Ecclesiastes 6:10 Commentary and Bible Study

Man should not try to change his own nature but accept what he is and recognise his limitations. Man’s nature is defined by what God made him to be as summed up in the name which God gave him in Eden shortly after his creation. He was then and still is today ‘Adam’, ‘Man’ a word which derives from the Hebrew for ground or earth from which he was made. This humble origin was deliberately chosen by God to remind us that we are joined to the earth and cannot rise above it except by divine working. Only in Christ can we escape our fleshly limitations, and, more particularly, only in Christ can we also break free from the power of death which came upon our race after the fall. Let us not imagine that we can break free from these limitations and become what God did not make us to be. By doing this we contend with our Creator and enter into a battle that we are not going to win. God who made us is almighty and no one can prevail against him. Yet men attempt this very thing when they vainly imagine that they can find fulfilment on earth without reference to God, when they suppose they can turn this world into a paradise and create for themselves all manner of pleasures on earth that mean that they do not need heaven and can live without God. All covetousness is contention with God and an expression of dissatisfaction with him. It is an attempt to substitute something in his place, something which we assert to be superior to him. No man by striving can obtain for himself more than God has dealt out to him.