24.2 Vanity and Curse
© 2015 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope (Romans 8:20).
We want three words from the Greek before we start.
| Hypetagē | te gar mataioteti | ouch hekousa |
| Was subjected | to indeed futility/vanity | NOT willingly |
- Hupotassó: to place or rank under, to subject; to arrange beneath.
- Mataiotés: vanity, emptiness, unreality, purposelessness, ineffectiveness. The aimless wandering that comes from lacking purpose.
- Ouch hekón: NOT of one's own free will, not voluntary, not willingly. Forced, unintentional action.
There is a significant difference between vanity and curse. All of creation, including all of heaven, exists under vanity as its natural state prior to the manifestation of the sons of God. Vanity is the necessary reality of an invisible God creating conscious persons. Vanity is not knowing God. And in not knowing God, vanity can only wander around without inherent purpose.
Adam, in his innocence, lived under vanity; he could have lived for years without eating of the tree of death – AND without eating of the tree of life, and thus without purpose.
Jesus Was Tempted
Jesus lived and walked UNDER vanity.
God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed (James 1:13b-14). – Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren … For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. (Hebrews 2:17-18).
These two verses are difficult for those who want to call Jesus, “God the Son,” instead of the Word made flesh. God cannot be tempted by evil; Jesus was tempted in all things, exactly as we are tempted, by being drawn away by His own desires and enticed.
Three States of Being
There are three states of being.
1. Incorruptible – God and those willingly sealed into God. 2. Corruptible – all created beings, Jesus numbered among them – Jesus could not have been tempted or have died upon the cross had he not been corruptible. 3. Corrupt – all created beings who turn their backs on the good speaking of Jesus in order to fashion their own self's.
Vanity applies to all created beings. The curse applies to those who rebel and disobey. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (Galatians 3:13).
Our Job
Our job is not to break the curse; Jesus has already done that. Our job is to end vanity. Our job is to KNOW the Father and to KNOW Jesus Sent.
We come to the knowledge of the Father through knowing Jesus Sent. And we know Jesus Sent by Jesus living as us, sharing all of His glory and all of His victory utterly together with us.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57). Victory over the curse, victory over death – for one purpose, to know Jesus Sent and through Jesus, to know the Father.
NOT Willingly
To whom does the “not willingly” refer? Does it refer to the creation being subjected by the necessary reality of an invisible God who cannot be known apart from utter WILLINGNESS of heart?
Or does it refer to the Father, who never wanted a creation who did not know Him, whose Heart longs and sings with Desire to be known, to be touched, to be seen, to dance and sing, to laugh and weep with others whom He loves and who love Him? Does it refer to the Father who cannot sin, cannot push anyone around, cannot force anyone to love Him or even to obey Him, and thus must bring forth His beloved only to lose her, only to lose everything He loves?
The Equation
It is clear that neither the Father nor creation itself wants this present sad state of affairs to continue one moment longer. It is clear that you and I have been given the privilege and the task of bringing that which no one wants to its end, to bring all things, all creation yes, but the Father far more so, into the earnest desire and expectation of His hope.
None of this is complicated. All of it is simple and direct. Know Father through Jesus; show everyone Father through you. The equation is simple, but the “through Jesus” part, while utterly of Jesus in our hearts living as us, yet that is where the process of unfolding takes place, the process of Story. And that’s why we must understand the curse.
Consequences
God spoke the curse in Genesis 3 against His own Heart. Nothing in the curse is “God’s order” or “God’s will” as too many of our brethren have argued. The curse is not something “imposed” on man by a vengeful God; the curse is simply the consequences that must come from living inside the creation of the false self, living in Hades.
God’s anger against sin comes out from His broken heart. But we must never imagine that God’s anger against sin is diminished. God hates sin because sin destroys all that He loves and robs all that is good from those sinning and those sinned against.
The Butterfly
There is one antidote only for sin, and that is Blood upon the Mercy Seat, our hearts, the only place we live, the place where we walk together as one Person with a holy God. But we KNOW Jesus Sent by knowing all of His victory lived now through us in the awfulness of this present age.
Let’s keep before us the image of a butterfly casting off the chrysalis inside of which it was formed. The chrysalis is not part of the butterfly; neither curse nor vanity are part of us. Yet the butterfly does not know all the life inside of it, life and energy that will enable it to soar in the heavens, except by casting off the chrysalis.
