Would you start a business in an industry that you did not
understand? Your venture would soon
fail. Would start out in a new position
of employment without knowing what your employer expected you to do? You would not be able to keep the job. In every human endeavor the people who
succeed are those who understand what it is all about. And the same is true of life itself.
However, we start out our lives as infants, not knowing
what life is all about. That doesn’t
matter at first, when we are very young, because our parents care for us and
provide for all our needs. It is also
their responsibility to teach us what life is all about. But what if they don’t know, because their
parents had failed to teach them, and their parents’ parents had failed to
teach them? Then we can’t possibly find
out what life is all about, unless we learn from another source.
In the real world, that is what actually happened. In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth, and created human beings. Our
first parents, the first humans, had some insight into what life is all about
because God dealt with them personally.
But they rebelled against their Creator, and they gave birth to
rebellious offspring.
“. . . sin entered into
the world through one man, and death through sin; and so death passed to all
men, because all sinned.” —Romans 5:12
“One thing I have learned: God made people good, but they have found all
kinds of ways to be bad.” —Ecclesiastes
7:29
NCV
As they continued to multiply and spread abroad to fill the
earth, our ancestors drifted farther and farther away from God and failed to
pass on to new generations any knowledge of what life is all about.
On a number of occasions God intervened in human affairs to
remind us. Through the flood of Noah’s
day he wiped away a world that had become filled with violence and sin, and
gave mankind a fresh start. But, as soon
as enough generations had passed to build a sizeable population, they again
forgot about God and rebelled against him.
To stop them from building a technologically advanced society centered
around a skyscraper they were building at Babel in the land now known as Iraq,
God confused their languages—giving each family group its own speech and
grammar, so that they could no longer work together. They were forced to give up their building
project and move away from each other, eventually populating the far reaches of
the earth.
As they spread abroad to remote places and lost contact
with each other, the families of man did a poor job of passing on to their
offspring any knowledge of the Creator and his purpose for human beings. Although most national groups retained some
dim recollection of heavenly beings, and some even retained a story of the
worldwide flood in their oral traditions, the stories became twisted through
centuries of retelling by people who, themselves, were not faithful to God and
who had no desire to live by his rules.
Before long, people everywhere were bowing down to idols of wood, stone
and metal, guided in their worship by priests and prophets who knew nothing of
the true God.
Eventually God began to break this cycle of ignorance by
speaking to a man named Abram, whom he renamed Abraham. God later revealed himself to Abraham’s son
Isaac and to Isaac’s son Jacob, whom God renamed Israel. Many generations later, when Israel’s
offspring had multiplied greatly and found themselves enslaved in Egypt,
God sent Moses to free them from bondage and to bring them into a covenant or
agreement with God.
Each party to the covenant made promises. God promised to give the Israelites the land
of Canaan (whose inhabitants he had
sentenced to death for their gross sins), and to bless the Israelites there as
a special nation living under his laws.
And, as their part of the agreement, the Israelites were obligated to
obey God’s laws, which included not worshiping any false gods. But the covenant also contained a clause
spelling out what would happen if they broke the agreement: God would uproot them from the Promised Land
and would scatter them worldwide among other nations that would hate and abuse
them.
As far as the Jewish people were concerned, based on what
God had revealed up to that time in history, life was all about keeping the
laws God had given to them. Moses told
them
“The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to
us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” —Deuteronomy 29:29 NIV
Wise king Solomon investigated the alternative pursuits
that people came up with on their own, trying to give some other meaning to
their lives, and he concluded that all of these pursuits were “vanity and a chasing
after wind” (Eccl. 1:14; 2:11, 17, 26; 4:16; 6:9) Rather, he reached this inspired conclusion
as to the real meaning of life:
“This is the end of the matter. All
has been heard. Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty
of man. For God
will bring every work into judgment, with every hidden thing, whether it is
good, or whether it is evil.” —Ecclesiastes
12:13-14
Most of the Old Testament consists of the historical record
detailing how the Israelites repeatedly broke their covenant with God and took
up the worship of false gods, and how the true God punished them repeatedly to
discipline them. Eventually, he
announced to them that he would institute a new covenant that would be superior
to the covenant they had broken. The new
covenant would include forgiveness of sins, a closer personal relationship with
God, and opportunity for non-Israelites—people from
all nations—to know and worship the true God.
Those who enter the new covenant receive a fuller understanding of what
life is all about.
The New Testament introduces this new covenant and tells
how people of many varied nationalities quit worshiping their idols and entered
into this new covenant mediated through Jesus.
