The Paradox of Purpose

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him^. Ephesians 1:9 NASB

Will – We’ve made a mistake! A huge mistake that affects every person on the planet. It wasn’t deliberate: it was simply the accidental result of our natural tendencies. But the implications of this mistake are colossal.   In fact, we have been living with the disastrous consequences of this simple mistake for as long as men have walked the earth.

What is this mistake? We have forgotten that God’s eternal purposes are hidden from us.

How many of us believe that we can see how God is working His purposes through history? How often do we think that we clearly know what God’s purposes are for us today? We have forgotten that God is not under contract to tell us His plans. He doesn’t need to ask our permission for what He is doing. In fact, He hardly ever tells us what the big picture looks like. God offers only glimpses of His eternal purposes through His progressive revelation. He doesn’t tip His hand too soon. If we begin to act as though we understand what God is doing before He tells us, we are probably going in the wrong direction. Once we see the truth about God’s eternal purposes, we will have a very different view of our lives.

The Bible is God’s invitation to look at history in order to firmly grasp this concept. Abraham was called to follow God to a land that God would show Him. For over a century, Abraham was the obedient traveler. But Abraham never received any of that promised land during his lifetime. He died owning nothing more than his burial ground.

Neither Isaac nor Jacob saw God’s purposes fulfilled. By the time Jacob died, the entire family of Israel consisted of seventy people living as exiles in Egypt under a foreign king. For more than two hundred years, the descendants of these few survived as slaves to the Egyptians, suffering one burden after another. Children were born into slavery and died in slavery while God’s purposes were being fulfilled. There was no happy ending or glorious reward in this world for these people. There was only a promise—a promise that never came true for them. God’s purposes were buried within a nation of refugees.

Moses, God’s chosen deliverer, led a wandering nation for forty years. The entire generation that fled Egypt died before a single person crossed the Jordan. These people, including Moses, knew only the promise. They never saw its realization. Along the way, God occasionally revealed Himself in cryptic symbols: the Ark of the Covenant, the tabernacle, the rock that became a fountain, smoke and fire, manna and serpents. It would be thousands of years before human beings understood the full intent of these signs, and even then, they would understand them only because God chose to reveal their meanings. God’s purposes remained hidden in the rituals and rigors of Israel.

The history of Israel is filled with examples of God’s mysterious purposes. God manipulated people and nations, land and sea, economies and wars to bring about His eternal purposes. We know this only through hindsight, revealed in God’s Word. When God’s prophets spoke about His purposes, human beings often misunderstood or ignored the messages. Yeshua himself commented on both the deliberate refusal of men to see God’s revealed purposes and the woeful condition of men who remained ignorant of God’s will. He observed our temporal disorder, that fixation on signs of the future rather than revelation in the past.

When we think about purpose, we often place our thoughts within the chronological category we call “the future.” For us, purpose is about what we will do, what we will become, what we will accomplish or what we will find. But the Hebrew language itself cautions us not to be so presumptive.

Perhaps the most powerful image associated with the mysterious purposes of God is found in the Hebrew word that we translate “future.” The Hebrew word is aharit; it is unusual because it literally means “afterward, backwards or after part.” So, how can it be about the future? The Hebrew concept of time is like a man rowing a boat. He sees where he has been, but he backs into the future. It is entirely unknown to him because it is behind him.

This picture has some very powerful theology in it. Only God can see “behind” us. We have as our guide what we see. Looking out from the boat, we see where we have been, the course we have been following. We see only the past. No wonder our history with God is so important. It is not just about human origins. Our past history with God is the visible guide for our course into the future. It is the guide because it allows us to align ourselves with the way God revealed His purposes in the past. But it is only a guide. It is not the goal.

This Hebrew view implies that we are not passive observers of history. We are participants. We are rowing boats in the middle of the river of history. The Hebrew concept suggests that what we really know about purpose, direction and time is observable in the past. This sequence of events, connecting this moment to all previous moments, places us in the historical fabric of God’s created purposes. We are not standing by, observing the universe as it surges past us. We are stuck right in the flow of all things that have ever existed up to this precise moment. And just like the river water below our boats, as we row we make changes in the very substance of history. History is dynamic, not static: it can be altered.

