God’s purpose
God’s desire for humanity is that human beings live in communion and in an intimate, living relationship with God, enjoying and delighting in what he created and placed under their authority. He gave human beings freedom of choice: either to live with him and enjoy what he created and entrusted to them, or to reject being in his presence (the presence of God), and that is death. In the Bible we see that the Lord created everything before he created man. This shows the love of God, who gives all good things and blessings to human beings. In the book of Genesis 1:26, God said: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” This text shows us God’s purpose for man from the time he created him: he placed all creation at man’s disposal. The authority and freedom the Lord gave man is to choose what is good, and very good, for himself and for nature as well. And when man allowed the enemy of good to converse with him against God, pride entered his mind, along with the temptation of becoming like God; he rejected God’s commandment and his presence in his life, and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, hoping to become like God. Genesis 2:16-17: “And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.'” The Lord’s commandment to man was clear, but man misused his freedom without caring about the consequence, which is death. God is the source of love and mercy: even if we reject him, he does not abandon us but always waits for us to return to him and reign with him. The people of God to whom he revealed himself are many, and God’s purpose is to restore to us the authority we had before the fall.
And in the fullness of time he sent his only Son as teacher, redeemer and saviour of all humanity, and to all who received him he gave the power to become children of God (John 1:12). But no one should take God’s mercy and love for granted, for the second coming of the Lord Jesus is near, to reward and judge each person according to their deeds. A person cannot do anything good by themselves without drawing that goodness from God; without him, a person remains lost, unstable and unable to choose between what is good and what is not. God’s love and purpose remain firm because he does not change: he is faithful, true and just, and he always wants us to enjoy his peace, his love and his constant presence in our lives.
In my own opinion, born of my personal experience, a person without God is like a field without a sower and like sheep without a shepherd.
Deacon D. N.
