December 24, 2019 – Psalm 73:25–26

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
—Psalm 73:25–26

God’s glory is our purpose.83
His glory is the purpose that God aimed at when he made the human race. “The LORD works out everything for his own ends” (Prov. 16:4); “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11:36). Every rational being sets itself a purpose in working. Now God is the most perfect Being and his glory the noblest purpose. God is not actively glorified by all people, but he designed to have glory from them, either by them or on them, and so it will be. Happy are those who glorify him by their actions, that they may not glorify him by their eternal sufferings.
It is the purpose of humanity as God’s work. People were made fit for glorifying God. “God made mankind upright” (Eccl. 7:29), as a well-tuned instrument or as a house built for convenience.
It is that which we should aim at, the mark to which we should direct all we do. “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). This is what we should continually have in our eye, the grand design we should be carrying on in the world. “I have set the LORD always before me,” says David (Ps. 16:8).

God’s glory is our chief purpose.
His glory is that which God chiefly aimed at, the chief purpose of humankind as God’s work, and that which people should chiefly aim at. God made the human race for other purposes, as to govern, use, and dispose of other creatures in the earth, sea, and air, wisely, soberly, and mercifully (Gen. 1:26). We were fitted for these purposes, and we may propose them lawfully to ourselves, seeing God has set them before us, but still these are only subordinate means to his glory. There are some goals that people propose to themselves that are simply unlawful, such as to satisfy their revenge, their lust, their covetousness, and so on. These are not capable of subordination to the glory of God. But there are other intents that are indeed in themselves lawful yet become sinful if they are not set in their due place, that is, subordinate to the glory of God.
—Thomas Boston