In the Hebrew view, our future is really in the process of becoming. Rowing the boat never allows us to see where this river is going. It only allows us to see where we have been. Each pull of the oars draws another piece of the temporal fabric under the keel. We experience the effort, the slice of the oar, the slap on the water. It is real, struggling involvement. We can change some of it. We can pull deeper, harder, and faster. We can alter course, steering left or right. The unknown future is changed when we alter our direction by shifting course. History is being built as we go. It is, however, never outside the flow of God, for He alone knows the river’s destination. Life is the process of rowing. The guidance we need comes from where we have already been. Our understanding of God’s purposes can only be as clear as our knowledge of God’s past actions with us.

This is the reason that our history with God is so important, but not just our personal history. We find direction in God’s history with all men. The Bible is the record of God’s deliberate revelation of His history with Man so that we have the markers needed to stay on course. But nothing within our scope of vision will tell us about God’s future purposes. They remain hidden in the waters yet to be navigated.

If we have the right markers in the past, we do not need to see the future goals of our course. By keeping on a course that uses the past markers as bearing points, we know that we are going in the right direction even if we cannot see where we are going. God’s purposes for us are merely extensions of our past history with Him. Those of us who know God will know that we are on the right course because God’s faithfulness marks the way we have already come and God does not change course.

No part of our travel will ever allow us to see God’s purposes unless He shows them to us. If we ever begin to think that we can independently discern God’s purposes, we are reminded of those men and women who followed Him for hundreds of years with nothing more than a promise. God hides His purposes on purpose. He wants dependence, not self-sufficiency. He abhors calculation of future events.

Paul reinforces this beautiful analogy in his letter to the Ephesians. He reveals the “will” and “purpose” of God in a mixture of two Greek words, thelematos (will) and boulen (purpose). Paul describes God’s eternal purpose as the exercise of His will before the foundation of the world, inevitably and inexorably working toward His chosen ends, irresistibly unfolding itself in the history of Man, and revealing itself through the centuries until at last it reaches the glorious unveiling of the Messiah. Swallowing up His enemies and using those who are inherently evil, God moves through the Jews, the pagan empires surrounding them, and the evil authorities controlling all mankind to bring about His will.

In that historical moment on Golgotha, no one understood what was happening as it was happening except Yeshua. Had we been there, we would have despaired along with the disciples. We too would have missed the glimpses of the suffering servant described in Isaiah. We would have ignored the proclamation by Yeshua of his necessary death. Our vision of purpose would have been just as clouded as those who were present.

This is the great mistake. We think that we know what God is up to. But God’s purposes are a paradox. He seems to deliberately move in ways that we would never imagine. He is constantly choosing the one who does not seem right for the job, frustrating man’s efforts in order to demonstrate His, turning human discards into divine messengers and bringing glory out of human tragedy.   He relishes in the poor, the pitiful and the powerless.

Purpose. What on earth are we here for? The answer may seem simple and obvious. After all, we have a history with God. He has planned us for worship, intended us to live in community, destined us to become like His son, sculpted us to serve Him and commissioned us to proclaim His glory. The markers He leaves in the stream of history all line up with these great goals. We capitalize on what God has shown us in His previous revelation. But the eternal purposes of God are still hidden in the future. There is still a great mystery waiting to be disclosed.

That great mystery is the most important part of purpose and its deepest paradox. We do not know and cannot know God’s eternal goals on purpose. God has only revealed enough of His purpose so that we may learn dependence on Him. No matter how clear the revealed purposes of God are now, they are not the totality of God purposes. What we know today is only part, for we look through a glass dimly.

We are blind to His eternal purposes in order that we may learn absolute trust in the God who has designed our journey, our past, and the boat itself. We are here for more than worship, family, reformation, ministry and mission. We are here to embrace paradox. The great paradox of purpose is that God deliberately leaves us in the dark. Out of the mystery of God’s hidden purposes, we discover life’s great lesson. Faith is the confidence that we do not need to see what is held in the hands of God. We only need to know that He holds it. That is enough.

“Happy the ones not seeing yet believing.”

Topical Index: will, thélēma, mystery, purpose, Ephesians 1:9