For example, the Apostle Paul said this to an audience of pagan idol
worshipers in ancient Athens, Greece:
“‘. . . we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or
stone, engraved by art and design of man.
The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he
commands that all people everywhere should repent, because he has appointed a day in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which
he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.’” —Acts
17:29-31
Many pagans in Paul’s audience there in Athens and in other
cities he visited around the Mediterranean Sea left behind the worship of false
deities and embraced Christianity, coming under the new covenant mediated by
Jesus. When we turn to “Jesus the
mediator of the new covenant” (Heb. 12:24
KJV) we are adopted as God’s children and we receive the Holy Spirit as Jesus
promised. The eighth chapter of Paul’s
letter to the Roman congregation discusses this at some length.
“There is therefore now no
condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who don’t walk according to the
flesh, but according to the Spirit. . . . Those who are in
the flesh can’t please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the
Spirit of God dwells in you.
“But if any man doesn’t
have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. If Christ is in you . . . if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from
the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also
give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. .
. .
“For as many as are led by
the Spirit of God, these are children of God. For you didn’t
receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of
adoption, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself testifies
with our spirit that we are children of God; and if
children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if indeed we
suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.
“For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which
will be revealed toward us.” —Romans
8:1-18
This closer relationship with God—through our adoption as
his children and our receiving his Holy Spirit—gives us greater appreciation of
the meaning of life. And this
relationship is not one that ends tragically in death, but rather an
everlasting relationship that will only grow as time goes on, with a glorious
future. Knowing that this is what life is really all about helps us put our
present sufferings into a larger perspective.
Momentary suffering today becomes insignificant when we compare it to
what lies ahead for us. And the love of
God revealed to us through Jesus strengthens us to face any sort of trouble in
this world. As Paul wrote:
“Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ? Could oppression, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness,
or peril, or sword? Even as it is
written, ‘For your sake we are killed all day long. We were accounted as sheep
for the slaughter.’ No, in all these things,
we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
“For I am persuaded, that neither death,
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be
able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 8:35-39
Jesus came in the flesh so that he could set the example by
suffering for us on the cross, so that we might be adopted as children of God:
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he too
shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds
the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were
held in slavery by their fear of death.” —
Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV
The devil can no longer use our fear of death to force us
to do evil, because we have been adopted as God’s children with the hope of a
glorious future forever in heaven.
Christ, the captain of our salvation, suffered for us, to set us free
from slavery to this sinful world.
“For it was fitting for Him, for whom
are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to
make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” —Hebrews 2:10
NKJV
God’s purpose is to bring many sons to glory—to adopt us as
his children and bring us to heaven to live with him in glory. We can’t really understand the meaning of
life without grasping this.
This “mystery,” or “secret” as some translations put it,
was kept from mankind over the centuries until God revealed it through the New
Testament. The Apostle Paul referred to
it as
“the mystery
that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the
saints. To them God has chosen to make
known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ
in you, the hope of glory.” —Colossians 1:26-27 NIV
God is ready to destroy this wicked world in rebellion
against him, but he holds back that destructive power at this time, while he
continues to prepare us for the glorious eternal life to come:
“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to
make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for
destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of
mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, us, whom he also called, not
from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?” —Romans
9:22-24
If we understand that our present circumstances in this
world are only temporary, and that eternal glory awaits us, this can give us
the strength and courage to endure the troubles we face now:
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly
we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary
troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but
on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is
eternal.” —2
Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV
In just a short time—short compared to the eternity of joy
ahead of us—Jesus will return to take us home with him. Or, if we die before his return, he will
raise us to life:
“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will
not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an
eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be
raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. For this corruptible must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this
corruptible will have put on incorruption, and this mortal will have put on immortality,
then what is written will happen: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘Death, where is your sting? Hades, where is
your victory?’
“The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is
the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be
steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know
that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.” —1
Corinthians 15:51-58
So, although king Solomon declared
all human endeavors to be “vanity and a chasing after wind” (Eccl. 1:14; 2:11,
17, 26; 4:16; 6:9), our labor is not
in vain in the Lord. He gives us the
victory over death, and wipes every tear from our eyes. The meaning of life becomes clear when we
have eternity in view.
“Therefore they are before the throne of God, they serve him day and night in his temple. He who sits
on the throne will spread his tabernacle over them. They will never be hungry,
neither thirsty any more; neither will the sun beat on them, nor any heat; for
the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shepherds them, and leads them to
springs of waters of life. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” —Revelation 7:15-17