To glorify God and enjoy him
The Shorter Catechism's first question asks what human life is for, and answers that our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him for ever. It is one end with two sides: not adding to God's glory but acknowledging it, and delighting in God himself.
This week's questions
What is the chief end of man? Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever.
Question 1
So begins the Westminster Shorter Catechism, 107 short questions and answers prepared by the Westminster Assembly in 1647 for the churches of England, Scotland and Ireland. Presbyterian and Reformed churches have taught it ever since, and not they alone: the children of New England's Congregational churches met it in the schoolbook from which they learned to read The New England Primer, and Reformed Baptists learn from the Baptist Catechism of 1693, usually called Keach's, which keeps its order and most of its words The Baptist Catechism. No one need belong to a Presbyterian church to learn from it. How it came to be written is told in the library's introduction to the Shorter Catechism.
This course walks through it in fifty-two weeks, usually one or two questions a week, in the catechism's own order, from this first question to the closing Amen. The catechism first teaches what we are to believe concerning God, and then the duty God requires of us, as its third question will say next week. Each week gives the questions as the library has them, to read aloud and learn by heart, opens their proof texts, explains them briefly, and ends with one question to carry through the week and a short practice. The course's motto, ‘Deum glorificare, eoque frui’, is the Latin of this first answer: to glorify God, and to enjoy him.
One end with two sides
The answer names one chief end with two sides, and we are not asked to choose between them. The first proof text shows how far that end reaches, even to eating and drinking:
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31
The next proof text sets all things in their place: "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things" (Romans 11:36). Even the glory we give God was his first. The Puritan Thomas Watson, preaching through the catechism, distinguished the glory God has in himself from the glory his creatures give to him Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity, Q. 1. Nothing can be added to the first. The second is our acknowledging it: seeing God as he is, and saying so with our lips and lives.
To enjoy God is to delight not only in his gifts but in God himself as our good, as the psalmist does in the last proof text:
Whom have I in heaven but You? And on earth I desire no one besides You. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:25-26
His portion is not something God hands him; it is God. The psalm ends with both sides of the answer in a single verse: "But as for me, it is good to draw near to God. I have made the Lord GOD my refuge, that I may proclaim all Your works" (Psalm 73:28). Drawing near is the joy; proclaiming his works is the glory. ‘For ever’ means that this joy does not end where flesh and heart fail.
Nor is this joy a modern addition; it is Scripture's own language. David sings, "You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand" (Psalm 16:11), and Paul, writing in chains, makes it a command: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" (Philippians 4:4).
The whole church's confession, learned at home
That God is our end is not a Reformed discovery. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, wrote around 180: "For the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God" Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.20.7. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa, opened his Confessions by telling God that our hearts are restless until they rest in him Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1. The Catechism of the Catholic Church begins in the same place: God, happy in himself, made us out of goodness alone to share his happiness Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1.
The two Westminster catechisms set this common confession at their head. The Larger Catechism asks after man's "chief and highest end", and answers "to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever" Larger Catechism, Q. 1. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), long the catechism of the continental Reformed churches, comes in by another door. Its first question asks for our only comfort in life and in death, and answers that I belong to my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 1. Purpose and comfort are two doors into one house: those made for God become, in Christ, his own.
A catechism is meant to be learned by heart and talked over at home. Moses told Israel to keep God's words on their hearts and "teach them diligently to your children" (Deuteronomy 6:7), at home and on the road. In the 1650s Richard Baxter, minister at Kidderminster in England, taught his people household by household, and urged other pastors to do the same Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor. Man's chief end, in the Reformed Faith course, takes this question further; see also Why do we exist? and What is happiness?
To ponder this week
What would change in one ordinary day this week if you lived it to glorify God and to enjoy him? Paul put even eating and drinking under God's glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). Say the first answer aloud in the morning, and at night recall one moment when you delighted in God. At home, one can ask the question and another give the answer.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 6
How does the Shorter Catechism answer its first question, "What is the chief end of man?"
- Practice 2 of 6
What does it mean to glorify God?
- Practice 3 of 6
Which is closest to what the catechism means by enjoying God?
- Practice 4 of 6
Which proof text of Question 1 tells us to do all to the glory of God, whether we eat or drink?
- Practice 5 of 6
What does the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism ask?
- Practice 6 of 6
Which is true of how the Shorter Catechism has been used?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- Benjamin Harris, The New England Primer 1690년경 / c. 1690 — c. 1690. A schoolbook first printed in Boston by Benjamin Harris, from which New England children learned to read for more than a century; the earliest copy that survives is of 1727. Beside the alphabet in rhymes ('In Adam's fall / We sinned all'), prayers and verses of Scripture, its many editions printed the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and many also John Cotton's catechism for children, Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes.
- English Particular Baptists, The Baptist Catechism 1693 — 1693. The catechism of the English Particular Baptists, who had owned the Second London Confession as theirs in 1689; it keeps the order and most of the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and is usually called Keach's, after Benjamin Keach, though who compiled it is not certain. It parts from the Shorter Catechism on baptism, answering that baptism is to be given to those who actually profess repentance toward God and faith in and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to none other; that the infants of believers are not to be baptised, Scripture giving neither command nor example of it; and that it is rightly administered by immersion.
- Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity 1692 — 1692. The Puritan Thomas Watson (c. 1620–1686), ejected from his London parish in 1662, preached through the Westminster Shorter Catechism question by question; over 170 of the sermons were published together after his death, and are read today in three volumes, A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments and The Lord's Prayer. Since it follows the catechism, it is cited by the catechism's questions.
- Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies — c. 180. Defends the Creator and the incarnation against the Gnostics; Christ sums up and renews humanity (recapitulation). Book 5 looks for the reign of the righteous in a renewed creation. Read
- Augustine, Confessions Read
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church 1 — 1992. The Catechism's first paragraph: God, happy in himself, made us out of goodness alone to share his happiness.
- Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor 1656 — Urges pastors to watch over themselves first and to teach their people household by household.
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds, the Westminster Shorter Catechism and the Reformed confessions, the Fathers and classic commentary. They teach the Catechism as the Reformed churches' own, a week at a time, and present both sides where the Reformed differ, and other traditions' views, fairly. Scripture quotations: BSB.