Year 5, Day 103: Job 9

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Grace

• Grace: Grace comes to us when we make mistakes and have a failing of character.  Grace comes to us when we have a typical D₂ moment.  Grace comes to us when we need space to recognize a mistake, repent of it, and allow God to redeem it while calling us back into His will.  Grace is partnered by Time and Vision.

Today I’m going to focus in on one particular verse: Job 9:33.  In this verse, Job claims that there is no arbiter between God and man.  In Job’s day, he is absolutely correct.  Who can come between God and mankind, laying hands upon both as if to bridge the gap between the two? 

You see, Job may not realize the scope about what he speaks, but he completely understands the problem of original sin!  What man can go into the presence of God and survive?  Who can go before God righteously as an arbiter for an unrighteous humanity?  We cannot save ourselves because we cannot even find among ourselves and arbiter between us and God.

I believe Paul has this verse in mind when he writes 1 Timothy 2:5.  Job cannot see into the future, but he knows that what mankind needs most is an arbiter.  In 1 Timothy 2:5 Paul tells us that there is one mediator between God and man: Jesus Christ.  God had to solve the problem for us.  God became the arbiter by taking humanity upon himself and becoming God-made-man.

I feel bad in that Job gives us this incredible bit of wisdom and never sees the answer in real life.  However, we know Job believes in the answer.  We’ll get to Job 19:25 soon enough, and there we’ll discover just what Job’s faith is all about.

That’s the grace that Job needs in the midst of his pit of despair.  He knows that he is not at fault.  Yet at the same time he also knows that he is sinful and cannot go into the presence of God and survive.  He knows that an arbiter is needed.  God’s grace is that an arbiter is given to us in Jesus Christ.

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