As a hell-deserving people saved by the grace of God (Eph. 2:8), from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:9), and for the glory of God (Eph. 1:12), we exist to joyfully extol and magnify the Triune God, to faithfully proclaim the Christ-centered word, to build each other up by speaking the truth in love, and to bring the good news of the gospel to our city and world, so that the Lamb who was slain may receive the full reward for His sufferings.
I. To Joyfully Extol and Magnify the Triune God
Man’s chief end is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever (1 Cor. 10:31; Rev. 4:11). This life, this world, and the universe itself are not about us. They are about Him. The universe is a cosmic theater designed to display the breathtaking, soul-satisfying glory of God (Ps. 19:1). The problem is that, because of sin, we are not only born blind to His glory but hostile toward it. Yet by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, our blindness is removed and we are given new hearts to behold and adore the glory of God as it shines most splendidly in the face of His Son, Jesus Christ (Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 4:4–6). The new birth enables us to joyfully extol the glory of the very God we once despised (Rom. 1:30). Out of all created things, God has chosen to display the glory of His manifold wisdom through His church (Eph. 3:10). Thus, our ultimate purpose as a congregation is to magnify the Triune God and exalt His name together (Ps. 34:3). In short, it is to make much of Him by what we proclaim and how we live. In the words of the Gloria Patri:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.
Amen, amen!
II. To Faithfully Proclaim the Christ-Centered Word
One of the chief means of magnifying God together is by proclaiming, from both the Old and New Testaments, all that He has accomplished through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of His Son. This was, after all, the very first thing the Spirit-empowered church began to do on the day of Pentecost, as the eyewitnesses testified:
We hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. (Acts 2:4, 11)
Peter went on to define these mighty works in terms of what God accomplished through the humiliation and exaltation of His Son (Acts 2:22–36). We are a people united under the authority of God’s Word—never above it, never alongside it, but always beneath it. We believe that when Scripture speaks, God Himself speaks. Paul calls the church "the pillar and buttress of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15), and we long to live worthy of this title. This is why proclaiming God’s truth in a world of lies and delusions is of paramount importance. God’s Word alone is sufficient to save, sanctify, safeguard, and satisfy the people of God for time and eternity (Ps. 119).
Scripture is not only God-breathed in its nature (2 Tim. 3:16) but also Christ-centered in its message (Acts 13:27–39). Jesus taught that His person and work are the central focus of all Scripture (John 5:39; Luke 24:27, 44–47). Because the Bible is the inerrant, infallible, inspired, and authoritative Word of the living God, the most faithful and loving thing we can do as a church is to preach Christ crucified in all of Scripture, declaring "the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27) for the glory of the Triune God and the joy of all peoples.
III. To Build Each Other Up by Speaking the Truth in Love
As Christ saves His people, He makes them citizens of His kingdom (Col. 1:13), members of His household (Eph. 2:19), and living stones in the new and final temple God is building by the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 2:5; Eph. 2:21–22). We exist, therefore, not merely to build up ourselves (Jude 20), but to build up one another (1 Thess. 5:11). We live in a day when secular and religious individualism is prized and celebrated, yet while we acknowledge our ethnic and cultural differences, we confess the greater reality: as the church, we are all "one in Christ Jesus" and "individually members one of another" (Gal. 3:28; Rom. 12:5).
We are to "strive to excel in building up the church" (1 Cor. 14:12). We fulfill this high calling by not neglecting to meet together (Heb. 10:25), by counting others more significant than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), by bearing one another’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), by teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom (Col. 3:16), by stirring one another to love and good works (Heb. 10:24), by showing hospitality (1 Pet. 4:9), and by using our God-given gifts to serve one another for His glory (1 Pet. 4:10). Our aim in all this is that every believer be presented mature in Christ (Col. 1:28). By speaking the truth in love, we grow up in every way into Christ, who is the head of the body, the church (Eph. 4:15).
IV. To Bring the Good News of the Gospel to Our City and World
While the previous point highlights our God-given mandate to build one another up as the church, our mandate toward the world is to "make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that [Christ has] commanded [us]" (Matt. 28:19–20). This threefold commission—to make disciples through the proclamation of the gospel, to mark repentant believers by baptism, and to mature every disciple into individual who hears and heeds, trusts and treasures, loves and obeys the Lord Jesus Christ—was the solemn charge our Savior left His disciples with just before He ascended back to heaven. In carrying out this Great Commission, we are called to support the planting of sound, Christ-treasuring churches at home and abroad.
V. That the Lamb Who Was Slain May Receive the Full Reward for His Sufferings
As the previous sections describe our purpose as it relates to the church and the world, this final point speaks to the ultimate motivation behind everything we do as a congregation. In one sense, we return to the very first point concerning the exaltation of the Triune God and affirm that one of the chief purposes of Christ humbling Himself to the point of death was that He might be "crowned with glory and honor" as the Last Adam (Heb. 2:9), receiving all that the Father promised Him: a purified people, washed white in His blood, to be His eternally treasured possession (Tit. 2:14; Isa. 53:10–12; John 6:39–40; 17:2). If Christ's saving work is the blazing sun at the center of the biblical universe, around which the whole of Scripture revolves, then we must listen carefully to how Jesus Himself describes this climactic work:
The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. (John 12:23)
Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (John 13:31)
Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. (John 17:1)
This was the highly anticipated hour of the Son's glory (John 2:4, 4:23, 8:20, 12:27, 13:1). The Father of glory glorified His Son as He hung on the cross in darkness, bearing the awful weight of our sin, and He glorified Him again when He raised Him from the dead (1 Pet. 1:21). But the hour of the Son's glory is not a merely a past memory, it is the "blessed hope" of the future as we await "the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ" (Tit. 2:13). The King will come again in His glory to judge the living and the dead (Matt. 25:31).
In that day when His glory is revealed (1 Pet. 4:13), He will shine radiantly in and through His redeemed as they shine like the sun forever (Matt. 13:43; Col. 3:4; 2 Thess. 1:9-10). The glory of the Father and the Son will be the everlasting light of the New Creation (Rev. 21:23). Thus, our highest motivation in all ministry is not merely that the lost be found or the saved be sanctified, but that the Lamb who was slain might receive all that the Father promised Him: eternal glory (Luke 24:26; John 17:24; Eph. 1:12; 2 Pet. 3:18). The driving motivation of the apostles was that their King and Savior would be glorified, both now and forever, as Peter stated:
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 4:10-11)