What is the Source, the Goal, and, Therefore, the Whole Point of Life?

The Source

The Trinity is Relational

Before the creation of human beings, there was already an intimate community – the beautiful mystery of the Trinity.  God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit lived in perfect loving relationship with each other from all eternity, full of life and joy.  And this one God in three-Person community made us to be like Him.  “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness” (Genesis 1:26).  The Trinity designed us to live all of life together in intimate relationship with Them and each other.  And it was very good. For a while.

The Break

Sin is Relational

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, turned away from the Trinity’s design for us, and so have the rest of us.  We broke relationship.  We went our own way, the way of self-sufficiency, self-protection, and self-promotion.  In the human relationships we do have, self is still at the center.  We use each other.  We hide from each other.  We hurt each other.  Relationships become means to an end, not ends in themselves.  And we are left deeply lonely.  Apart from God’s intervention, our search for healing, life, and joy is hopeless.

The Intervention

Redemption is Relational

But God did intervene.  He did not abandon us to ourselves.  Instead, He willingly subjected Himself to the anguish of broken relationship because He wanted to rescue us from our isolation and bring us into His family.  This is what happened at the Cross.  Out of sheer love for us, the Father abandoned His beloved Son, leaving Him utterly alone to bear the guilt for all our self-obsession and to suffer His Father’s punishment for it in our place.  The Trinity willingly endured the agony of broken intimacy with each other in order to restore us to loving relationship with Them and with each other.  This alone makes real healing, life, and joy possible.

The Goal

Restoration is Relational

Now the Holy Spirit is living in us, remaking us into the image of the Trinity, into people learning to love like the Trinity loves, into people learning to live in and for relationships of authenticity and intimacy with God and each other together.  Only He can do this work of transformation in us.  And He’s not in a hurry.  He does it over a whole lifetime.  It’s not complete until we are with Him face to face.  But He is always at work in us now, and He will finish what He has started.  “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.  He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).  He has destined us for complete healing, life, and joy in and through perfect intimate relationships forever.

The Point

Life is Relational

So, until then, what’s the point of life here and now?  Could it be relationship?  Could it be abiding together?