purpose

Quote of the Day
One lives in the hope of becoming a memory.
Antonio Porchia 

What do we live for?

Friday night I heard a speaker claim that the purpose of the Christian life is to bear fruit.  He carried out the fruit analogy, saying that just as the purpose of the fruit we eat is really to bear seeds, so the fruit of the gospel that we bear with our lives is reproductive, bearing seeds into the lives of others.  The parable of the sower supports this:  the seed that falls on good soil produces a multiplicative crop.  (multiplicative?)

The very first answer of the Westminster Catechism claims that "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."

These could both be true.  The first claim being a derivative of the second.  But what do we live for?  Antonio Porchia made a name for himself that will last, at least as long as people are reading Italian poetry, or browsing Wikipedia.  But to be remembered cannot be our goal.  For many years it was mine, off and on.  I can easily fall to the temptation of being more concerned that I look like a great Christian leader than that I am actually following Jesus.  And while people who spend their lives for God are sometimes remembered, many are not.  Trouble is it can look the same, for a time.  But your sins find you out, if you don't let the gospel find them out first (Ephesians 5:8-14).