What is
the meaning of life?
The question has been asked
countless times in countless ways throughout the ages. “Why are we here?”,
“What is my purpose?”, “Why did God make all this?”, “Why are we here on
earth?”. These are all just different ways to ask the question, “What is the
meaning of life?”
Well, the Bible does give us
an answer to that question. Some people may reject the answer it gives, but the
Scriptures do, nonetheless, answer one of the most meaningful questions anyone
can ask.
In Acts 17, the apostle Paul
was visiting the Areopagus and saw many statues to
pagan gods. He explained to the people why God made us here on earth.
Acts 17:16-31
While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to dispute with him. Some of them asked, "What is this babbler trying to say?" Others remarked, "He seems to be advocating foreign gods." They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, "May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we want to know what they mean." (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)
Paul then
stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: "Men of Athens! I see
that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked
carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this
inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am
going to proclaim to you.
"The
God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and
does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands,
as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and
everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit
the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places
where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps
reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets
have said, 'We are his offspring.'
"Therefore
since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like
gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past
God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to
repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the
man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from
the dead."
Paul explained that not only did God put
Man upon the earth, but also God determined the exact times and places we
should live. Then Paul explained God’s reason behind this: God created
Mankind on earth so that we would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and
find Him. And God is not far from anyone of
us.
Ephesians 2:10 further tells
us more about God’s plan for us:
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Yes, God does have plans for
us:
Jeremiah 29:11-13
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
You see, the Bible tells us
that God put us on earth so we would perhaps seek Him and find Him. God has
plans for us and they are not plans to harm us, but to prosper us. And these
plans are for us to do good works that are serving Jesus Christ.
Some may wonder why God
would not just create a bunch of robots to serve Him if that is what He wants.
But God does not want us to be his “robots”. God desires something much deeper
and more meaningful than that--He wants a relationship with us. He wants to
have a relationship with us the way a father has a relationship with his
children. To us an illustration, God wants us to be a part of His “family”—with
Jesus as our big brother.
This is what God wants, but
He does not force anyone into it. He gives us free will—to make the decision
for ourselves. After all, love that is not by choice is not really love at all.
You can’t force someone to love you. And as God loves us, He wants us to love
Him back. 1John 4:8,16 tells us God is love. And if God is love, we must
love Him if we want to have a relationship with Him.
Some deep thinker somewhere
once said that we as humans are not here on earth to have some great spiritual
experience, but we are great spiritual beings here on earth to have a human
experience.
John 3:2
Dear friends, now we are
children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we
know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
And that is the
point, what we will become has not yet been made known. But when Christ appears
we will be changed. And we will become like Him. Just as when Christ was on
earth, He took on our appearance, so when He returns a second
time, we shall take on His appearance!
1Corinthians 2:9
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who
love him" —
1Corinthians 51-53
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all
be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For
the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be
changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the
imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.
Life here on
earth is not the main event---that is yet to come in eternity. There is so much
ahead that we cannot even conceive. Life on earth is just the “warm up” act,
with much, much more to follow.
So that’s what the
Bible says. You can believe it -- or not.
Learn more
about God’s Plan of Salvation for yourself. Ask, “What must I do to be saved?”
"Come, follow me," Jesus said,
"and I will make you fishers of men."
-- Matthew 4:19