Year 8, Day 103: Job 9

Theological Commentary: Click Here

It is chapters like this that really draw my respect for Job.  Job speaks truth from a human perspective and does it with such grace and spirit.  He speaks his condition without speaking against God.

Job’s main complaint is that nobody can be compared to God and deemed righteous.  It is impossible.  Next to God, we’re not even capable of registering on a scale of righteousness!  Therefore, in a response to Bildad’s argument, what good is it to compare us to God’s righteousness?  Who can compare there?  Job isn’t stating a complaint against God; Job is merely stating a reality.  Next to God, we don’t compare.

In fact, Job goes one step further.  Not only don’t we compare, but we have no arbiter.  We have no way to stand before God and make a defense.  We have nobody to make such a case for us.  The best any of us can do is read God’s Word and try our best to live obedient to His will.

What Job is doing is telling us about the human condition millenia prior to God’s plan to do something about it.  Job is making sure we understand our greatest human need.  We cannot go before God and there is in fact nobody who can go for us!  That’s our greatest need as a human being.

Our greatest need, then, is Christ.  Jesus is our go-between.  Jesus is our arbiter.  Jesus is the one who can go before God and mediate for us.  Millenia prior to Jesus coming, Job knows of His need!  Here is the wisdom of the Old Testament reaching forward in anticipation for Jesus.  We need an arbiter.  We need Jesus.

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