To Glorify God And Have A Personal Relationship With Him Flashcards
The meaning and purpose of life
-To glorify God and have a personal relationship with him
-To prepare for judgement
-To bring about God’s Kingdom on Earth
Whats the meaning of and purpose of life for Christians
-Most humans ask themselves What is it all about? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life Religious people look for answers to these questions in the teachings and beliefs of their religion, but their search for meaning does not stop there.
-also consider their own experiences and things they observe in the world around them. This means that there is no one, simple answer to these questions that applies to all Christians.
-Not only do different Christian denominations and scholars teach slightly different things, but each individual Christian draws on different personal experience and observations. Because of this, the three purposes that are considered below are only a starting point.
Intro - to glorify god and have a personal relationship with him
-Most Christian ideas about the purpose of life have their origin in Christian ideas about God.
-Christians see God as the creator and sustainer of all that exists, they define the meaning and purpose of life with reference to God. One way of doing this is to consider why God created humans.
To glorify God and have a personal relationship with him - genesis 1 quote
‘Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea’
The writer stresses the fact that humans, being created in God’s image, are very like God. God tells them to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the Earth and subdue it, and at the end of the act of creation:
Another quote from gen 1
God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.’ (Genesis 1:31)
-One way of understanding this is to see that humans are God’s image in the created order.
-They represent God’s qualities to everything else that God has made, and to one another.
-By reproducing and filling the Earth, they are supposed to spread the qualities of God that they represent over the whole Earth.
-For Christianity, the ‘Godness’ of God is beyond all human understanding, so God’s qualities are hard to define in language.
What do Christian’s do to try glorify god
-They try to show God’s glory in their own life and actions.
-They tell others about God and try to encourage them to become Christians so they too can glorify God.
-They try to make their own lives more God-like in order to represent him better in the world.
-They draw people’s attention to God’s qualities in the world by talking and writing about them.
-They engage in worship which draws on and reflects back God’s glory.
Jesus on the sermon on the mount
‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:16)
-sum up Christians agenda in order to glorify god
Genesis 2 quote
‘Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.(Genesis 2:7-8)
-God shows care and affection here for the individual that has been created, and makes animals to be companions, finally creating woman as a partner for him.
-God walks in the garden and talks to Adam and Eve. This close relationship between God and creation leads to a belief that another part of the purpose of human existence is to share a personal relationship with God.
-Christians believe that as well as glorifying God in the world, they also need to nurture their own relationship with God.
-relationship between Jesus as a human being and God the Father is, for Christians, the model for the relationship between every human and God.
Jesus’ prayer at the last supper
‘The glory that thou hast given me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me. (John 17: 20-23)
What does Jesus’ prayer at the last supper show?
-This prayer shows the intimacy of the relationship between the Father and the Son (‘you are in me and I am in you’), and uses that intimacy as a model for the relationship between Christians and God.
-By this, Christians are influenced to build a close relationship with God, for example by:
• Communicating through prayer.
• Aiming to know God better through studying the Bible.
• Trying to follow Jesus’ teachings, because Christians believe that God can be known through the person of Jesus Christ.
• Trying model their lives on the life of Jesus.
Evaluation
-For those whose desire is to have a personal relationship with God, this could result in a contemplative life - a life-long journey of prayer and contemplation, perhaps within a monastic community, leaving on one side everything that might make the journey less direct.
-Some might focus on Christian mysticism, working through study, worship and contemplation towards a hoped-for, transformative experience of G
