The Purpose and Meaning of Life

Why are we here? Just what is the purpose and meaning of life? That question has intrigued and baffled scientists, philosophers, and theologians—even ordinary men and women—for hundreds and thousands of years. Yes, the answer to what is arguably life’s ultimate question has eluded the world’s most brilliant and learned minds. Most of the 6.7 billion people living today are clueless about the right answer. In fact, USA Today once published the results of a poll listing significant questions on most people’s minds. At the top of the list was the question: “What is the purpose of life?”

If you will do a search on Wikipedia, under the heading Meaning of Life, you will find that the answers proposed are as varied and as diverse as the entire ideological landscape. Clearly, many have opinions, but few have conclusive or authoritative answers.

A Personal Quest

Fifteen years ago, I had two burning questions in my mind: “What is the purpose and meaning of life?” and “How should we human beings live?” I was determined to find the answers, even if it took me the rest of my life.

For many months, I was on a literal quest for the meaning of life. I was not satisfied with simply finding a purpose for living, but the real, true, and ultimate purpose for human life on this earth. I wasn’t all that interested in how people found meaning and purpose in their individual circumstances; I wanted to find the ultimate purpose for humanity. Just what is the whole point in living? Why are we here anyway?

The second question I asked myself was, “How should we (or I) live?” While I realized there were many roads I could travel, I only had one life to live. I didn’t want to embark on just any road. I wanted to find the way—the way to the best life possible. What was that way?

I spent many days and more than a few nights in diligent study and research. I acquired books, articles, tapes and other resources that could somehow shed light on my questions. I spent a lot of time in libraries and bookstores (yes, even bookstores!)—reading, thinking, and reflecting. When a flash of insight would come, I would write it down on my journal. The answer was simply too important for me not to do it. Finding the answer to this question—and sharing it with others—was a priority.

Why was it such a big deal for me?

The power of purpose hit me one night 11 years ago while reading a book. I no longer remember the title of the book, but I will never forget what I read: “Your life is like a coin—you can spend it any way you want, but you can only spend it once.”

That thought was so powerful I determined at that moment that one of the best investments of my time would be finding out what life was for in the first place! It made perfect sense to me! I realized that many people are entirely clueless about the real purpose of life. Most people pursue this or pursue that, without knowing why. I asked, “Why do they do the things they do?” Is it right? “Why do they believe the things they believe?” Is it true? It seemed to me that it never occurred to most people to ask those kinds of questions. What a waste of that one precious life! As Socrates once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

For me, to continue living my life without a clear understanding of the purpose and meaning of life is like taking a ship to the open sea without a clear destination. I didn’t want to become another ship lost somewhere in the ocean. Before I leave port, I want to know my precise destination. Otherwise, I would be wasting precious time and fuel.

But where do I go for the answers? Can the real purpose of life be discovered? Does God even exist? Is there such a thing as absolute truth? Can it be known at all? If so, why are there so many religions and belief systems? Are they all equally valid and true?

I had to know the answer to all of these questions. And I was determined to find the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But can one actually learn or figure out the purpose and meaning of life? Can one “figure out” the way to live? Interestingly, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.”

Laying the Right Foundation

To get to the right answers, I realized we must look outside ourselves. If you want to know why a certain car exists and how it works, you don’t ask the car. You ask the manufacturer. I realized that we must carefully examine and look at our origins. Where did we come from? Only then will we find our purpose. If indeed we were created, we must look to our Creator for the answers. We cannot reason out the answers on our own.

I learned that many things can be discovered by science, but some things cannot—they must be revealed. The purpose and meaning of life is one of them. No wonder very few, it seems, have found the answer to life’s biggest question. Knowledge about our material universe can be discovered—by the use of our five senses and through observation, experimentation, reason, and the tools of modern technology. But knowledge of spiritual things—the things that existed prior to the inception of the material universe approximately 15 billion years ago—is beyond science. It must be revealed, or else we cannot know it.

Today, it is not intellectually fashionable to believe in God. Some are even embarrassed to admit we were created by Him, and that we owe Him our allegiance, our respect, and—I dare say—our obedience. As human beings, we want to captain our own ships. We don’t want anyone telling us what to do or how to run our lives. We want to be the masters of our own destiny.

So what have we created? What does our track record look like? We’ve created a world of awesome progress. But at the same time, we’ve created a world of appalling evils. We can send man to the moon and back. We can move people from point A to point B at supersonic speed. We can interconnect computers and share knowledge from all around the globe. But we still fall flat on our faces when it comes to addressing our very own basic problems—both individually and collectively.

We have messed up the environment. We have messed up the economy. We have messed up our health. We have messed up our marriages and our families. We have messed up our lives!

