Here is B. B. Warfield on the first question and answer of the Westminster Catechism (What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.) From <>“The First Question of the
Westminster Shorter Catechism,” in “The
Westminster Assembly and Its Work,”
The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 6 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), pp. 379-400.
The peculiarity of this first question and answer of the Westminster Catechisms, it will be seen, is the felicity with which it brings to concise expression the whole Reformed conception of the significance of human life. We say the whole Reformed conception. For justice is not done that conception if we say merely that man’s chief end is to glorify God. That [p. 397] certainly: and certainly that first. But according to the Reformed conception man exists not merely that God may be glorified in him, but that he may delight in this glorious God. It does justice to the subjective as well as the objective side of the case. The Reformed conception is not fully or fairly stated if it be so stated that it may seem to be satisfied with conceiving man merely as the object on which God manifests His glory—possibly even the passive object in and through which the Divine glory is secured. It conceives man also as the subject in which the gloriousness of God is perceived and delighted in. No man is truly Reformed in his thought, then, unless he conceives of men, not merely as destined to be the instrument of the Divine glory, but also as destined to reflect the glory of God in his own consciousness, to exalt in God: nay, unless he himself delights in God as the all-glorious one.
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Read the great Reformed divines. The note of their work is exaltation in God. How Calvin, for example, gloried and delighted in God! Every page rings with this note, the note of personal joy in the Almighty, known to be, not the all-wise merely, but the all-loving too.
