While humans can physically exist without acknowledging God, life cannot even exist without God. More than that, true life and living cannot exist without God. The Bible emphasizes that true life—full, meaningful, and spiritual—is only possible through God. God is the Creator of all life. God also maintains and sustains us and all living things. God gives us spiritual life through Jesus, offering abundant and eternal life to all who trust in His death and resurrection for the forgiveness of sins. Pursuing life apart from God leads to emptiness and futility. Ultimately, the Bible teaches that without God, life lacks true fulfillment and vitality and denies the reality of our existence.
We cannot influence whether God is necessary for physical life—He either exists or He doesn't. But many do attempt to find spiritual life without God—in fact, the wisest man in history tried. Without the power of the Holy Spirit, he had to try to find spiritual meaning in physical things. Solomon couldn't create himself—he couldn't bring himself into existence—but he could easily see how out of his control existence was. Ecclesiastes 3:19 says, "For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity." Ecclesiastes 2:3–10 describes how Solomon tried to grow by multiplying what he thought was life—riches, food, pleasures, even the beauty of nature. But in verse 11, he says, "Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun." Solomon did find that he could respond to this spiritual life, but it wasn't the kind of response any of us would find attractive—"So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind" (Ecclesiastes 2:17). Solomon had a lot to say about work—the vehicle by which we maintain our lives. In Ecclesiastes 2:22–23, he says, "What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is vanity." He also sought to maintain his spiritual life through wisdom (Ecclesiastes 2:16), but he quickly realized that even wisdom doesn't guarantee a fulfilled existence. Finally, he found that reproduction without God feels more like being robbed than leaving a part of oneself for posterity. Ecclesiastes 2:21 says, "because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil."
Solomon sums up his findings in Ecclesiastes 2:24–25: "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?" The wisest man who ever lived discovered that the simplest things in life—eating, drinking, and working—are only profitable if we include God, and the same is true for us today. We cannot live without God.
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