THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 11, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 32.

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE.

LIFE is action. Life is growth. Life is progress. Life is overflowing and outflowing. Life’s harmony is giving. Death is fixity and stagnation.

God gave life to this earth that it might be a fitting home for his sentient, intelligent creatures; and life throbbed in it from center to circumference. God gave life to air, to plant, to tree, to fish and bird and beast, that they might bring forth of their kinds, beautifying the earth, and bless all that dwell upon it.

Neither was man made higher than all the brute creation that he alone might be served of them. Man was not placed over his fellow-man that he may be ministered unto and blessed, but that he may be a blessing to them. The law of life is that only in blessing may we be truly blessed. But many a soul finds the wish of itself expressed in the plaint of the little boy, “Mama, have some one ’muse me.” His whole idea of existence was that he was here to be amused, and that others were here to amuse him.

To everything God has created and made has He given a mission of blessing to others. Not a plant grows purposelessly; some one, something, is better because it has had being. Not a flower “wastes its sweetness on the desert air” for naught. It may indeed have been “unseen” by selfish man, but it bloomed not in vain. Its life may have sucked up and transmuted into beautiful tissue and odor some noxious decay. It may have furnished some insect its food, some bee its store of honey. It may have burst the clod, grown, bloomed, ripened, and died, not knowing another life; but its seed may have been carried by wind, or bird, to grow again, and so be a blessing to many lives.

God’s sunlight wraps up in its potentialities all blessings. The day is a constant minister to the activities of life. The night is a soother to sleep and rest. In the blessed Sabbath day are stored blessings to the child of faith who may unlock its treasure-houses and revel in its higher joys. In all God’s works, sentient and unsentient, there are blessings innumerable for all. It is only selfish man who desires and endeavors to turn all these things to his own lust and profit and pleasure; and all the perversions seen in lower natures are but the result of his original sin.

But God saves man from this selfish life by making him, through faith in Christ Jesus, a new creature. In the Spirit he is born again. He is given a “new heart,” and a “new spirit,” and a “new mind.” Life regenerates him. And God asks that his body be presented “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service,” “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Christ gives His life—His Spirit—to His children that they may render such service. “Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” He says in His resurrected power to His disciples, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost.” He tells them, “Ask, and ye shall receive.” He declares that He is more willing to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him, than are earthly parents to give good gifts unto their children. In fact, His Word declares that He died the cruel death of the cross that man might come to that place where he would “receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:13, 14); that man might no longer be “alienated from the life of God,” but be bound up “in the bundle of life,” free in the Spirit, connected with the eternal Godhead by the current of God’s life through Jesus Christ. What a wonderful privilege! What a gracious, boundless gift!

Reader, do you not desire this Spirit, this life? “Yes,” you say: “I long for it, I pray for it, but I do not get it.” Perhaps you are seeking it for a wrong purpose. Do you seek it that you may be blessed, for yourself, or blessed that you may be a blessing? Is it that you may hoard life and do great things to win fame or wealth? or is it that you may minister to others? For, mark this great fundamental truth, God gives His Spirit, His life—for service for Him and His. He blesses us with life that we, like Abraham, may be a blessing.

Note the similitudes to which God likens His children: They are living, fruit-bearing branches of Christ, the true, life-giving Vine, giving of themselves, of their own life, to others in ripened fruit. They are the good seed sown in a field, bearing a rich harvest of grain for the Husbandman. And whenever they are likened to that which we assume to be fixed or dead—“dead as a stone”—even that is given life—“living stones” built up into Christ, grown into God’s great spiritual service-temple, by virtue of His life.

Do you want His Spirit—His life—for service for Him?

If so, have you yielded every power of your being to Him? Is the tongue which has babbled for earth’s vanities, lied for earth’s gain, stabbed and wounded and marred and vivisected the reputation of a fellow-being, taken God’s name in vain—is this tongue given to God to tell the sweet story of salvation through Jesus Christ, to anxious ears and almost despairing hearts waiting to receive it? Are the ears which have listened to the various voices of earth, which have taken pleasure in lying tales and lewd stories, which have delighted in sounds pleasing only to the senses, but palling upon the heart,—are these ears consecrated to hear God’s voice, and, hearing, to do it? Are the feet which have found pleasure and pain in the byways of sin consecrated to bear God’s blessings “down lowliest ways if God wills so”? Are the hands which have smitten others, but hoarded for self and ministered to selfish ends, consecrated to do His work, to feed the “ragged, bestial beggars,” to bind up wounded limbs, soothe weary, fever-stricken temples, for His sake? In short, are all and each of powers of mind and body, of land and gold, gladly, freely, given to Him for service, not as you will, but as He will? If so, then His Spirit “awaits your demand.” Life is yours, life “more abundantly.” He gives His life, not for unholy passion, but for purity. He bestows it, not for lust, but for love. He gives it freely, for noble, self-sacrificing, loving service. O soul, yield to Him; His service is most blessed; for “it is more blessed to give than to receive”!