The Chief End of Man

At family devotions tonight, we read in our hymnbook this brief comment by Francis A. Schaeffer on the Westminster Catechism.

'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 in saying, 'and to enjoy Him forever.' 

Nevertheless, the first phase is the first phase: '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. 

But we must feel the force of both sides of the issue. If we fail to emphasize that we can glorify God, we raise the whole 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.