One of the most fruitful places to see the intersection between Puritan theology and the glory of God is the first question of the Westminster Catechism.

What is man's chief end?

Answer, man's chief end is to glorify God

and enjoy him forever.

So the Puritan fingerprints are all over the Westminster standards,

which is not surprising because it was made up of

divines like Thomas Goodwin and Jeremiah Burroughs and Samuel Rutherford. The implications

of that first question are more far-reaching than some of us realize.

What we're going to see in the formulation of the answer to the first question,

man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,

is that it touches on the nature of God's glory, it touches on the nature of the human soul,

it touches on the nature of God's plan for redemption and creation, it touches on the consummation

of all things, the implications of the formulation of that first question

are vast and worthy of our extensive meditation.

And B.B. Warfield did that meditation

in an essay that he wrote about the first question.

And so I want to launch my reflections on the glory of God, the enjoyment of God, the Puritan influence there.

I want to launch my reflections by thinking about his.

Now what he does in his essay on the first question

Warfield does is to contrast it with Calvin's catechism.

Calvin begins like this. Question number one, what is the chief end of man?

Answer, it is to know God his creator question two what reason have we for this answer

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