Sabbath
- Repent and be righteous
- Do good works
What’s Next?
Read on about a command of Jesus to enable man to choose whether to love God and be with him: Believe In Jesus – Why? What Does It Mean?
[1] 1 Jn 4.8.
[2] Jn 3.16.
[3] When a nation was ready to love him, the first thing that God commanded their leader Moses to teach them was, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” [Deut 6.4-5] About 5 centuries later when this nation reached its zenith, her wise king, Solomon, summarised the whole duty of man in these momentous words: The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. [Ec 12.13] To fear God is to love him because when you love someone, you fear to offend him. About 3 centuries later when this nation began to turn away from him, God sent his prophet Micah to remind them of what he required of them: He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? [Mic 6.8] To walk with God is to love him for no one can ever walk with someone he does not love. When men and women from all nations were ready to love him, God came as Jesus and taught that the great commandment was to love God: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. [Mt 22.37-38].
[4] In his last days on earth, Jesus revealed that it was his desire for man to be with him: I desire that they … may be with me where I am… [Jn 17.24]. He promised to come again so that man could be with him: I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. [Jn 14.3] 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says that when Jesus comes back, man will always be with the Lord: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Colossians 1:26-27 says that man being with Christ is a revelation of the mystery hidden for ages and generations.
[5] Gen 3.1-6.
[6] Is 59.2.
[7] The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. [2 Pet 3.9].
[8] ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Return to Me,” declares the Lord of hosts, “that I may return to you,” says the Lord of hosts. [Mal 3.7].
[9] King David said this of God: If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off for ever. [1 Chron 28.9] In Jeremiah 29:13, God said, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Paul preached that God “made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him.” [Act 17.26-27] Hebrew 11.6 says that God “rewards those who seek him”.
[10] Adam was made in the image and likeness of God (Gen 5.1; 1.26-27). This cannot refer to physical image and likeness because God is a spirit. This image and likeness can only refer to character. When God created man, God implanted in man his own character because for God and man to be together, God and man must have compatible character. If God and man have conflicting character, God and man cannot be together. However, because God also implanted freewill in man, man can choose whether to act according to the character of God implanted in him or not to do so. Genesis 5.3 says that Seth had the likeness and image of Adam. This means that Seth chose to be with God by acting according to the character of God.
[11] Ex 2.23-25; Ps 81.4-7.
[12] Ex 12.38.
[13] Ex 19.16-19.
[14] Zech 8.16-23; Is 2.2-4.