Purpose and Fruitfulness

Scripture — Genesis 1:27-28 (NRSV)

So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Devotion

In yesterday’s Life for Leaders devotion, I began a series called God’s Purpose – Your Purpose. Through devotional reading of Scripture, reflection, and prayer, you will come to greater clarity about God’s purpose and how this informs your purpose in life.

Yesterday, we considered God’s purpose as revealed in creation. Genesis 1 shows that God created the world so that it should be fruitful, a place where plants and animals flourish. You could rightly say that fruitfulness is an essential facet of God’s purpose for all things. God not only creates fruit, but also fruit-producing plants, trees, animals, and even people. The value of fruitfulness is embedded in creation itself.

That fruitfulness is central to God’s purpose is also seen clearly in the creation of human beings. In Genesis 1:27 God “created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” The fact that God made us in God’s own image suggests that in some ways we are to be like God. No, we’re not equal to God or little gods. But, as we’ll see in a moment, we are to be like God when it comes to the priority of fruitfulness.

After creating the first humans, “God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the first of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’” (1:28). There it is! The very first command God gave to human beings was “Be fruitful.” Fruitfulness is indispensable for human life, for the purpose God assigned to the creatures made in God’s own image.

What is fruitfulness? In Genesis, human fruitfulness had to do most literally with making more people to help fill and rule the earth. But biblical fruitfulness is about more than making babies and raising children. Psalm 92 says of the righteous who are deeply rooted in God, “In old age they still produce fruit” (92:14). We can and should be fruitful when we are beyond childbearing years. Moreover, in John 15, Jesus observes that his Heavenly Father “is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Clearly, fruitfulness is central to God’s purpose for God’s own creative work and for the work of the people created in God’s image. God wants the world to be full of fruit and well-managed so that it might grow into even greater fruitfulness.

Fruitfulness is strongly connected by Jesus to the purpose of God I emphasized yesterday: God’s glory. Following in the footsteps of Christian theologians throughout the centuries, I observed that God created heaven and earth so that God might be glorified. God’s glory is central to God’s purpose. Now, especially given John Calvin’s striking image of creation as a “glorious theater” in which God’s glory is on display, we might suppose that our job is to be the audience, marveling at God’s glory. Yet Genesis 1:28 helps us understand that we are not merely observers of God’s glorious creation. We are also participants in creation and the work of helping it to be fruitful. Through what we do in obedience to God’s command, God is glorified. When we are fruitful, God is glorified. Remember what Jesus said in John 15:8, “My father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.” Our fruitfulness isn’t only a way to make the world a fuller and better place. And it isn’t mainly for our glory. Rather, our fruitfulness is for God’s glory.

Genesis 1 reveals that fruitfulness is central to our purpose as beings created in the image of God. God has made us so that what we do really matters, not only for human benefit, but also primarily for God’s own glory. As we help the world to be fruitful through our own fruitfulness, we are fulfilling God’s purpose for all things, including us.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Fruitfulness/Growth (Genesis 1:28; 2:15, 19-20).