God created this earth and sends people here for a reason. Before I get to that specifically, I will put it in context.

We are eternal beings. The essence which is each individual person with their unique personality was not created and cannot be destroyed. That essence received a spiritual body when you were born as a child of your Heavenly Father. You are a child of God. Spiritual matter is real and tangible and finer than physical matter such that we cannot normally detect it with our physical senses. You lived as a spirit for eons with your Heavenly Father where you learned and progressed to the point that you and your brothers and sisters were ready to take the next step to acquire a physical body, knowledge, and power like your Heavenly Father. This next step is mortality, death, further spiritual training and resurrection to immortality. There is no guarantee that a person will make it through this phase to become like Heavenly Father. That risk of failure gave rise to a highly intelligent, cunning spirit brother, Lucifer, rejecting Heavenly Father’s plan and leading a third of our spirit siblings in rebellion. The consequence was/is that they will remain spirits eternally.

So here we are in mortality where our essence is in an eternal spirit body which is in a mortal physical body. Our memory of our former existence as spirits is disabled, and our knowledge and power as mortals is limited. We are not in the presence of our Heavenly Father, nor do we perceive a connection with the heavenly realm unless we diligently seek it. People in the heavenly realm live by celestial law which means not only respect and consideration for others, but the higher law of loving others. There is the celestial law of love, the terrestrial law of respect and consideration, and the telestial lawlessness. When you look around this world, you see people in all three levels. The purpose of life is for each of us to find out what law we are willing to live by and thereby determine our place in eternity.

There is another aspect to the heavenly realm that is important to understand. To live in the heavenly realm a person has to not only be willing to live by celestial law; a person must must also be sinless. A person who has broken the celestial law is no longer sinless, so this looks hopeless for most of us. Heavenly Father knew this would be the case and prepared a way for us to be redeemed from our sins. This is where Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice comes in. Redemption from our sins through the atonement of Christ is conditional. We must believe in and have faith in Jesus Christ and his power to redeem us; we must continue to repent so that eventually we can live the celestial law and sin no more; we must enter into the covenant of baptism where we promise to take upon us the name of Christ, always remember him, and keep his commandments; we must receive the Holy Ghost who will help us meet these conditions; we must continue with all this until Christ declares that we are ready for celestial life.

The purpose of life is to prove ourselves worthy to live with our Heavenly Father as immortal sons and daughters having the same knowledge and power that he has.