Job 9:2–3

The question here is, how a soul can stand before God. Where is righteousness to be found? ... He was convinced that God hates evil and loves holiness. His friends looked at Job's condition and said he must be a hypocrite. He must have done something very bad, they argued, for God was against him, and prosperity is the mark of God's favour. But Job insisted that this is no adequate test.

In moral terms, this is the vital question of human life on earth since the fall. The peace of the human heart depends on the answer. Here lies the mystery of a conscience brought to rest. Believers in Old Testament times, from Adam onwards, tried to solve this problem. Both before and after the flood, before and after the Law, every sincere soul puzzled over this question.

There is more emphasis than we are often aware of in this chapter. "How should a man be just with God?" More emphasis on "with God." A man may be just in a certain sense. He may not fail in any way that troubles his conscience in his dealings with other people. But to be just with God is another thing.

A person who lives for a good reputation with people never has a conscience before God. Anyone who thinks that way about his own character is always wrong. He is only acting to please himself and the world, and not God.

Job has thrown out three suggested answers to his question: defiance, self-justification, and careless forgetting. What about a course of self-improvement? ... He knew that melted snow gives the purest kind of distilled water. It has the greatest power to absorb and remove dirt... If he achieved something like this in his own character and life, what then? Why, God would plunge him in a dirty ditch as the only fit place for him. And even then, he himself, beneath his clothes, would be dirtier than they! The dirt was in him, not in his surroundings.

Self-justification is a very attractive idea, yet Job stated it only to reject it as unworkable. He knew he had only to open his mouth to condemn himself. And anyone who would justify himself under God's searching eye must be able to prove his own perfection. Nothing short of that would satisfy.

Job did not know what was in his heart till he was put to the test... Job had a kind character, high position, great wealth and many possessions. People thought well of him, and he ended up thinking well of himself. God must break all this down. Trials come, and then self breaks out, because it was inside.

Read Job 9 and you can see Job's tries at answering this question. He throws them out one by one as worthless. He ends with a cry for a "daysman," or mediator — a cry that would not be answered for perhaps two thousand years.

Christ lays His hand upon the sinner, having been made sin for him. How could a man as he is be made righteous? Impossible; but Christ could be made sin with God for man... Now we find in the gospel, not the righteousness of man with God, but God's righteousness for man.

"How should man be just with God?" This is the guilty man's "hard question." Bildad's remarks drew this out of Job... It was all very well for Bildad to say "God will not cast away a perfect man." No one ever supposed He would, but where is the perfect man to be found? Job felt that he was not that man. Romans 3:21-26 gives the divine answer to the guilty man's "hard question." The redemption that is in Christ Jesus lets God justify by His grace, as a free gift, everyone who owns his guilt and believes in His Son.

The first is of course verse 3. Supposing man adopts a defiant attitude and contends with God; what then? Disaster, and no justification! Sin has made mankind into rebels, so defying God is their first instinct. But Job saw how ruinous such an attitude would be. God is so infinitely great that no rebel can prosper, and down to verse 19 he continues this theme.

The instant the soul is awakened, it sees with God's eye, and this is the only way of seeing right. When that happens, the soul stands in the light of God's judgment and says, "I could not answer him one of a thousand." God is infinitely good; but His way of goodness is not that of allowing evil. Could you answer for yourself in the day of judgment for everything you have ever said or done?

Our consciences may be quite at ease while we are far from God and not yet awake. But the moment we have to face what we are in the presence of God, we see that our case is desperate. We all know, more or less, what self-righteousness is, and we can get along with it well enough until God's eye is upon us. A man may have an excellent character, and deserve it too, but he does not have a perfect conscience... the moment we recognise God's presence, the veil is off. We see God, and His word searches the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Then we can understand the words of poor Job (and there was no one like him in all the earth), "He cannot answer him one of a thousand."

Job was a most righteous man, and God bore witness to him as such. He was no Pharisee, and he used language no Pharisee would use. Yet when he was put into the crucible, he was found to be secretly clinging to a testimony from his fellow men. In his heart of hearts he knew that testimony would not stand before God (Job 9:2-3, 20, 30, 31). And is there not a hidden root of self-confidence in every heart? Is there not a longing to compare ourselves with others, sure that the comparison will favour us, with God Himself as the Judge?

If we look at Christ, we shall find that He exactly meets the need that Job felt. I cannot answer God one in a thousand — but what do I find in Christ? God in His person came to me in this world because I could not do anything. The blessed Lord did not wait up in heaven, but came to these unrighteous people. He never said "Come to me," until He had come Himself.

We can see how immense the difference is when the gospel reveals the righteousness of God. It is no longer the question, How shall man be just with God? ... Now the gospel reveals God's righteousness. That shuts out everything on man's part except faith, so that it might be wholly grace on God's part. Yet it rests on the foundation of Christ's suffering for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.