God Created You for a Purpose

A Verse by Verse Study of Genesis 2:1-25

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In Genesis 1, God created the world and everything in it, including mankind.  And God said that everything was good.

Now in Genesis 2, the story focuses in on man – how God created him and for what purpose.  Genesis tells us that we were made in God’s image, and now we begin to find out what aspects of God’s image we were created in.  This gives us more insight into who we are, what our purpose is, and what God is like.

This blog post is all about how God created you for a purpose, and what that purpose is.

God Created Us to Worship and Find Rest in Him

Genesis 2:1-3 begins with God completing his work of creation and resting on the seventh day.

Why did God rest?  Many people believe that God rested to demonstrate that we also need physical rest from work.  And while this is a great application of this passage, this is not the entire picture and meaning behind God resting.

Creating the universe was monumental, and it might seem like the kind of work that would require a vacation afterwards.  But God didn’t rest because he felt tired. Although we, as humans, do require physical rest, the kind of rest God intended to demonstrate for us, was a day away from work, so that we could spend it in communion with him.

In Genesis 2:3, God declares the seventh day as ‘holy’. The seventh day is set apart from the other days, in order that we might honor God and enjoy his creation.  God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.  It was a gift to man for spiritual rest and replenishment.

In the last post on Genesis 1, I mentioned that God intended for work to be good and bring us fulfillment and pleasure.  Now in Genesis 2, God is also giving us the gift of rest – a day away from work, but more importantly, a day set aside to honor and worship God.

In the series on Romans, we learned that Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant and the Law on our behalf.  Although we no longer have to observe the Sabbath, God does still want us to both work and rest.

Jesus also spoke of setting special time aside to remember his work on the cross.  He demonstrated this for us in the last supper (1 Corinthians 11:26).

This gift of rest is both physical and spiritual, and the importance of this time of rest and renewal – as a dedicated time in communion with God – is demonstrated from the beginning of the Bible to the very end!

God’s Original Design

Genesis 2:4-7 tells us that this passage is the record (or other translations use the word history or generation) of the creation of the earth.  Man wasn’t present to see God create the earth, so this history would have been given directly to Adam or Moses by God.

This recorded history begins before there was any vegetation on the earth, back in Genesis 1:1.  Man was not created yet to care for the plant-life, and God had not yet caused it to rain.

As you read this account, you will see that God didn’t just make earth a functional place for man to live, but a beautiful place.  God also didn’t just design an earth that would make life possible, he designed an earth that would make life abundant.  He made us a beautiful place to live in and packed it full of natural resources for our use and enjoyment.  Every aspect of God’s design shows us his goodness.

God’s Creation was Good

But what made God’s creation truly good, better than functionality, abundance, and beauty, was God’s presence. God didn’t just put humanity on earth, he lived there among them to enjoy a relationship with them.

Notice how God’s title changes from Genesis 2:2 and Genesis 2:4. In the first passage, it simply says God, but in the next passage God uses his name, Lord God, Yahweh.  This is his name he gave to Moses when he made a covenant with mankind.

Why is this important?  Because, in the beginning, God was already using his covenant name, Yahweh, with his people because he was in a covenant relationship with man from the beginning.  Sin severed that relationship, but we were created to be in a relationship with God.

God Created Us with His Own Spirit

In Genesis 2:7, God formed man out of the dust of the ground, the most basic of materials. Man wasn’t formed from nothing, but it was next to nothing.  However, God transformed this useless substance when he breathed his Divine breath into it, giving life to man.

The word breath in Hebrew, ruach, is the same word for Spirit.  God breathed his breath, or his Spirit, into Adam.  We may have come from nothing, or next to nothing, but we were made with God’s own Spirit and in his image.

2 Timothy 3:16 says,

‘All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training, in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work’

NIV

Scripture – God own words – also contain God’s breath, or Spirit, making it alive and powerful in the lives of those who live by it!

God Created a Habitation for Man

While verses 4-7 is a history of creation given to us by God, verses 8-9 and onward, could represent a history of creation from Adam’s perspective.  How incredible it might have been for Adam to witness God create! 

In verses 10-14, a record of the river systems and precious materials that could be found in the area, also indicate that this was written by an actual eyewitness – or passed down orally as it was first witnessed by Adam.

God planted a garden and made it the perfect habitation for Adam, and later Eve, to live in!

God made all sorts of trees grow up in the Garden of Eden, but two trees had significant importance: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

• The Tree of Life:  Genesis 3:22 tells us that the purpose of the tree of life was to grant, or sustain, eternal life, and this tree of life comes back into the picture in Revelations, when God resets everything back to how he originally intended it to be.
• The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil:  This was the “temptation tree”.  Eating from this tree would give the person an experiential knowledge of good and evil.  Upon creation, Adam and Eve only experienced goodness.  Everything God created was good.  This tree was a test of man’s ability to remain faithfully obedient to God’s commands, but man failed.

People often think Adam and Eve were very foolish.  They think someone wiser would have made the right choice.  But given time, we all would have failed the test.  God knew this and had a plan of redemption for us all along. Before initiating this plan, mankind had to finally come to the realization that we are incapable of saving ourselves.

God Created Man to Have Work & Purpose

Genesis 2:15 says that God placed man in the garden to tend it and watch over it.

Some people understand this to mean that God created a gardener.  That he needed someone to do the work of looking after his garden.  But that is not at all why God created man.  First, God didn’t need anyone to care for the Garden of Eden.  If he wanted it to, it could have just as easily been self-sustaining.

Not only did God not create the Garden of Eden purely for his own enjoyment, he did not create man for his pleasure and purposes alone.  God made the garden to give man a place to live and commune with God and to give him a sense of purpose – to have work.