Science and technology cannot address our deeper issues. Human governments don’t possess the solution. Higher education doesn’t know the answer. Even religion, which many look to for moral and spiritual leadership, is hopelessly divided—plagued with disunity, doctrinal disagreements, competition, confusion, strife and war.

Why?

Because we have rejected the true God and the true knowledge of the Bible. We have rejected His righteous laws and His holy commandments. We have taught the “scientific” theory of evolution in our schools as a way of explaining how everything got started without a Creator. We have bought a lie and marketed it to ourselves and to our children. Now we are reaping the consequences.

Growing up, I had always been taught to believe in God. However, when I was 19, I left my home in the Philippines to study in America. I began to unpack my cherished beliefs one by one and studied them objectively for the very first time. I questioned the existence of God. I questioned the veracity of the Bible. I looked at the theory of evolution. In my free time, I hit the shelves and studied volumes on philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, cosmology, epistemology, ethics, and Christian apologetics. I felt I had to personally re-study and reexamine everything. I didn’t want to believe in something just because my parents or my church always believed it. I wanted to be convinced by logic, proof, and objective criteria. More than anything, I wanted to find absolute truth.

After a long and thorough study, I found PROOF of the existence of the Creator God—the One who reveals Himself in the Bible. I also found EVIDENCE that the Holy Bible, the #1 bestselling book of all time, is true, and that it is, in fact, the authoritative Word of God, the Creator of the whole universe.

The Purpose and Meaning of Life

I finally came to understand, from studying the Bible, that our destiny is to become the children of God—divine, spirit-composed members of His immortal family. Unknown to most, God is reproducing Himself through willing and obedient human beings. The desire of God is for human beings to first become as He is in character (righteous, faithful, loving, giving, serving, compassionate, just, etc.) and then also to become as He is in composition (spirit, invisible, all-powerful, immortal, divine). Once we grasp that incredible truth of our true potential, our lives will never be the same!

God is real, and He is the uncaused Cause of the whole universe, including all of life—including human beings! But human beings are unique in all creation. Animals were created after their own kind…

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good (Genesis 1:24-25, NKJV unless otherwise noted, emphasis added throughout).

… but human beings have been created after “the GOD kind.”

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all [the wild animals of] the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

We humans were patterned after God. From the beginning, it was God’s intention that human beings be a special creation. It’s only human beings who are patterned after the Creator Himself!

Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (1 John 3:1-2).

Our destiny is to be like Jesus Christ, in spiritual character and in spirit composition. Now who is Christ like?

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation (Colossians 1:15).

…who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3)…

Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? (John 14:9)

Jesus Christ is just like God the Father—like Father, like Son! Now, if we will be like Christ when He returns—and Jesus Christ is exactly like His Father—then we will also be like the Father. Therefore, God has reproduced Himself in us! Therefore, we are called, and shall actually be—literally—God’s children! Here is further biblical proof:

Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family [the family of God]. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me” (Hebrews 2:11-13, NIV).

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

Jesus Christ will have many brethren, but He will always be the firstborn. God the Father will always be the Father. Nothing can and will change that. But we shall all be Christ’s younger brothers and sisters, and we shall be conformed to His image—we shall be exactly like Him and like God! Of course, God the Father and Jesus Christ will always have greater authority and power than any of us.

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10).

That is God’s purpose for sending His Son Jesus Christ to come and suffer and die for us—He is bringing many sons [and daughters] to glory.

Glory involves a transformation of our bodies, from a lowly flesh-and-blood composition to a glorious spirit composition!

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4).

When Jesus Christ came to this earth as a man, he divested Himself of all the glory that He shared with His Heavenly Father. Christ later prayed to His Father to have it restored back to Him.

“And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5).

Then later, His Father did answer His prayer and restored it back to Him.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let Him go (Acts 3:13).

We can see a description of how the resurrected, glorified Christ looks like in Revelation 1:14-16:

His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength (Revelation 1:14-16).

Those who are wise shall shine Like the brightness of the firmament, And those who turn many to righteousness Like the stars forever and ever (Daniel 12:3).

…by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust (2 Peter 1:4).

Yes, that’s about as clear as it gets! We shall all share in the same nature as the Father and Jesus Christ. We shall be glorified—we will be transformed to immortal spirit, with power and great glory! We will then have a divine and godly nature! That’s our real destiny. That’s the reason why we were born—to be part of the very family of the Almighty God!

You Always Have a Choice

Let’s not forget the big picture. God created you and I for a great purpose! Our life is valuable beyond compare. A loving and merciful Creator God made us, fashioned us, and gave us the greatest destiny and potential there could ever be. God patterned us after Himself, and put a spirit inside of us that would serve as the link to Him—a bridge, if you will, from the finite to the Infinite.

