They are all seekers. The greatest minds of antiquity have reunited in a magnificent temple to once again confront the greatest questions concerning man. Occupying center stage in this sort of all-star event are Plato and his brilliant pupil, Aristotle. Onlookers gather about, watching a disputation on the highest plane. Plato speaks of how humans have been chained in an earthly cave, unable to see the transcendent and heavenly reality that shapes the earth. His finger points skyward, as if to show that there is the origin of all truth. Aristotle differs. Understanding the world we live in, and especially the laws of nature, is the key to truth, he says. Aristotle directs his right hand downward, as if to show that here is where we find truth. At stage right, in the corner is Zeno of Citium, a wizened old man carrying a young child in his arms. In his shriveled and sober face we see the hallmarks of Stoicism, of which he was the principal founder. Next to him we find the young, plump Epicurus, crowned with vine leaves and presumably defending hedonism—the belief that the principal aim of life is pleasure. Opposite them are the scientific and mathematical types. Euclid demonstrates to his four students the wonders of a compass and geometry, suggesting that the world can be understood by mathematical laws. Next to him, holding globes, is the astronomer Ptolemy, seeking to understand his place in the cosmos.

This is The School of Athens (painted between 1508-1511), Raphael's masterpiece that captured the spirit and dream of the Renaissance. Here is the sanctuary where, the poet Lucretius writes, "the commonplace thoughts of ambition, vanity, and thirst for gold, give way to the search after truth."¹ Deep within every person there is an aspiration to discard pretension and pursue a fundamental and indispensable question—the meaning of human life. Even if we have never studied these Athenian legends, their search for meaning to the human condition resonates within us, because we are all seekers.

The Question
As to the purpose of human life, an eminent historian succinctly states, "We all want to know why. Man is the asking animal."² Franklin Baumer labels this question concerning the meaning of man as a "perennial question," one of the "deepest questions man can ask about himself and his universe...perennial because man cannot help asking [it]."³ According to Pascal, it is man's demand for a why that makes man, and man alone, miserable.⁴ It would not be too much to add that only when we have the answer to this why are we truly satisfied.

Throughout the centuries, the search for the meaning to human life has vexed philosophers, troubled theologians, stumped psychologists, and, in short, challenged everyone. Met with a million shrugs, the question persists.

The Bible does not shirk from asking and answering this critical question. The question is raised prominently in the Old Testament, especially in the book of Job. The question is answered in the New Testament, with particular development in the apostle Paul's writings. Paul's life and writings reveal the mystery that has been hidden in God throughout the ages.

The Seeker
Edom, west of the Arabian desert. ca. 2000 B.C.

"There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and this man was perfect and upright, and he feared God and turned away from evil."⁵

And so begins the book of Job, the ancient story that is both as familiar and as misunderstood as any other in the annals of man. Job is described as a man of impeccable virtue, prosperous both in progeny and in material possession—ten children, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and a great many servants. He is "greater than all the sons of the east." Little else is recorded concerning this man because little else need be recorded. We have just been introduced to a man with no discernible weakness or fault.

If Job's virtue, piety, and primitiveness make him foreign to us, what comes next makes him intimate, identifiable, and timeless. For reasons hidden from Job, God permits Satan to begin a sudden and devastating attack on him and his possessions.

A messenger finds Job and tells him that his oxen and donkeys have been stolen following a bloody raid. Another messenger then arrives to tell him that his sheep and servants have been destroyed by lightning. Job has no chance to collect himself—a third messenger comes to tell Job that his camels and servants have fallen prey to another deadly raid. A fourth and final messenger suddenly and ominously appears with the bitter news—Job's sons and daughters have all been killed in a desert storm. A brief period of time passes, and then Job is directly attacked—he is struck with severe boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job, stripped of all that he had, and stunned by the seeming senselessness and absurdity of his situation, is a picture of bewilderment and anguish:

Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and expire?...
I have no ease and I have no quiet and I have no rest, but trouble comes.⁶

But Job refused to passively accept his condition, think nothing more of it, and act as if his life were but a random sequence of events. He sought for meaning. His friends would later come and offer superficial and trite explanations for his sufferings. Job rejected their easy answers, knowing there was something deeper and more profound to his predicament. A man in darkness, he continued groping for that elusive understanding. His frustration mounted, and finally, it became unbearable. Job's sufferings, physical and metaphysical, provoked within him the ultimate inquiry, articulated in the heartfelt cry whose echo is still heard today:

Why have You brought me out of the womb?⁷
What is man that You magnify him, and that You consider him, and that You visit him every morning, You try him every moment?⁸
You have hidden these things in Your heart; I know that this is with You.⁹

Job's utterance is remarkable—he recognized that his life and the events therein were not meaningless or senseless, and that God had created man with a purpose. Job demanded to know the answer to the mystery of human life, an answer hidden in the very heart of God. Job asked, Why? And in so doing, Job became the paradigmatic Seeker.

The Discoverer
Philippi, Macedonia. A.D. 52

The apostle Paul, along with his companions, had finally arrived in Europe. His travels thus far had not been pleasant. Already he had narrowly escaped several attempts on his life. In Asia Minor the crowds had stoned Paul to the point of unconsciousness and left him for dead. It mattered little. The sufferings strengthened Paul's faith and filled him with joy. He was knocked down, but not knocked out.

