Why did God create us?

By Matt Slick

Email: "If God had to create us to demonstrate love fully, would that be saying that God didn't have love fulfilled in the Trinity?"

Response:  I'm not saying that God is lacking in any way within Trinity. But, if we were to say that he's completely sufficient in the Trinity, and that complete sufficiency precludes any creative work, then we would not be understanding what complete sufficiency would mean -- since God, who is completely self-sufficient and self-fulfilling, decided to create.

I'm only offering a hypothesis that the nature of love is to focus on others (John 3:16). I've often wondered why God created us and, of course, perhaps the primary reason is his own glory. But I cannot help and wonder if it is not also to express the very nature of what his own loving nature is, other centeredness and "self-sacrificedness" (John 15:13). I'm not saying that that is the case. But, when you look at what the nature of love is and how Christ performs the greatest act of love, I cannot help but wonder if there is a connection and that God is best glorified in fulfilling the nature of true love.

As far as love being fully known in the Trinity, perhaps it is. Perhaps it is not. I'm trying to be very careful here and not degrade the quality of God's love it anyway through foolish misspeaking. But if, just if the nature of love is to sacrifice for others, as in the greatest act of love is to die for someone else (John 3:16; 15:13), then how could this the accomplished within the Trinity without an incarnation and a death by which the greatest manifestation of love can be accomplished?

Does this mean that God is insufficient in himself because he "needed" to create or his love is not perfect because it "needed" to sacrifice? Not at all. I suspect that the nature of love itself requires expression, fellowship with others, that only imperfectly manifested love does fails to fellowship and sacrifice. Since we are made in the image of God, I suspect that the husband and wife relationship with the resulting union in one flesh in marriage, reflects the inter-Trinitarian relationship of love and its natural and perhaps necessary fulfillment in close fellowship with another. As we are in union and "one" in marriage, so too is the Trinity in union and "one". As God loves and love requires people on which to express itself, so too, God created us to love, to fellowship with, and to sacrifice for.

My conclusions about God and his love, though as inaccurate and insufficient as they may be, germinated from the truth of Christ's own words about "God so loved the world that he gave..." and "the greatest act of love is to lay one's life for a friend." since God is the best at manifesting love, I figured that to give and manifest the greatest act of love would require an incarnation and a death; hence, one of the reasons for creating us.

But, I hope this helps.

matt