Casting Off the Bands
When you see a butterfly, weak and impoverished, struggling against the strong bands of the chrysalis, the temptation is to reach down and break those bands to set the butterfly free. To do so, is to condemn the butterfly to a slow, agonizing death. By casting off the bands of the chrysalis, the butterfly experiences all the life and strength held deep inside working its way out into all of its body and wings.
By casting off the bands of curse and vanity, you and I come to KNOW all the life and strength of this Victorious Christ who lives now as us and who connects us as one Person together with the Father.
Curse 1 and 2
Here are the seven elements of the curse, Genesis 3:14-21.
1. Verse 14 (to the serpent): On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. God enforces the covenant Adam made with the serpent. Those who would be empty of God must be animated by demons, eating the dust of human flesh every moment.
2. Verse 15: . . . and you shall bruise His heel. Satan and his demons are given power to stand before the woman to devour her child as soon as it is born – except they are limited to bruising, not to destroying Christ walking this earth.
Curse 3 and 4
3. Verse 16 (to the woman): In pain you shall bring forth children. This is the agony of Jesus in Gethsemane and the travail of our own lives as we pass through the sufferings and pressures by which Christ in all fullness is brought forth through us.
4. Verse 16: . . .your husband, and he shall rule over you. This is not a blessing; it is not God’s ‘order’; it is a curse. No matter what fantasies we humans weave inside our own deluded bubbles of self, there will always be those humans more cruel and more desirous of destroying others than we. The cruel are the ones who will always “rule over.”
Curse 5 and 6
5. Verse 17 (to Adam): Cursed is the ground for your sake … We live in a world of scarcity and want. To live separated from God is to live separated from Father’s abundance. Notice the “for your sake,” referring directly to the many weird and unusual trials that hit us, the pressures that cause us to lay hold of Christ our only life with all the ferocity of our souls.
6. Verse 19 … For dust you are, and to dust you shall return. Death — physical death. The wages of sin is death — In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die — The soul that sins shall die. Physical death is the consequence of sin.
Curse 7
Physical death is the ripping apart of body and spirit. Physical death is the severing apart of heaven and earth. Physical death is the last enemy to be destroyed. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ – that victory is VICTORY over death.
7. Verse 21: Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Adam and Eve were clothed with the skin of a beast, heaven vanishing from their sight, darkness covering their eyes. Without the skin of a beast, shielding us from the light and from heaven, mankind could not have survived one day.
Earnest Expectation
Subjected – IN HOPE! The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits.
| Apokaradokia | apekdechetai |
| Earnest expectation | eagerly waits. |
- Apokaradokia: strained expectancy. Apo – away from; kara – the head. Eager, intense expectation. Head turned away from all other considerations.
- Apekdechomai: to await eagerly. From three words, apo – away from; dexomai – welcome, and ekdidesis – out of. Straining forward, welcoming that which is coming out of – something.
In most places in the New Testament, this word, apekdechomai: to await eagerly, is used to describe the believer’s expectant awaiting the Parousia, the presence, of Jesus Christ. But here, Paul uses the word as a defining word for all creation. And when we say “all creation,” we leave nothing out. All creation wants, with every fiber of its being, the manifestation of the sons of God.
Wow! In other words, we must no longer be fooled by the seeming indifference and hostility against the revelation of Jesus Christ we see in this world. It’s all a smoke screen. Everything eagerly waits – for you and me to reveal Jesus.
It’s All about the Birth
Remember points 2 and 3 of this ninth most important verse. 2. The creation eagerly waits with earnest expectation –for something. 3. The creation groans and labors with birth pangs. Although these two seem to be opposite expressions and thus are listed as two different things, they are actually two sides of the same thing.
A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world (John 16:21). It’s all about the birth. The manifestation of the sons of God is that birth.
The Father’s Hope
Him who subjected it in hope. We are speaking of the Father’s hope. God wants something He does not yet have. Creation’s eager anticipation is simply an expression of the intense Desire of God for you and me to reveal Jesus.
There is so much to consider here, but this is an introductory course, and alas, our space is limited. Our purpose is to have a clear view of God’s framework, God’s pro-thesis, so that as we go forward, the Lord can place all the details for us into the Father’s real story line.
And thus we must look again at story.