Futility

It’s a beautiful spring day and you decide to wash and wax your new SUV. After grabbing soap, a bucket, a brush, and hose, you carefully rinse down your precious vehicle and began cleaning every square inch of paint, chrome, and glass. After it dries, you apply a layer of car wax and then begin to tediously polish it until your SUV glows.

When the job is complete and your eyes shine with pride, you jump inside, rev up the engine, and head to the nearest off-road vehicle park. Plunging down a dirt road, you spy a giant mud puddle up ahead. With glee, you step on the gas and plow into the gooey mess. Gobs of dirt and mud now cover your gleaming vehicle. A few hours later, as you pull into the driveway, your spouse looks out the window and mutters, “Futility.”

There is another activity that serves no useful purpose in the spiritual life—the effort to try and gain salvation by our own works. The apostle Paul addressed the futility of trying to keep the law in our own power. It is akin to trying to wash your car with a bucket of mud. He explains that “a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ” (Galatians 2:16).

Christ’s death on the cross affirms the uselessness of salvation by works, for if we could be saved by our own acts of righteousness then the atonement would be unnecessary. For “by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified” (Romans 3:20), yet we may be “justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (verse 24).

When we accept God’s gift through faith, “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Such peace can never come from our futile efforts; it is the result of true faith that brings Christ into the heart (Galatians 2:20).

Apply It:

Think of a time in your life when your efforts have been fruitless. What needed to change?

Dig Deeper:

Job 15:31; Psalm 94:11; 1 Corinthians 15:17

Key Bible Texts

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: (Ephesians 2:8 KJV)