God gave man work to give him a sense of purpose and productivity, and a place to apply skills and accomplish.  All work is good and it is meant to be offered to God as a form of service and worship.  God is pleased when we work for his glory.  Psalms 90:17 says.

‘Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us;’

ESV

God Created Man to Have Free Will

In Genesis 2:16-17, God gave Adam one command, that he must not eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  He could eat from any tree, but that one.  That was the single command from God.  But God’s command was good.  Like a father warning his child to look both ways before crossing the street, God was warning Adam not to do something that would bring him spiritual death.

Unlike the tree of life, there is no other mention of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the rest of the Bible, and that is because that tree will not remain.  The purpose of this tree was to give man a choice: to obey God and remain righteous, or to disobey God and invite sin to enter man’s heart and the world. 

God was very clear in his warning: if they ate of the fruit they would surely die.  God who just breathed life into man, who himself lived with man, told Adam that he would die if he disobeyed.  Adam chose to not trust God and chose his own way.

Love Requires Free Will

But free will is the only way to truly love and be loved.  God wants a relationship with man, but true love and worship is one that is made by choice, rather than forced by mind control like robots.

Those who freely choose to follow God’s ways, to accept his Son as their Savior and Lord, can enter into a right relationship with him.  The tree of knowledge of good and evil will no longer exist in eternity: the choice to sin will be abolished.  Those who choose holiness through the blood of Jesus now, will actually become holy in eternity. Sin will be no more.

God Created Man to be in Relationship

In Genesis 2:18, the first “not good” comes in the form of loneliness: God’s next purpose in creating man was to counter that loneliness – God gave Adam a companion.

God wanted us to experience the intimacy of relationships – a relationship in which we could be authentic and share in our joys and burdens – valuable friendship.

Proverbs 17:17 says,

‘A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.’

NIV

God wanted us to have a social life – to have friends in which we can share life with.  We were not created by God to be disconnected islands, and the intimacy that God wants us to experience goes beyond a relationship through marriage – marriage is not the only way in which we can experience intimacy.

Some people wonder why we would need companionship if we had a relationship with God?  Well, the answer lies in God’s nature.  Though we won’t fully understand God’s nature until eternity, God is not human, and he wanted us to experience relationships with our own kind.

God Gave Man a Helper: the Gift of Marriage

The world sees the word “helper” in the Bible as referring to women as “inferior”.  The Hebrew word for help or helper in this passage, ezer, is the same word used in other passages describing God as our Helper.

In the New Living Translation, they translate the passage this way:

‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.‘

Genesis 2:18 (NLT)

But the New King James Version translates this same passage this way:

‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him.‘

Genesis 2:18 (NKJV)

In this translation, you can see that a woman is not seen as lesser, or weaker, but comparable to man – though tasked with different purposes and roles.

Man is tasked with leading the home to follow and obey God’s commands, but man needs the woman to work together with him to fulfill it.

A woman is a great blessing to man, and though a woman is made for man, men and woman are made for God.  We are not made for ourselves.  We are made to serve God and submit to his good and perfect plan and authority.

After God creates Eve from Adam’s rib, Adam makes this statement in Genesis 2:23,

‘This at last is bone of by bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.’

ESV

Adam understood the oneness of his relationship with Eve. Though he and Eve were one, he recognized that she was not the same as him.  Two different people joining together, intended to compliment one another to accomplish God’s purposes for their lives.

Genesis 2:24-25 represents the marriage of Adam and Eve – two becoming one flesh.  This occurred before the fall, and it was God’s good and perfect plan for us in marriage.

God Created You for a Purpose

This was the life that God created us for.  Through a time of rest and communion with God; serving God through our service and work; freely choosing to love, worship, and obey God; and finding companionship and marriage to help us fulfill God’s plans and purposes, we can find fulfillment, peace, and joy in this life.

However, when sin entered the world, it distorted God’s calling and purposes.  But what God has created remains good, and we can still find purpose and fulfillment when we pursue God’s will. 

How Can We Live Out Our Purpose?

When we choose to put our faith in Jesus – to follow and obey him as Lord of our lives – we will one day experience God’s perfect design and purpose for our lives, in eternity.  But what about right now in the present?  Can we live out our purpose as God intended now, in a world taken over by sin?

Yes we can, though not as perfectly as we will experience in our future glory.

When we realize that it is God who has the right to define and identify us, that it is God who gives us our purpose, and that it is God who is the rightful lawmaker, we will re-prioritize our lives to align with God’s ways.

To live our your purpose as God created you, you must:

• Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
• Set time aside to worship and commune with him and rest in him.
• Enjoy his abundant and beautiful creation and thank him for the goodness in all he created.
• Work as unto the Lord.  In all that you do, do it for the Lord to bring God glory.
• With your gift of free-will, choose to love and obey God, as he first loved us and chose us.
• Enjoy relationships as God intended you to. Don’t isolate from others, but find companionship in others, to bear one another and share in one another’s joys and burdens. 
• If you are married, live out your marriage as God intended.  Marriage is not easy, but God intended it to be a blessing if we follow the blueprints he laid out for us.

God is our Sovereign Creator, and his design is perfect. But because of free will, we have a choice to make: choose God’s perfect way, or choose our own way.

Book Recommendations:

God’s Purpose for Your Life: 365 Devotions by Charles Stanley – How can you rest in the truth that God has a purpose for you, a purpose he promises to fulfill? How can you know you are following God’s will? In this yearlong devotional, God’s Purpose for Your Life, Dr. Charles Stanley shows you that God’s plans for you are even more wonderful than you can imagine.

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