The greatest feat of accomplishment for such a loving Creator God is the creation of holy, righteous, character in us. But God will not “cram his religion down our throat.” God made us a free moral agent, and He gave us the power to choose. We could either serve Him or reject Him. Of course, the way of rebellion against God and His laws is the very cause of all the evil, unhappiness, pain, heartache, sorrow, and suffering that has plagued our world today. On the other hand, the path of obedience to God and His revealed Way causes all the happiness, peace, contentment, joy, abundance, and fulfillment that can ever come upon a human being. Still, God allows us to choose!

How It Changed My Life

Since I have learned the real purpose of life, my life has been richer and more meaningful. I used to be really aimless in life, not knowing what to do with my life. I wasted a lot of time and energy. But the greatest waste was the psychological stress of not knowing who I was and what my life was about. But now I have the peace of mind knowing why I am here, where I came from, and where I am going.

I now know what I want to be. I want to become like Jesus Christ. His character is the character I want to develop in my life. His love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are the quality traits I would like to develop in myself. Right now, I am still a long way off from becoming like Him, but my purpose is to develop the character of Christ and to be like Him. I want to be found pleasing to Him. As a human, I still sin occasionally, but through the power of God’s Holy Spirit in me, I am slowly overcoming my bad habits, sins, and faults, and trying to be in conformity with God’s will.

I now know what I want to do. All I want to do now is God’s will, and not mine. I used to be self-willed, thinking what I want to do. Now, I care about what God wants me to do, and my desire is to please Him and to glorify Him with my life here on earth. I know I still occasionally fall and do my own will, but when that happens, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and strive to walk more carefully next time. I want to exercise the gifts that God has given me in order to help others grow. My passion is to teach people the purpose and meaning of life and how to live the best life possible. I want to tell people about the hope of God’s soon-coming Kingdom as the only lasting solution to all the world’s problems of today. I want to tell them that Jesus Christ is coming again soon, to correct all wrongs and to bring His wonderful rule on earth. The Bible prophesies a wonderful world coming, when all war, crime, poverty, corruption, deception, injustice, oppression, disease, sickness, suffering, and death will vanish from the face of the earth. Ultimately, God will wipe away all tears from people’s eyes, and pain shall be a thing of the past.

“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful” (Revelation 21:4-5).

I pray, prepare, and work daily in anticipation of that soon-coming Day.

Finally, I now know what I want to have. All I want to have is God’s promise of everlasting life, or salvation, in His glorious Kingdom along with my family, friends, loved ones and with as many people as I can touch and reach with this my one and only life. I don’t need earthly riches. I don’t care if I’m not rich or a millionaire in this life. All that matters to me is that I gain the eternal riches and rewards in the coming Kingdom of God. I count as far more valuable the authority, power, rulership, and responsibility that I shall be given (if I qualify) when I will be sitting with Christ on His throne.

“To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne” (Revelation 3:21).

I am seeking for glory, honor, and immortality, which will all be given as I endure and hold fast, persisting in doing good until the end. I know I will face a terrible struggle in this life, since this whole world is under the sway of Satan, the wicked one, and under the Devil’s deception and opposition to God. This world will have to be replaced by the soon-coming Kingdom of God. Thank God a much better world is coming!

How Then Should We Live?

Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is [the whole duty, or purpose, of man]. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people—saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:6-7).

We need to fear God, love Him, serve Him, and obey Him. God is alive and we cannot pretend that He doesn’t exist or care about sin. There will be a day of reckoning for every single human being.

But why do you judge your brother? Or why do you show contempt for your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ (Romans 14:10).

We need to take stock of our lives now and ask ourselves some important questions: Do I really have the right respect and reverence for the God who made me? Am I faithfully obeying Him and keeping His commandments? Make no mistake, God is alive, and one day, we will have to face Him.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10).

Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, And the unrighteous man his thoughts; Let him return to the LORD, And He will have mercy on him; And to our God, For He will abundantly pardon (Isaiah 55:6-7).

Summary

So, why are we here? What is the purpose and meaning of life? God created us after His own image and likeness—we are created after the God kind! His purpose is to reproduce Himself. The glorified Jesus Christ is the firstborn among many brethren. God is in the process of bringing many sons to glory. God is creating a family—His own Family—filled with sons and daughters who share His holy, righteous, and perfect character. Our definite chief aim in this life should be to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all our physical needs shall be added to us as well (Matthew 6:33).

That is the true purpose and meaning of life—the reason we are alive today!

Recommended Reading: For a more detailed study of this fascinating subject, please read, download, or request your free copy of the booklet, What Is Your Destiny?.