Bible Studies

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Futility: The Seeming State of a Godless World


After the sin of Adam and Eve God subjected creation into a state of futility (vanity). Genesis describes this transformation of a world He once called “good”:

“Then to Adam He said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat from it’;
Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil [sorrow] you will eat of it all the days of your life.
“Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you;
And you will eat the plants of the field;
By the sweat of your face You will eat bread,
Till you return to the ground, Because from it you were taken;
For you are dust, And to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

Thus death and futility (the curse) were introduced into a world that formerly knew neither. Although Adam lived another 900 years after banishment, he eventually died. He lived the life we know now of sorrow and labor in the midst of the obstacles (thorns and thistles) that are with us continually.

Futility (or vanity in the KJV of the Bible) is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as a condition of: having no useful result, barren, fruitless, useless. Webster’s adds: trifling, unimportant and a “head stuffed with silly and unimportant ideas”.

When Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden, they entered a realm of separation from God. Whereas God was always present in the Garden, under futility man had to seek the invisible God with prayers, altars and animal sacrifices. As soon as the pair ate the forbidden fruit, they realized they were naked and hid themselves from God. That same condition exists today as God is hidden from us by our sins.

“Listen! The LORD’s arm is not too weak to save you,
nor is his ear too deaf to hear you call.
It’s your sins that have cut you off from God.
Because of your sins, he has turned away
and will not listen anymore.
Your hands are the hands of murderers,
and your fingers are filthy with sin.
Your lips are full of lies,
and your mouth spews corruption” (Isaiah 59:1-3).

Isaiah goes on with a look at futility that He sees:

“No one cares about being fair and honest.
The people’s lawsuits are based on lies.

They conceive evil deeds
and then give birth to sin.
They hatch deadly snakes
and weave spiders’ webs.
Whoever falls into their webs will die,
and there’s danger even in getting near them.
Their webs can’t be made into clothing,
and nothing they do is productive.
All their activity is filled with sin,
and violence is their trademark.
Their feet run to do evil,
and they rush to commit murder.
They think only about sinning.
Misery and destruction always follow them.
They don’t know where to find peace
or what it means to be just and good.
They have mapped out crooked roads,
and no one who follows them knows a moment’s peace.
So there is no justice among us,
and we know nothing about right living.
We look for light but find only darkness.
We look for bright skies but walk in gloom.
We grope like the blind along a wall,
feeling our way like people without eyes.
Even at brightest noontime,
we stumble as though it were dark.
Among the living,
we are like the dead...
For our sins are piled up before God
Yes, truth is gone,
and anyone who renounces evil is attacked.
The LORD looked and was displeased
to find there was no justice” (Isaiah 59:4-16, NLT).

Our sins separate us from God. God looks and sees only injustice and violence in the futile world. He stands ready to deliver but our sins have rendered us inattentive to Him—no eyes to see or ears to hear.

“Though the wicked is shown favor,
He does not learn righteousness;
He deals unjustly in the land of uprightness,
And does not perceive the majesty of the LORD.
O LORD, Your HAND IS LIFTED UP yet they do not see it” Isaiah 26:10-11).

Probably the fullest definition of futility was written by Solomon, King of Israel, considered to be the wisest man of his time. He said:

“Vanity [futility] of vanities…,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity [futility]” (Ecclesiastes1:2).

He goes on to discuss the areas of life he himself experienced that bore this out:
The Futility of Pleasure and Possession (Ecc 2:1-11; The Futility of Life (Ecc 6:1-12); The Folly of Riches (5:10-20); The Futility of Labor (2:18-260; The Futility of Wisdom (1:12-18); The Evils of Oppression (4:1-16) and so on. This is a man who had unlimited resources to examine life and found only futility i.e. “there is nothing new under the Sun” (1:9). We are all caught in this web of futility with seemingly no way out.

However, the Apostle Paul said this about futility:

“For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope” (Romans 8:19-20). In hope of what?

…that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:20-21).

“For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly [with expectation] for our adoption as sons” (Romans 8:22-23).

Thus the cure for futility is the manifestation of the Sons of God who will release creation from its cursed state. God had this in mind when He subjected creation in the first place. In His loving mercy, He foresaw the Coming of Christ and the Sons to set right creation to its true, original condition—the Kingdom of God).

