Why Are You Here?

Genesis 1:27-28, Colossians 1:15-20

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So what are you doing here? Why are you here right now? Now, I’m not just asking about, like, why are you watching this devotion video? I’m asking the bigger picture. The bigger picture question, like, why are you here on this planet? What is your purpose? What’s the meaning of life? I know. I just went there to that big picture question. What is the meaning of life? And I know people talk like it’s this big riddle, like no one can really know the answer to that question. But actually, if you look through the pages of Scripture, the first pages, we can get some insights to why we are here.

If you look back to when God created humanity, when God created Adam and Eve, you go to Genesis chapter one verses 27 to 28 to say this.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

God created humanity in his own image, in his likeness. See, when God did that, God was doing something very purposeful. I mean, how does an invisible God visibly put on display what he looks like in this world? It’s by creating you and me, creating people with the purpose of being walking pictures of him. God gave humanity the authority over the world to go and to live and act into and to work together so that we could display his character and his goodness and his love in the world. Humanity was created to be a walking picture of God.

It’s a pretty incredible purpose. Now, unfortunately. Do you always live in a way that looks like God? I know. I sure don’t. None of us do. In many ways we, throughout the day, live in ways that don’t look anything like God. And as people who are created to live in a way that looks like God in many ways, you can look and feel like, Man, our lives are just a real disappointment because we just failed to be that. And and no wonder, no wonder God calls out our sin when we were created for so much more than we often live for.

But there’s good news for us. If you go to the New Testament, to the Book of Colossians, there is this incredible section talking about Jesus. Jesus who is fully God, but then also fully human, and notice what it says about him. So we pick up in verse 15, says

He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He is a human who is a walking picture of God. He is what you and I were created to be. When you see Jesus, you see God. Jesus is God becoming human. So He could live that life you and I were meant to live but don’t. And then he could lay that life down and die on the cross in order to pay the price. To take the justice for all the ways that you and I have not at all acted like God. And then He rose again to resurrection. Life rose again to give us a new life so that through faith in him, we now have that image restored through faith in Christ.

When God looks at us, He sees us as the image of God as walking pictures of God. And as we live in our faith now, we get to begin to live out what we were originally called to be. We get to begin to live in our purpose when God, the Holy Spirit works in us. And in Galatians five, it talks about these fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, kindness, all these good things. When those things come out in you. You are walking in your purpose because you are showing the world what God looks like. In First Corinthians Chapter 12, it says that each of us actually has a unique manifestation of the Spirit. God, the Holy Spirit shows up in you, in your life as a Christian. Why are you here? What is your purpose? To be a walking picture of God.