What Are
We Aiming At?
It was a
dirty trick. And, it took me a long time to figure it out. When I was very
young and helping my father around the house, he would subtlety shift the goals
for me. As I would be finishing up whatever task he had asked me to do, he
would ever so carefully extend the project, just enough, to keep me working. It
took me a while, but as I grew older, and more aware of his tactics, I realized
what he was doing—by ever so slightly shifting the end goal, he could get more
work out of me.
All of us
know the importance of having goals in life. Author and historian Bill Copeland
captures this well: “The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend
your life running up and down the field and never score.” Simply put, if you
don’t know what you are shooting at, you’ll never know if you’ve hit it. It
would be hard to imagine an area of life where this doesn’t apply: in
parenting, sports, vocation, education, performance, marriage, music. And,
unsurprisingly, it applies to our Christian lives as well.
What is
the goal of the Christian life? What should we be aiming at? What is our
target, our purpose, our end? Imagine how the answers to these questions would
subtlety (or drastically) shift your everyday walk with Jesus. Try some answers
on and see: What if the goal in life is to be happy? Everything you would do
would aim toward maximizing your joy or pleasure. Or, what if the goal is to be
a good person? All things are filtered through the lens of moral improvement.
Or, if serving others was key? Forget all else, and give yourself wholly and
completely to acts of service. Imagine how each of these answers would
radically change how you go about living every moment.
Of
course, you could spend a lot of time running up and down the field, and never
attain your goal… but that is especially true if you don’t even know what the
objective truly is. How do we determine what the right goals are? Who decides
what target we should be aiming at? Our families have a powerful influence here.
Of course, our culture dictates to us what we should want. One powerful
guidance is our own personalities, our likes and dislikes. But, can we speak of
the goal of the Christian life with any more definition than that? Well, I
think so. Remember who made us? Who redeemed us? Who we now claim as our Lord
and Savior. As Creator, Redeemer, Lord, is it surprising that we should look to
Him for our purpose in life?
So, what
does God Himself say is our purpose? What would He want for our ultimate goal
in life? There are many ways to phrase it—“to know Jesus and be known by Him;”
“to dwell in the Presence of the Lord;” “to glorify God and to enjoy Him
forever.” There are other ways of describing this, but you get the picture. Our
purpose, our goal is Him. And, fixing that goal firmly in mind, not allowing
that purpose to drift, will keep us from wandering through life, up and down
the field, never scoring.
Once the
goal is firmly in mind, what does it look like to approach the target? On the
football field, the team responds differently depending on how far they are
from the goal line. When you are deep in your own side of the field, you play
differently than when you are nearing the end zone. Where is the “end zone” for
the Christian life? Are we aiming for heaven? Is our goal to be rid of this
world and in our spirits be with the Lord? Is the fulfillment of life only when
we die? The Apostle Paul for one would argue strongly against such thoughts. 1
Corinthians 15 is a majestic overview of Paul’s thoughts here, a great biblical
summary of the goal, the end zone for the Christian life, and we’ll be
exploring it together this Sunday.
In
preparation for worship this Sunday, read 1 Corinthians 15.
1. It is
easy to imagine that Paul is writing this chapter specifically in response to a
set of questions. What do you think some of those questions might be?
2. Why
would such questions be on the minds of the Corinthians? I don’t think you need
to know anything about the Corinthian Church to guess at the reasons why these
questions are important.
3. What
is the logic of verses 12-19? Paul is pretty relentless here. What does this
tell us about the use of logic in the Christian life?
4. Why
would some say there is no resurrection of the dead? Besides the obvious
empirical question—why else might one deny the resurrection?
5.
Speculate on why you think this is an important issue for Paul? Why doesn’t he
just handle this question—is there a resurrection or not?—in short order? Why
elaborate as he does?
