Job 33:25–26

Job 33:15-22. He shows God using the plough — a dream, a striking providence, bodily pain or sickness — to break up that hard ground. And such is the work to this day… Job 33:23-24. The sower comes after the ploughman. The seed is the Gospel. God provides the ransom; He brings deliverance to the sinner. Job 33:25-26. The condition of the believer… Job 33:29-30. Elihu tells Job these are samples of God's way in saving souls.

He was a godly man; there was no one like him. Yet God saw a defect in him… Here God does not deal first with outward sin, but with the inward working of a man's ignorance of himself, and then with its breaking out, through God's dealings, into actual sin. So when Job was brought into God's presence, the thing was found out and came into his conscience. When God reveals His presence, the effect is first submission, then confession. "I have uttered what I did not understand… I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." And God restores him to full blessing… Job was not upright in the full, true sense until he despised himself and said so — that is, until he confessed. Then his flesh became fresher than a child's again.

So a freshness better than that of youth is given — as Naaman gives us an example. "His flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean" (2 Kings 5:14). It is a new birth, by the incorruptible seed of the word of God.

What freshness of soul this gives! "His flesh shall be fresher than a child's; he shall return to the days of his youth." It is no longer, "Oh that I was as in months past." The old "I" is done with. It is no longer I, but Christ in me; no more wretched striving to justify the old me. Ah, no! but my soul filled with freshness in contemplating God's ransom, and God's perfection in justifying me by that ransom.

We have here nothing at all about the two natures. The Old Testament saint never understood that. Man cannot profit by that truth, or understand it, until he sees Christ by faith — sees the Son and believes in Him. Now we are made to understand it simply and fully… "He looks upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted what was right, and it profited me not" — there you see is just what the repentant soul says. It is not called "repentance" here… but here we have the thing, repentance, although the word is not used. It is very comforting to think that this was what God was doing in those days, and was known to be doing — because the gospel was not preached then.

Elihu seems to call himself the interpreter Job asked for. He says that a go-between, an interpreter, would bring the solution Job was looking for… Elihu says that the only complete answer to this will come when the full results of the interpreter's coming have reached us.

Now we see the blessed results of this work of the Interpreter in the ransomed man. He can now pray with confidence, rejoice in God's favour, and see His face with joy. He has found a righteousness — not from his own goodness but from Another — "the righteousness from God that depends on faith." No doubt this includes God recognising faithfulness in a child of God, as in Job's case. But the principle carries us much further.

Elihu speaks of God showing man what was righteous. That came to light in the path our Lord walked. But he adds, "He will render to man His righteousness." That could only be as a result of the work upon the cross (Job 33:23-26).

He would never surrender his integrity. He would never let go his righteousness. But, as Elihu puts it, his "righteousness," or his "uprightness" (see Job 33:23, 26) would now mean something different. It would mean bowing under God's hand. It would mean trusting the searching work of His discipline, and learning the lesson God would teach. In short, it would mean looking away from himself to God, and living on that new principle before Him — centred in God and no longer in self.

The freshness of that new life will overflow in thankful prayer to God. Take Saul of Tarsus. God's grace woke him and saved him, and he had the distinction of having God say of him, "Behold, he is praying" (Acts 9:11). That is the result of being born again: "then man prays to God, and He accepts him" (v.26). More than that, "he sees His face with a shout of joy" — a wonderful honour given to every believer, because God has rendered to him His righteousness (v.26). We throw away our own righteousness as filthy rags, and the believer's confidence is now in God's righteousness.

He takes notice of every departure from Him. But the door is always open for "repentance." When a man judges his sin, and sees it in the light in which God sees it, nothing stands in the way of immediate restoration. The moment the conscience bows under the sin and confesses it, it comes into an upright position... So the church of God, or an individual soul, must come into this state of uprightness before God, so that He can restore it; Job 33:23-26. Judge sin in the conscience, and then God reveals His unfailing love to meet the need.

The way to be cleared is so simple. Why should anyone walk with a burdened conscience? Make an upright and honest confession, and we are not only forgiven but cleansed. Elihu says the same of the soul that has come to judge itself: "then man prays to God, and He accepts him; he sees His face with a shout of joy."