You Don’t Know“You” Until You Know Your Purpose

1 September 2026  1 Corinthians 2:10-16

“Now we have received…the Spirit which is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.”  (1 Corinthians 2:12)   

The most well-known statement of our civil and human rights was written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Striking in this statement is the absence of any mention of the pursuit of the purpose for which humans, in fact, exist. Not only is that not an unalienable right, it doesn’t appear even to have been on the minds of America’s founders.

But it should have been. After all, If there is no given, factual, objective standard by which different ideas of happiness might be tested to see whether they conform to reality or spring from illusion, then the “pursuit of happiness” can mean just the pursuit of carnal pleasure as easily as the pursuit of virtue, the pursuit of other people’s property as easily as their well-being.

So, what if it is true that we don’t know the truth about ourselves or anything else, apart from our ultimate purpose. What if the Enlightenment of the 18th century got it wrong, and we have been misled for the last 300 years. What if the signs of cultural disintegration we see all around us are signs of that illusion.

 Apart from some understanding of the purpose of human life, “the pursuit of happiness” is a pretty lame right (cf. Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks, p. 37).

A popular philosophical nostrum, a product of the 18th century Enlightenment, is that “you can’t get an ought from an is.” You can’t logically jump from a statement of pure fact (is) to a command or a value judgment (ought) using logic alone. That claim rests, however, on the claim that statements of fact do not include statements of purpose. It would make it illogical to say, “My car gets 60 miles per gallon, and so it is a good car.” But the Enlightenment project wanted to separate statements of fact from purpose, making facts “public truth” and purpose a “personal preference.” But if the claim that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, 1647) is true, it is at least as important as the factual claim that humans have 46 chromosomes; it is at least as important to teach young people as it is to teach them the alphabet.

The Bible is dominated by statements of purpose. It’s oldest prayer, the Shema, states plainly, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). Jesus seconded that, and added, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (cf. Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:39). Unlike many eastern religions, which do not connect statements of purpose with statements about God, the Bible does that all the time. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of Jesus the Christ, calls people to do particular things, and expects a response; he asks questions and expects particular answers. Failure to respond or answer is to live in illusion and sin.

So, what if it is true that we don’t know the truth about ourselves or anything else, apart from our ultimate purpose. What if the Enlightenment of the 18th century got it wrong, and we have been misled for the last 300 years. What if the signs of cultural disintegration we see all around us are signs of that illusion.

Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to explain the gospel in terms of our world, but explaining our world in terms of the gospel. Maybe you will never know the truth about the world or yourself until you know your ultimate purpose. Maybe you will never know your ultimate purpose until you know God.

God is calling. Answer.