In his wonderful book The End for Which God Created the World, Jonathan Edwards sets out a vital point for the book and yet also for the whole of life. It is one that requires some reflection, but it is so vital that we must reflect on it deeply or we will not see why God created the world and will also miss why God created us. In some ways his reflection on words at the beginning of his treatise gets at the vital issues of Christianity. If we miss his point, we will have also missed true holiness and what the heart of Christianity is.
“To avoid all confusion in our inquiries concerning the end for which God created the world, a distinction should be observed between the chief end for which an agent performs any work and the ultimate end. These two phrases are not always precisely of the same signification, and though the chief end be always an ultimate end, yet every ultimate end is not always a chief end. A chief end is opposite to an inferior end; an ultimate end is opposite to a subordinate end. A subordinate end is what the agent aims at, not at all upon its own account, but wholly on the account of a further end of which it is considered as a means.”
Without going into all that Edwards sets out on this issue, this is enough to bring home what the vital point is in terms of Christianity and the life of holiness. We must always remember that the Greatest Commandment is to love God with all of our beings. We are also to glorify God in all that we do (I Cor 10:31). The Greatest Commandment is not contrary to humanity living to the glory of God in any way, but we must understand that to love God with all of our beings is to live for His glory out of that love. What we want to do in this meditation is to look at how this insight of Edwards helps us to diagnose our spiritual condition and our motives in what we do.
What I would like to do is to use different language than Edwards that might be clearer to the modern reader. We will use the terms terminal and instrumental. A terminal end is that which is the end for which all else is done. In other words, all motives and ends (purposes or goals) terminate in this end as the final and most important end. It is the end for which all other things are done. An instrumental end is an end (purpose or goal) that has the purpose of a greater end. In other words, the instrumental end is always a subordinate end in that it is not desired for itself alone but is desired for a greater reason or end. It is desired in order to obtain something else. A terminal end is desired for itself and it might have one or several instrumental ends that are only desired to obtain the terminal end.
In the world we see many people doing many things. From the outside we see the things that people are doing and we think of them as being either good or bad. But we are not always able to see their motives in what they are doing. It is the motive behind the action that will tell us their terminal or true goal. It is the greatest desire that they have in what they are doing that we are interested in if we are to determine their terminal goal. For example, we can imagine a young man helping an elderly person across the street and assisting in carrying that person’s groceries. We might smile to another person and remark about what a good thing that young man is doing. The action has all the appearances of good, but we still don’t know why (as to motive) the young man was doing what he was doing. Let us suppose we went up to the young man and asked him why he was helping the elderly person. If he said that he was doing it because he was getting paid for it, we would not think of it as such a good act as it would then be doing a job. If he said that it made him feel good about himself, it would be nothing but an act to make himself feel good. If he said that he did it to show that he was righteous in the eyes of God, we would think of him as self-righteous. If we found out later that he did it in order to rob the elderly person, we would know that the action was simply criminal and wicked. The terminal end or the real motive that the young man had in mind determined what was good or evil in the behavior.
The same thing is true in Christianity as well. Our motives determine whether what we do is good or evil and not simply the outward performance of an action. Do you love God when you go to church or do you go to church for another motive? Do you love God in your moral actions or do you have another reason that you do them? It might be social respectability or even a vow that was made. It might be from the fear of shame of getting caught or being seen doing such a thing. Let us not forget that our terminal motive must be the love of God in all things. We either use self as an instrumental end in seeking the glory of God or we use God as an instrumental end in seeking the glory and good of self. Do you use self for God or do you use God for self? One is the life of Christ and the other is idolatry. Choose this day your terminal end. If it is not God, you need His grace to give you a new heart.
God Loves... Himself 
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