THE END FOR WHICH GOD CREATED THE WORLD
Why did God create the world? Why did God create anything at all? These are vital questions and perhaps more vital than any other question regarding creation. Scripture is the absolute authority on the matter because it is God’s testimony as to why He did what He did. It should be admitted by all that no one else was around when God planned and decreed to create, so that leaves us with His testimony and His alone. It is also the case that God might have had more than one reason to create, and in fact I would argue that He did, but the greatest concern is to discover His greatest or chief reason for doing so. If God had 100 purposes for creation and 99 of the purposes pointed back to His chief reason for creating, that is something that is important (even vital) to know. That is what Jonathan Edwards set out to do and (I think) his views on the matter are simply inescapable.
To help his readers and his parishioners see the truth, Edwards set out to show the fact that God created the world to manifest His own glory. Yet Scripture gives us other reasons that God created the world as well. In order to grapple with these things and help others to see what he was driving at, Edwards shows the difference between an ultimate end and a chief end. A chief end is seen in contrast with an inferior end and an ultimate end is seen in contrast to a subordinate end. A subordinate end is what a person aims at in an action and yet not on its own account but in order to obtain another end, purpose, or goal. For example, a person can have the goal or end of going to a pharmacy, but the ultimate end of the person is not to go to the pharmacy. The goal obtained by going to the pharmacy is to obtain a medication that will help in healing the person. But even then, the healing of the body can be a subordinate end to simply wanting to feel better. So it is absolutely vital to understand the distinction between ends or we will not be good interpreters of Scripture or of our own hearts and things regarding others.
An ultimate end is what a person seeks and does for its own sake rather than simply seeking it for the sake of another end. Edwards uses the example of a man that goes to some effort to obtain some fruit because he liked the taste. The man wanted the fruit simply because he liked and valued the taste. There are many things that people do that can be considered ultimate ends, at least in one sense, when they do things simply because they value something in and of itself or because they desire its pleasure.
A subordinate end can be rather complicated since some ends can be subordinate to an ultimate end, but also to other ends are subordinate themselves. Edwards refers to this as “a succession or chain of many subordinate ends, one dependent on another, one sought for another, before you come to anything what the agent aims at and seeks for its own sake.” This helps human beings examine their hearts as to motives and ends, but also helps us in ways to view others. We can see that a person can desire to be religious, but that does not inform us why the person wants to be religious. We can see people with great zeal and fervor, but that does not tell us why people have great zeal and fervor. It is true that people will usually give us good reasons about themselves, but while those reasons may be true those reasons may be subordinate ends rather than an ultimate end or even a chief end.
It can be that a person may say that he loves God and seeks His glory and those words be true in some sense. The person may not be lying at all. The question, however, does not get at the deepest reasons a person loves God and why the person seeks the glory of God. The person may love God (in some sense) and seek His glory (in some sense), but only do those things as subordinate to things that s/he values more. On the other hand, a person may see nothing but self as s/he goes throughout the day and thinks that there is nothing but sin there. But the self can also be a subordinate motive with God being the chief love of the soul. There is a huge distinction between the love of self (subordinate end) that flows out of a love for God (chief end) and the love of self (ultimate end) that flows from a love for self (chief end). But again, we use the words and if we do not strive to understand the distinctions they can drive us to a false confidence or a false despair. We are to use self as a subordinate end to the end that we are to the glory of God (chief end).
A chief end is always opposite of an inferior end and so is to be the end (goal, desire, purpose) that all things are to be done for. The self should always be subordinate, yet that does not mean we should never have the interest of self in mind, though not the interests of self-centered self. We must learn to do things for self and do them for a greater goal and end. For example, whether we eat, drink, of whatever we do we are to do those for the glory of God. It is not wrong to eat with many goals, even the preservation of self, but the love of God must be the end which is the chief end of all as God should be the end that is never inferior to another.
God Loves... Himself 
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