15 Jan 2024
I remember distinctly when I was young as a child, I had to confront this question, and the answers I received from various ones, including my parents, were unsatisfactory to me, and when I tried very hard to think of the answers, I grew very alarmed and fearful – principally because I felt that there is no meaning in life and that I might just be here “by chance”, here today and gone tomorrow without any trace of my existence.
When I started medical school, and encountered somebody dying, and in the same moment I observed the birth of a baby, I started pondering over the meaning of life and death. Even when someone shared with me the gospel, I was initially cynical and full of doubts – and I embarked on reading and studying the Bible ‘to prove’ that the Bible is ‘wrong’. Thankfully, and by the grace of God, I encountered Jesus and experienced His reality, love and goodness, and that set me on a journey as a Christian for the past 56 years.
What is man? This was the question which I could not avoid asking about myself years ago. I found myself to be self-conscious and self-aware. I could stand back from myself and look at myself and judge myself and ask basic questions about myself, and, what is more, I could not help doing these things. And that caused me to wonder what life means, what sense it makes, what one is here for. Now I realise that such questions must be squarely faced, and not ignored.
After becoming a Christian and noting the answers in the BIble, I realise that every human individual has infinite worth, being made by God for nobility and glory, but every human individual is currently twisted out of moral shape in a way that only God can cure. Each of us by nature is God’s image-bearer, but is also fallen and lives under the power of sin, and now needs grace. Sin is a sickness of the soul, a sickness of the spirit, and the tragic sense of life, inner tensions and contradictions, plus our own unrealism, egoism, and indisposition to love God and our neighbour, are all symptoms of our disorder.
Some may express the thought that man, though good, is terribly weak. That, however, seems hardly adequate. – the Bible reveals that each one of us is radically bad, though providentially kept from expressing our badness fully. Someone rightly said that if we can project our thoughts and feelings throughout our days onto the screen for everyone to see, we would run and hide and feel terribly embarrassed.
In human nature, viewed morally, as God views it, everything is out of true to some extent. It is beyond us to straighten and integrate the human character – man needs God for that.
Scripture shows that God intends his law to function in three ways:
Its first function is to be a mirror reflecting to us both the perfect righteousness of God and our own sinfulness and shortcomings. The law is meant to give knowledge of sin and, by showing us our need of pardon and our danger of damnation, to lead us in repentance and faith to Christ (Galatians 3:19-24). As we read and study the Bible in order to know God, surprisingly, we begin to know ourselves – our sinfulness and shortcomings.
The law’s second function is to restrain evil. Though it cannot change the heart, the law can to some extent inhibit lawlessness by its threats of judgment, especially when backed by a civil code that administers present punishment for proven offenses.
The third function of the law is to guide the regenerate into the good works that God has planned for them (Ephesians 2:10). The law tells God’s children what will please the heavenly Father.
The Christian is free from the law as a supposed system of salvation but is “under Christ’s law” as a rule of life.
Those who do not in humility and self-distrust allow the Bible to teach them its message about God and grace will never have their false notions of God corrected, nor see the light of saving truth, but will walk in darkness forever; only those who become pupils of Scripture will find the true God and eternal life. This point is bound up with another: the clear understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The nature and power of the Spirit’s ministry sprang straight from the Scriptures: the Spirit is the Author of the Bible and He is the One who can rightly interpret the Bible for our growth and learning spiritually. Although God uses men as writers, it is God who inspired all Scripture. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that God’s people may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16). We need to read and study the Scriptures with the purpose of entering into the thinking of the writers (and ultimately the thinking and teaching of God’s Spirit) – we do this not just as scholars (we have seen the danger of intellectual pride and the inadequate place of human reason and logic), but as Christians, conscious of the darkness of our own minds, and praying for light from God – and by God’s grace, we can enter into a deep personal experience of the Spirit’s inner witness to the authenticity of Scripture as God’s Word, and of the Spirit’s power to use it as a source of instruction, hope, and strength.
In coming to Christ, His Word and the Spirit, I no longer wonder who I am and what I am. I now know and experience the joy of knowing God, of being loved by Him as HIs child, together with many other believers. I now know that there are two worlds – although I am in this fallen world, I am a citizen of heaven and I am on my way to my Father’s home. In the meantime, as a pilgrim on earth, God is preparing me for my eternal home together with the rest of the brethren, and the circumstances, setbacks, even sufferings and pain, are monitored by God to transform me and the brethren to be like Christ. There is meaning in life and there is a wonderful hope awaiting its consummation in eternity. Death no longer holds any fear – it is a doorway into the presence of God – it is not the end but a beginning with Him.
“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” (2 Cor. 4:17).