As it turned out, Europe was no more receptive to Paul and his companions. Shortly after arriving in the city of Philippi (in modern day Greece), Paul and his companion Silas were violently seized and brought before the city magistrates. They were stripped, and then brutally beaten with rods. Paul and Silas were then thrown into the dungeon-pit of the prison, in "pestilential cells, damp and cold, from which the light was excluded, and where the chains rusted on the limbs of the prisoners."¹⁰ For good measure, the jailer put their lacerated limbs into the stocks—a torturous instrument with holes to immoblize a prisoner's wrists, ankles, and neck. Beaten and bound, Paul and Silas were finally left alone. About midnight, the other prisoners began hearing a strange sound incompatible with the barbarous prison. Echoing from the deepest recesses of the jail, the voices of Paul and Silas were heard by the inmates as they began singing "hymns of praise to God."¹¹ They listened with wonder to these new and joyful sounds coming from those who were in such physical pain.

From this glimpse into the life of Paul, the contrast between Job and Paul is obvious. Job's sufferings made his life an abysmal existence of anguish and unrest; Paul's sufferings seemed to transport him into a heavenly realm of peace and contentment. Job sank in deep and suffocating sorrow; Paul exulted in sublime and unfettered joy. Job responded as one who did not know the meaning of human life; Paul responded as one who did.

The Eternal Purpose of God
While Job gave profound utterance to the question of the ages, Paul's elucidating ministry gives the unique answer to the question—the eternal purpose of God and His plan to fulfill it. God's eternal purpose refers to the desire of His heart, that in which He finds satisfaction and joy.¹² God's eternal purpose is to enter into human beings, fill them with His very life and nature, and constitute Himself into them to such an extent that they fully express Him. By dispensing Himself into man in this way, God becomes man's inner content and man becomes God's visible expression and reproduction.¹³

This is what God wants. This is the answer.

Man—the Vessel
In order to understand how God accomplishes His eternal purpose, we have to understand the revolutionary anthropology found in the Bible—that every human is a vessel.¹⁴ Since we are all vessels, we have an innate desire to be filled with things, noble and ignoble, such as education and virtue, entertainment and vice. But Paul understood that as a vessel, the purpose and meaning of human life is to receive, contain, be filled with, and ultimately express God Himself. Since man was made to contain God, those who reject God and seek to be filled with other things encounter a deep sense of emptiness and vanity, and feel that life is devoid of meaning. Conversely, those who have received the One they are meant to contain have the unique and profound sense of satisfaction and meaning to human life.

Since man is occupied by so many things apart from God Himself, God will work to empty His seekers of all these distractions so that they will open to receive Him. How else can He fill with Himself those who are filled with other things? God allowed Job to suffer so that he, a man of probity, would be emptied of his material security and self-righteousness and be reduced to caring for nothing but God. Paul's sufferings caused him to realize that he was a fragile vessel, thus helping him to treasure the precious and priceless God who was working Himself into Paul to become everything to him.

God—the Content
God, on His part, passed through a tremendous process to become the unique and satisfying content for man, the vessel. First, God became an extraordinary human being named Jesus. This God-man lived a genuine human life that expressed God in humanity. At the end of His life on earth, Jesus was crucified on behalf of humanity. By His death, Jesus Christ obtained the forgiveness of sins for all people and made possible the reconciliation of God and man. Three days later, He resurrected and became the life-giving Spirit.¹⁵ The Spirit is the sum total of all that God is, including His experiences as a man, His passing through death, and His boundless resurrection power. As the Spirit, God can reach man, supply man, and impart His very being into man.

Paul was a vessel continually open to the filling of the Spirit. In the midst of his torturous sufferings Paul enjoyed what he described as "the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ."¹⁶ When he should have been discouraged, Paul was uplifted by the very God who had already passed through all forms of human suffering. When his own life was in danger, Paul was strengthened by being filled with the same God who had passed through death and entered into resurrection. By receiving God into his being day by day, Paul entered into the meaning of human life—Paul became an expression of God.¹⁷

The Answer
Within every human being there is a longing to know and enter into the meaning of human life. Deep within every human heart is a wondering: Why am I here? Is there meaning to all that I am experiencing? Is there purpose to human existence? At the deepest level of our being, we are all seekers. We all want to know.

God dispensing Himself into man, man becoming God's expression: this is the answer to all our questions. This is what the ancient seekers longed to discover. This is what Job only dimly understood. This is what we yearn for. This is the purpose and meaning of human life.

1 Eugene Muntz, Raphael: His Life, Works, and Times (Chapman & Hall, 1888), p. 264. (back)  2 Daniel J. Boorstin, The Seekers: The Story of Man's Continuing Quest to Understand His World (Vintage, 1999), p. xiii. (back)  3 Franklin L. Baumer, Modern European Thought, (MacMillan, 1977), pp. 11, 14. (back)  4 Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensées (Pantheon, 1950), p. 85. (back)  5 Job 1:1 (back)  6 Job 3:11, 26 (back)  7 Job 10:18 (back)  8 Job 7:17-18 (back)  9 Job 10:13 (back)  10 W.J. Conybeare and J.S. Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul (Longmans, Green, and Co., 1898), p. 234. (back)  11 Acts 16:25 (back)  12 Ephesians 1:5, 11; 3:11 (back)  13 Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 3:10; 2 Corinthians 4:7; Galatians 2:20 (back)  14 Romans 9:20-23; 2 Corinthians 4:7 (back)  15 1 Corinthians 15:45 (back)  16 Philippians 1:19 (back)  17 Philippians 1:21 (back)

To satisfy the desire of God's heart and enter the purpose of human existence, please pray this prayer:

O Lord Jesus, my life of seeking has left me empty. I am purposeless without You. Lord Jesus, cleanse me of my sins and come into me. Bring me into Your purpose for the satisfaction of Your heart. O Lord Jesus, I give myself to You for Your eternal purpose.