Year 8, Day 108: Job 14

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Here we have a passage where I think Job goes a touch too far.  Before I get there, though, I’m going to start out in truth.  Like all theology that goes a little bad, it actually starts in truth.  Job makes a couple of reasonable comments.  First, man is full of trouble when we are born.  Our days are short in number and we are full of sin inherently.  There’s no arguing that.

Then, Job asks a really important question.  Who can bring anything clean out of the unclean?  Naturally, no human being for sure.  This question is the turning point for Job.  The reason that it is so important is because its answer is what allows us to avoid Job’s mistake.  We know who can make something clean out of the unclean.  God can.  We know how He does it, too.  He does it through the cross of Christ.  Through Jesus we are made clean.  Job doesn’t have access to this knowledge.

Because Job doesn’t have access to this information, he begins to accuse God.  He sees the hopelessness of life.  Who among us can hope to be righteous?  Who among us can hope to be clean?  If we don’t have a shot at it, why try?

This is the futility out of which Job ends this chapter.  Job acknowledges that we have no chance.  We are born and die and don’t get a chance to see the fruit of our generation!  God watches while the mountains ebb away, we don’t get that perspective.  God watches while we destroy each other and even while He brings destruction upon us.  But we don’t get to see the overarching effects.

Without the cross of Christ, life is ultimately futile.  What is man that God is mindful of us?  However, with the cross of Christ we can know cleanliness.  We can know that God can take our efforts and prosper them.  He can allow us to know the eternal, even though we might die!  With the cross of Christ, we don’t need to know the futility that Job sinks into at the close of this chapter.

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