The whole creation has this travail of childbirth—the plants and trees, the animals, the weather, the elemental spirits and it is deep within the spirit of man. Life is a travail, a groaning to deep for words for the coming of the Sons and their deliverance.

The words “release creation” denote the spirits of the evil one Satan, the god of this world. They must be defeated.

“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12).

These spiritual forces, also called powers and principalities, are currently controlling every aspect of our lives and the lives of society in general. They promote futility and play upon it, destroying even the hope to which it was subjected. Only in Christ we see the defeat of death and futility once and for all accomplished on the cross. As soon as Christ was resurrected the defeat of Satan and futility was a done deal. Our job, 2000 years later, is to manifest His victory on this earth. “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven [the Spiritual realm of God]” (Matthew 6:10).

However, we must realize the obstacle(s) we are up against in completing this task. At birth we inherited the fallen flesh nature or “the Adamic nature”. The Apostle Paul was well aware of his own flesh being an ever present reality:

“For I know that NOTHING GOOD DWELLS IN ME, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good… Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from this body of death?” (Romans 7:18-21).
If Paul, an apostle and considered a righteous man, realized that nothing good dwelled within him so also should we realize that all our activities are done in futility, accomplishing nothing.

However Paul found the answer to this seemingly unanswerable condition:

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin” (Rom 7:26).

He goes on:

“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh,
so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
For the mind set on the flesh is death [sin is death], but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace,
because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so,
and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom 8:2-8).

Many try to know God through their intellect but Paul says the mind is “enmity” against God, does not subject itself to Him and is NOT EVEN ABLE TO DO SO.
There is nothing we can do for God in our natures of futility that pleases Him. We can’t do enough good works even in His name, we can’t give enough money, we can’t go to church enough and we are even unable to love with His love. He looks on our fallen natures as:

“… [being] like an unclean thing,
And all our righteousnesses are like FILTHY RAGS;
We all fade as a leaf,
And our iniquities, like the wind,
Have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6 KJV).

And: “And there is no one who calls on Your name,
Who stirs himself up to take hold of You;
For You have hidden Your face from us,
And have consumed [caused us to melt] us because of our iniquities” (Isaiah 64:7).

Christ uncovered the previously held secret, known only to Abraham: Righteousness comes not by works of the flesh but by faith. Formerly, the Mosaic law held man in bondage as it was proven again and again that man, in and of himself, could not fulfill God’s requirements. The need of a Messiah became apparent. Christ fulfilled the law for us so that we could go where He is, seated at the right hand of the Father, in God’s Spirit realm.

Whereas since the Old Covenant (The Old Testament) was ineffective in bringing righteousness, Christ initiated the New Covenant, in His blood, that made righteousness available to all who believed. Instead of requiring adherence to a code of laws, He required only faith in Him and his resurrection. This New Covenant was first prophesied by Jeremiah hundreds of years before Christ’s appearing:

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.
“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:30-34, quoted in Hebrews 10:15-17).

This New Covenant applies to all, not just the Jewish people. All those of faith become God’s chosen people, not just one nation as in the Old Testament. Paul said: “… there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all” (Colossians 3:11). And: “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh.
But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Romans 2:28-29). Thus we today become “spiritual Israel”.

Christ rent the veil which formerly blocked the way into the Holiest of Holies in the temple. He did away with all enmity between God and man. Their sins were forgiven and forgotten. And all of this by the immeasurable gift of the Grace of God which is free and unmerited—not by works so we cannot boast in the flesh that we did it.

God through this grace will impart His nature to us. He will write His laws on our hearts so that they become our nature and, like Christ, it becomes impossible to sin. No more preachers and teachers—all will know Him. His presence will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. We will see Him like He is because we will be like him (1 John 3:2).

God had all of this in mind when he subjected mankind to the awfulness of a futile existence. He made only one way of escape: the person of Jesus Christ who abolished the separation from God. We need to recognize the existence of futility throughout creation so we can appreciate Christ and His gift of grace. That is our only “hope”. Everything else is death, decay and unlimited sin.

As Paul said:

“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth [for the things of the earth are temporal but the things above are eternal].
For you have died [to your futile nature] and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:1-4).


© Kenneth B. Alexander 2008

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