Purpose

Reading these passages

The word purpose appears once in the ten verses on this page, and when it does it belongs to somebody else.

Romans 8:28 speaks of those who are the called according to his purpose. Not theirs. Every other verse here talks about work, plans, workmanship, labour, light — the vocabulary of things being made and done — and none of them uses the language of a personal calling to be discovered.

That is worth registering before reading further, because the question people usually bring to this subject is what their purpose is, singular and individual, and these passages are largely answering a different question. They are about whose project you are in rather than which one is yours.

What Romans 8:28 does not say

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Three things in that sentence get lost in the usual paraphrase, which runs everything happens for a reason.

It does not say all things are good. It says they work together toward good — the verb is synergeo, from which we get synergy, and it describes components combining into an outcome none of them produces alone. An ingredient in a good result is not thereby a good ingredient. Paul had a list of what he meant by all things, and it is in the verses just after: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. He is not calling those good. He is saying they are being made to serve.

Second, the promise is addressed. To them that love God, to them who are the called — twice specified, which is unusual emphasis. It is not a general statement about how the universe treats everybody.

Third, good is defined a verse later and not by the reader. What follows immediately is that those God foreknew he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. That is the good in view. Whether it matches what the reader was hoping for is precisely the question the verse does not address, and the reason it is a harder comfort than the paraphrase.

A thing made

Ephesians answers the question about individual purpose more directly than anything else here, and the noun it uses is unexpected: For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The Greek is poiema — a thing made, a piece of work, and the root behind the English poem. It is used twice in the New Testament and the other instance is about the created world.

Then the odd part. The good works are described as prepared in advance, and the verb for what we do with them is walk. Not invent, not choose, not discover after long searching — walk in them, as one walks in a road that was already there. The picture is of arriving at work that has been laid out, which is a considerably less anxious account of vocation than the one most people carry, and also a less flattering one.

Notice the order of the sentence, too. The making comes first, then the works. Ephesians has spent the previous nine verses insisting that nothing is earned; the works arrive after that settlement rather than establishing it.

Unfinished on purpose

Two verses on this page describe a project still in progress, and neither pretends it is close to done.

Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. The verb translated perform is epiteleo, to bring to completion — and the deadline given is not a date in the reader's lifetime. Paul is writing to a church he is fond of and telling them the work on them will run to the end.

The psalm says the same and then does something the page's own quotation does not show. The Lord will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever. That is where most quotations stop. The verse itself continues: forsake not the works of thine own hands.

So the confident sentence ends in a request not to be abandoned. The psalmist states the certainty and then, in the same breath, asks for the thing he has just declared certain — which is a more recognisable posture than either half on its own, and it is the half that gets left off.

The same word, twice

Two verses on this page use the same Hebrew noun, and having both here lets you see something neither shows alone.

Proverbs: There are many devices in a man's heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand. Jeremiah: For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil.

Devices and thoughts translate the same word, machashavot — plans, intentions, the things worked out in advance. The King James varies the English, so the connection is invisible unless you go looking, but the two verses are describing the same category of thing held by two different parties.

Set side by side they make a single argument. A person's plans are described as many; God's are described as few enough to characterise, and they are characterised — peace, not evil. Proverbs says whose stands. Jeremiah says what the standing one contains. Neither verse says the human plans are bad, and Proverbs conspicuously does not say they fail; it says the other one stands, which is a claim about durability rather than about merit.

There is a lexical detail in the Jeremiah verse worth having as well. An expected end compresses two Hebrew nouns, acharit and tikvah — an outcome, and a hope. The promise is of both: a thing that actually arrives, and something to hold in the meantime. The King James phrase is elegant and it hides the second half.

Labour that is not wasted

Paul ends his longest argument about resurrection with a conclusion about work, and the join between the two is the whole point: Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.

Therefore is carrying fifty-seven verses. The chapter has been arguing that the dead are raised, and this is what Paul takes to follow from it — not that the present is unimportant, which is the inference people usually expect from a resurrection argument, but that present effort holds its value. If nothing survives, the labour evaporates. If something does, it does not.

In vain renders kenos, empty. The claim is not that the work will succeed, or be noticed, or be enjoyable. It is that it will not turn out to have been hollow, which is a narrower promise and the only one the argument supports.

And Matthew supplies the one instruction here that concerns what other people see: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven. The sentence is built to prevent the obvious misuse. The works are to be visible; the credit is redirected in the same clause. Whatever purpose means across these ten verses, it is not a thing done privately, and it is not a thing done for the name attached.