1. What is the great priority and purpose of man?
Man’s great priority and purpose is to love God with his entire being: heart, soul, mind and strength (Mk 12:29-30).
2. Why is this man’s great priority and purpose?
Loving with the entire being is worship: expressing the worth and value due to God (Ps 29:1-2). Man was created to express this glory (Is 43:3), as image-bearers (Gen 1:26-27), just as the entire created order is to reflect and magnify the worth of God (Ps 150, Revelation 4:11).
3. Why should all creatures magnify God’s worth?
God is Beauty (Job 40:9-10). The Triune God is the perfection of all excellence in Being, the most delightful conjunction of all attributes of Deity, the quintessence of truth and goodness, and the most admirable and sweetest expression of this loveliness. This glory calls for the appropriate response of highest enjoyment and admiration (Ps 113:3).
4. Why should God delight in this worship?
God delights in His own glory above all things, knowing that the magnification of His glory is the greater good of all.
5. Why should man delight in this worship?
Nothing is more reasonable, and nothing is more profitable than for man to love what is most beautiful (Ps 73:25)
6. What is meant by loving God with man’s entire being?
To love God with the entire being is to love Him for Himself, not as a means to a higher love, but to delight and depend on Him ultimately.
7. Why should God not be loved as a means to another end?
God is the only God, the only One worthy of ultimate love (Ps 115:1) and not an instrument to some other love, for all things are from Him, and through Him, and to Him (Rom 11:36).
About David de Bruyn
David de Bruyn pastors New Covenant Baptist Church in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a graduate of Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minnesota and the University of South Africa (D.Th.). Since 1999, he has presented a weekly radio program that is heard throughout much of central South Africa. He also blogs at Churches Without Chests.
