To Enjoy Him Forever
Introduction:
Question 1. What is the chief end of man?
Answer. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
i. Not two ends but one end
ii. the highest goal and highest good
Is it right to seek your own pleasure and happiness?
Problems:
i. selfish people seek their own - Php 2:21
ii. Love seeketh not her own - 1 Cor 13:5
Solutions:
i. seeking your own happiness is not nec. opposed to the happiness / good of others - Php 2:4
ii. Love seeks her own when she does good because she delights in the good of others Pro 21:15
Defining pleasure, happiness, joy and good
i. “If you love your own existence”
ii. That which is most agreeable to being or to existence - Php 1:18-26
Self Interest in Scripture
i. He who would love life and see good days, - 1 Peter 3:10
ii. Proverbs
iii. Rewards in Christ's words - Sermon on the Mount much more...
Is happiness the goal or only a byproduct?
Very common understanding / teaching
It is impossible to make a single act where happiness is not your final end
God seeks his own happiness - Jer. 9:24
God's glory or my Joy?
This people draw near to me with their lips - Is. 29:13
Serve the Lord with gladness - Ps. 100:2
Quotations.
Q. 7. Why is the glorifying of God and the enjoyment of God joined together as one chief end of man?
A. Because God hath inseparably joined them together, so that men cannot truly design and seek the one without the other. They who enjoy God most in his house on earth, do most glorify and enjoy him. "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be still praising thee." — Ps. 84:4. And when God shall be most fully enjoyed by the saints in heaven he will be most highly glorified. "He shall come to be glorified in his saints."— 2 Thess. 1:10. Thomas Vincent http://www.shortercatechism.org/resources/vincent/wsc_vi_001.html
Q. 9. Why are the glorifying and enjoying of God put together, as making up our chief End?
A. Because no man can glorify God, that takes him not for his God; and one takes him for his God, that takes him not for his supreme Good; and both these being essentially included in this Notion of the chief End, are therefore justly put together. John Flavel
http://www.shortercatechism.org/resources/flavel/wsc_fl_001.html
OBJECT. IV. To suppose that God makes himself his ultimate end in the creation of the world, derogates from the freeness of his goodness, in his beneficence to his creatures; and from their obligations to gratitude for the good communicated. For if God, in communicating his fullness, makes himself, and not the creatures, his end; then what good he does, he does for himself, and not for them; for his sake, and not theirs.
Answer. God and the creature, in the emanation of the divine fullness, are not properly set in opposition; or made the opposite parts of a disjunction. Nor ought God’s glory and the creature’s good, to be viewed as if they were properly and entirely distinct, in the objection. This supposeth, that God having respect to his glory, and the communication of good to his creatures, are things altogether different: that God communicating his fullness for himself, and his doing it for them, are things standing in a proper disjunction and opposition. Whereas, if we were capable of more perfect views of God and divine things, which are so much above us, it probably would appear very clear, that the matter is quite otherwise: and that these things, instead of appearing entirely distinct, are implied one in the other. God in seeking his glory, seeks the good of his creatures; because the emanation of his glory (which he seeks and delights in, as he delights in himself and his own eternal glory) implies the communicated excellency and happiness of his creatures. And in communicating his fullness for them, he does it for himself; because their good, which he seeks, is so much in union and communion with himself. God is their good. Their excellency and happiness is nothing, but the emanation and expression of God’s glory: God, in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself: and in seeking himself, i.e. himself diffused and expressed, (which he delights in, as he delights in his own beauty and fullness,) he seeks their glory and happiness. Jonathan Edwards
http://www.doxologypress.net/theology/edwards/works/volume_1/theend.html#iv.iii.iv-p31