“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.”
– Jonathan Edwards
Note: I use the term “terminal end” to refer to what Edwards referred to as a person’s chief end as that which all other ends are for. This is the person’s greatest goal or greatest desire. The “instrumental end” is that which a person desires something but desires it to obtain a higher or greater desire or goal.
We have been looking at how different things look when we begin to look at the purpose for which God created them. We have looked at prayer, Bible study, worship, and in some ways the church. But let us look at the Church and its purpose. The Church is so weak and anemic today that it is hardly recognizable when we see what it was meant to be in Scripture. The Church is not here in terms of its primary purpose in order to provide help and relief to hurting people, it is here to be the dwelling place of the glory of God and therefore to manifest His glory. The Church is not here in terms of its primary purpose as a social program or even for evangelism, but it is here for one primary purpose or terminal purpose or end. It is that which God has set out for it to do.
Paul sets this out to us in Ephesians 3:8-11: “To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; 10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We can see from this text that God has had a plan that was according to His wisdom from all eternity. God has had an eternal purpose for the Church and I doubt that it has changed. Paul said that he was given grace “to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what us the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things.” Now we must stop, humble ourselves, and pray for those words to sink in. The apostle Paul was given grace to preach and through that preaching to bring to light a mystery which was hidden in God for ages. In other words, for all eternity this was hidden from the angels. For all of human history no one ever really understood this. But now God brought it to light.
We see in v. 10 that God had hidden something for ages and now Paul is going to bring it to light so that God’s manifold wisdom “might now be made known through the church.” The Church is God’s vehicle to bring forth this truth that He had hidden from eternity. We may be closing in on the eternal purpose of the Church. But notice that His wisdom would be made known “to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” This text tells us that God has a purpose for the Church that is not of this world. It is to shine forth His wisdom to beings that we know nothing about. That purpose is ‘in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Again those words are weighty and will pass right over us if we do not stop and pray for the Lord to cause them to sink deep into our souls.
As we think of what God’s terminal purpose for the Church might be, that is, the purpose for the Church that all other purposes have their purpose in it, we should stress again that this is an eternal purpose. We must also see that this eternal purpose was carried out by God Himself in Christ Jesus. The text does not say that Christ carried this purpose out, but that God carried it out in Christ Jesus. As we reflect on these weighty words, let us come back and reflect what is going on in our day. We see books being written about purposes of the church and purposes in life. Fine, but if those purposes are not in accordance with the main purpose that is the eternal purpose of God, then there is a huge problem with that methodology. Let us also know that if people write and speak about the purposes of the church in a way that is somewhat biblical and yet they are not applied in a way that is in accordance with God’s terminal end or eternal purpose in the church, then those things are not according to the wisdom of God. They reflect humanism.
God Loves... Himself 
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