Why do we exist?

What the Bible says

The Bible answers this question by turning it round. Before asking "What am I here for?", it asks "Where did I come from?" On its account a human being is not self-existent but made. In the vision of Revelation, the elders around the throne sing:

“Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things; by Your will they exist and were created.”

Rev 4:11

I exist because God willed it. Paul adds that all things were made not only through Christ but for him.

All things were created through Him and for Him.

Col 1:16

What, then, were people made for? In Isaiah God calls his people:

everyone called by My name and created for My glory, whom I have indeed formed and made.

Isa 43:7

"Glory" here does not mean that God uses people to feed his vanity. Glory is the making known of how good someone is. We were made to show what God is like, and to do that we have to know him. Jesus prays:

Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.

John 17:3

Jeremiah says the same. The wise, the strong and the rich should not boast in what they have, but in this, "that he understands and knows Me" (Jer 9:23-24). So the Bible's first answer is a relationship. Before any task or achievement comes knowing God, which is not a matter of information but of fellowship.

That relationship spills over onto other people. When Jesus was asked which commandment is greatest, he gave two:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind… This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

Matt 22:37-39

We were made to love God and to love our neighbours. That is what the Bible calls our purpose.

Ecclesiastes sharpens the answer. The Teacher examines life "under the sun", that is, with God left out and only the visible world in view, and his verdict is bleak.

“Futility of futilities,” says the Teacher, “futility of futilities! Everything is futile!”

Eccl 1:2

But the book does not end there. Its last word is:

When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.

Eccl 12:13

The church's witness

The church has long had a short answer. The Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647 begins: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever" Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q1. Notice that two verbs stand side by side. Glorifying God and delighting in him are not rivals. Duty and joy are one.

Augustine turned this into his own story. In the opening of the Confessions he says to God, "our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee" Augustine, Confessions 1.1. The restlessness of the human heart is not a defect. It is a pointer to what we were made for.

Commenting on John 17, Augustine ties eternal life to knowing God and says that this knowing grows.

if the knowledge of God is life eternal, the more advance we make in this knowledge, the more we make in life eternal.

Augustine

On the last chapter of Ecclesiastes, Matthew Henry writes: "The fear of God, is often put for the whole of true religion in the heart, and includes its practical results in the life" Matthew Henry. Fear of God, in other words, is more than trembling. It is the whole orientation of the heart toward him, with the way of life that follows.

In the original languages

The key word of Ecclesiastes is hevel (הֶבֶל). English Bibles usually say "vanity" or "futility", but the word literally means "breath" or "vapour". It is what you cannot hold, what does not last. The Teacher is not so much crying that life is meaningless as saying that everything under the sun is like a breath you cannot grasp. Wealth, wisdom and pleasure, taken by themselves, do not get past death. So he looks for something to hold beyond the breath.

The other word is yada (יָדַע), "to know". In Hebrew this verb is not limited to knowing facts. It means knowing by close acquaintance, and it is used even of the intimacy of husband and wife. The "knows Me" of Jeremiah 9:24 and the "know" of John 17:3 (Greek ginōskō (γινώσκω)) are this kind of knowing. When the Bible says that eternal life is knowing God, it means fellowship with him, not information about him.

Common objections

"Meaning is not found, it is made." This is a serious objection. People do find deep meaning in family, in good work, in helping others. Those who do not believe in God are not thereby less good. There is also a fair worry that a purpose handed down from outside takes away freedom. No one wants to live like a tool with a fixed use. All of that should be conceded.

But the purpose the Bible speaks of is not a use assigned to a tool. It is closer to a father telling his child, ‘I made you to know me.’ Christians do not say that human-made meaning is fake. They ask two questions. First, can the meaning I make bear weight against death and the fading of every memory? Ecclesiastes said "futility" at exactly this point. Second, can a meaning I give myself weigh more than I do? A purpose I set I can also withdraw. Being loved into existence is a gift I did not set and cannot take back. People answer these questions differently, and this is not proof. It is a comparison of which account explains the whole of life better.

"If God seeks his own glory, isn't he self-centred?" When a person seeks only his own glory we call him arrogant, and the objection draws on that instinct. But God is not like us. To call the most beautiful thing beautiful, and the best person good, is not arrogance but truth. Nor does God's glory compete with our joy, which is why the Catechism joins glorifying and enjoying. In John 17 Jesus draws us into the circle of love in which the Father glorifies the Son and the Son the Father. The church has confessed that God made us not because he lacked anything, but out of overflowing love.

"Does this hold for people who suffer, or who achieve nothing?" It would be contrary to the Bible to say that a sick body, or a life with nothing to show for it, has no purpose. If our purpose lies not in accomplishment but in being known and loved by God, then a dying person, a small child and someone who cannot work have the same weight. This is taken up further in Does suffering have meaning?.

Going further

The claim here is plain. You are not a by-product of chance but someone made in love, and at the centre of your life, before any work or result, stands fellowship with one person. A reader who does not believe need not accept this at once. But before deciding the answer is wrong, it is worth considering what it actually promises.

You might ask yourself some questions. What am I holding on to hardest right now, and will it outlast time? What is my restless heart looking for? How might my work look different if it were done from love of God and neighbour?

To read on, see Who is God?, What is a human being? and How should we live?. Ecclesiastes is worth reading in one sitting.