June 21, 2021 – Click here to listen
Have you ever wondered why the Lord created humankind in the first place? It seems that we create more problems than we solve in this beautiful world and sometimes seem to be merely an ugly blight on the paradise God created for us.
The Bible is crystal clear why He did it. It was so He could love us.
Adam and Eve were more like Him than anything else He had created. On the sixth day of creation, God “breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul”. God made mankind in His own image; that is, Humans would live forever, just as God will.
Colossians 1:16 states: “All things were created by Him and for Him.” He created us for His own pleasure. Being created for God’s pleasure does not mean humanity was made to entertain God or provide Him with amusement; however, it gives God pleasure to have other beings with whom He can have a genuine relationship.
Now I know that some of you might logically be saying that the premise of God creating us so He could love us seems irreconcilable with human suffering. If God created us to love us, why in the world would He allow us to suffer? I have reached the conclusion that to have the relationship God wants us to have with Him it necessitated that He grant us a free will. With it came sin and God being holy and perfect cannot tolerate sin. This sin had to be dealt with before His love could be fully demonstrated in the complete absence of any suffering, sorrow, or tears which are the natural result of sin.
C.S. Lewis tried to explain this in the book, The problem of Pain. He said the problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insolvable so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word ‘love’ and look on things as if man were the center of them. Man is not the center. God does not exist for the sake of man. Man does not exist for his own sake. Revelation 4:11, Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. We were not primarily created that we may love God (though we were made for that too) but that God may love us, that we may become objects in which His Divine love may rest “well pleased”.
Lewis mentioned that to ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are to ask that God should cease to be God: because He is what He is, His perfect love must, in the nature of things, be impeded and repelled, by certain stains in our present character, and because He already loves us He must labor to make us lovable in HIS eyes. We cannot even wish, in our better moments, that He could reconcile Himself to our present impurities. What we would here and now call our ‘happiness’ is not the end God has in view: but when we are such as He can love without hindrance, we shall in fact be happy.
God does not want people to live in brokenness, darkness, and separation. So, He went to the most extreme lengths in order that we can be forgiven, healed, restored, and made whole. He sent His Son Jesus Christ, fully God, who became fully human to perfect us for an everlasting relationship that fulfills His purpose for creating us. That He might finally have the genuine relationship that He desires with us for all of eternity. And then human suffering will cease to exist or
I believe even be remembered.
Colossians 1:16
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.