Formation Edition · Ophel

Formation Edition

The Many Things We Build After Leaving God

“Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” — Ecclesiastes 7:29

Solomon’s search finally reaches something firm. The disorder he has been examining did not originate in God. “God hath made man upright.” The crookedness belongs to what came afterward. Humanity did not begin restless, morally divided, and alienated from its Creator. God made what was good.

Genesis establishes that foundation: “God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Man was created to live beneath God’s Word and within His order. Sin entered when the creature listened to another voice and reached beyond what God had given. Humanity’s problem therefore begins not with insufficient opportunity but with departure.

Solomon says that after this departure, people “sought out many inventions.” We are remarkably skilled at constructing alternatives to dependence upon God. We build identities around work, security around money, significance around recognition, satisfaction around pleasure, and certainty around our own explanations. Paul describes fallen humanity as becoming “vain in their imaginations” (Romans 1:21). The heart that no longer rests beneath God begins producing substitutes.

The difficulty is that many of these substitutes are built from good things. Work matters. Relationships are gifts. Money has genuine usefulness. Knowledge is valuable. Achievement may represent faithful labor. But a good thing begins to bend when we require it to tell us who we are, secure our future, or make life finally enough. The gift is being asked to carry something it was never created to bear.

Jeremiah gave Israel a vivid picture of this exchange. They had forsaken “the fountain of living waters” and had “hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Notice the labor. They left the Fountain and began building. Human self-sufficiency is exhausting partly because we must continually repair the things from which we demand life.

This is why changing circumstances cannot finally restore us. A new job, relationship, church, possession, routine, or opportunity may be a gracious gift from God, but none can cure the heart’s tendency to devise life independently of Him. Jesus said that evil proceeds “out of the heart of men” (Mark 7:21). The problem travels with us because the problem is within us.

Our need therefore reaches deeper than learning to construct a better life. We need the faithful Man whom fallen humanity has never been. Christ lived entirely beneath the Father’s will. He said, “I do always those things that please him” (John 8:29). Where humanity sought its own way, the Son remained obedient. Where our desires scatter in many directions, His heart was wholly given to the Father.

Yet Christ did not merely demonstrate the upright life from a distance. The righteous Son gave Himself for those who had departed. He shed His blood, was buried, and rose bodily from the grave. Through union with Him, God begins something genuinely new in His people. Paul speaks of “the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). Grace does not simply decorate the old inventions with religious language; it forms a people increasingly restored beneath God’s rule.

That restoration reaches ordinary life. Christ may not remove our work, possessions, relationships, ambitions, or plans. Instead, He teaches us to receive them in their proper place. We can work without asking work to become our identity. We can enjoy a gift without asking it to become our god. We can plan without pretending to possess tomorrow. We can pursue wisdom without demanding omniscience.

Formation in Christ therefore includes learning to recognize what we have built after leaving the place of simple trust. What am I defending because I need it to make me feel secure? What must happen before I will be content? What am I asking to carry the weight of my heart? As Christ becomes more precious, the inventions lose their necessity. The soul learns again that peace is not something we manufacture. It is found in returning, again and again, to the God from whom every good portion comes.

Written October 23, 2026

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And Christ is formed in us.