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Glory is a word associated with great accomplishments. Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi is quoted as saying, “The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then saying to the world, ‘No, I won’t stay here.’” Lombardi’s quote records a common but misdirected aim of seeking glory—for one’s own good and benefit. In this vein, we can define glory as “honor and respect gained by notable achievement.” The Westminster Shorter Catechism points us in an entirely different direction when it answers its first question, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” What is a chief end? What does it mean to glorify God? What does it mean to enjoy Him forever?
Aristotle has a helpful set of distinctions that enables us to understand what a chief end is. Think of a statue made from marble. The material cause of a statue is, of course, the block of marble from which the sculptor creates his work of art. The instrumental cause of the statue is the chisel, the instrument that the sculptor uses to bring the statue into existence. The efficient cause—that is, the cause that applies energy and work—is the sculptor. The final cause is the very purpose for which the statue was created. That is, the sculptor was commissioned by a wealthy patron to create a statue for display in his home. The final cause expresses the very reason for a thing’s existence. Philosophers have also made another observation about final causes: What is last in execution is first in intention. In this case, the sculptor gets the block of marble and takes it to his studio; he sketches his statue’s form on a piece of paper; he chisels for days, slowly revealing the statue’s form; and then last of all, he displays the statue in his patron’s home. The very last step of placing the statue in the patron’s home was the first intention—creating the statue was the impulse that launched the whole project. Final causes and the idea that what is last in execution is first in intention helps us answer the question of what a chief end is.
When the catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?,” it directs our minds to think about the very reason for our existence. What was first in God’s mind before the foundation of the world before He first formed Adam? When we gaze upon the creation and behold a beautiful sunrise, as it first illumines the skies with hues of purple, then red, and then bright yellow light, the different colors captivate our senses and fill us with joy and wonder. The psalmist captures these experiences when he writes: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens” (Ps. 8:1). Again, the psalmist writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). Think back to the sculptor’s statue and ponder the artisanal skill of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. As we look at the striations in the subject’s calves, the curvature of his wrist, and the pensive expression on his face, we can see Rodin’s inspiring and skilled handiwork. The psalmist observes even greater handiwork in the creation as he marvels at the beauty of the heavens—the planets, the sun in all its brilliance, the moon, and the stars that shine so brightly.
Yet as much as the created world displays God’s glory, there is an even greater manifestation of God’s glory in the world. The psalmist points us to human beings as the greatest bearers of God’s glory: “You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5). What is humanity’s glory? Our glory consists in exercising dominion over the works of God’s hands, over the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea (vv. 6–8). To bring God glory is to reflect His Being and attributes in an analogous fashion as we exercise God’s dominion throughout the creation. In short, humanity’s glory consists in bearing the image of God. This is humanity’s chief end—the very purpose for which we were created, the very first intention that God had for Adam and Eve. But sadly, we know that Adam and Eve sinned and brought sin and death into the world (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Tim. 2:13–14). This is why Paul writes these brief but pointed words about humanity’s sinful state: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). To fall short of God’s glory is to fall short of bearing God’s image and reflecting His glory. Blessedly, God did not leave us in our fallen condition, a condition bereft of God’s glory. Jesus Christ, the last Adam, One like the son of Adam, veiled His own eternal glory and came to save sinners (Dan. 7:13; Luke 22:67–71; 1 Cor. 15:45). Jesus’ prayer to the Father shows us that He, unlike Adam, did not forsake His calling to glorify God. Adam bore the created image of God and sullied it with sin, but Jesus is the uncreated eternal image of God, and He glorified His heavenly Father through His obedience and suffering: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (John 17:1). Through Jesus’ obedience and suffering, He glorified His Father and saved a people who can now glorify the triune God.
Paul describes the nature of salvation in terms of image bearing when he writes:
As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. (1 Cor. 15:48–49)
In salvation, the Spirit of God unites us to Christ so that we have “put off [our] old self,” our former existence in Adam, an existence that was deficient of God’s glory. He has united us to Jesus the last Adam, so that we are now “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24). In so doing, the triune God restores us to our chief end—to bring Him glory by reflecting His glory in all that we say, do, and think. Think of the moon—a lifeless rock orbiting the earth, and yet at night it shines brilliantly even though it has no source of light in itself. Whence the light of the moon? The sun. Likewise, we have no source of glory in and of ourselves. Rather, our only source of glory must be the radiant sun of the triune God. We glorify God most when we reflect God’s glory in the world. Reflecting God’s glory in the world is our chief end, an end and final cause that not even sin and rebellion could derail. The book of Revelation describes this Creator-creature relationship in beautiful terms, as the new Jerusalem, which has no need of sun or moon because “the glory of God gives it light” and “the kings of the earth will bring their glory into” the city (21:23–24). The glory of the triune God will shine forth and be reflected in the lives of His saints.
While such final images indubitably inspire, we should realize that we need not await the end of the world and return of Christ to glorify God. While what is first in intention is last in execution, the triune God has begun to execute His end-time plan in the present. The Apostle Paul instructs us, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). We can glorify God in the smallest of actions—nothing is too insignificant. The big question we should ask ourselves is, Will we wait to live out our chief end? If the very purpose of our existence, the final cause of our very being, is to glorify God, then the only way that we will truly enjoy God forever is for us to align our desires with God’s design and intention. Only then will we truly begin to enjoy God forever as we glorify Him in all that we say, do, and think. In the words of Augustine, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”