Job 9:30–31

The fourth "If …" comes in verse 30. Job has already thrown out three 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 distilled water, with the greatest power to absorb and remove filth. Suppose he reached something like this in his own character and life — what then? God would still drop him into a dirty ditch, as the only place fit for him. And even then, under his clothes, he would be dirtier than they are! The filth was in himself, not in his surroundings. He could not reject more firmly the idea of being justified by a process of self-improvement.

Whatever you try, you cannot make yourself one bit better, or one bit more fit for the Saviour's presence… Snow water is the very purest of all water. So what does snow water stand for? Rites and ceremonies, and everything else that comes only from man's flesh. People are trying all this, but it does not work. Snow water does not cleanse from sin. Nothing can cleanse you before God, or give relief to your soul, but the precious blood of Christ. Trying to improve yourself is only a trap of the devil to keep you away from the Saviour.

A man may keep up the appearance of happiness in front of others, but the wound keeps aching in his heart… Next it is, "wash me with snow water." But this will not do. God's eye sees too far; He sees motives. Snow water is no use. I am so filthy that my own clothes hate me… What is Job looking into Job to find out? That a man cannot be just with God. It is a terrible lesson: all his snow water is useless, and he washes his hands for nothing. Is that the ground you are standing on?

He felt that when he listed his works of righteousness he had cleansed his hands as with snow water. But when God came before his soul again, he became utterly disgusting to his clothes. He uses a very strong picture: "my own clothes will abhor me." I think this is what it means. The fine qualities of his life, which he tried to wear as clothing, were the result of God's work in him. They refused to serve as decorations for the flesh. They did not belong to that man, and were not there to give him glory. Later he says, "I abhor myself." He came to the same mind as his clothes.

Even if he bathed himself in water as pure as snow, and washed his hands with soap, so that he was cleaner than he had ever been, God would still plunge him into the ditch. All self-help and self-improvement is in vain. But then comes a ray of light. He needs another to help him, to bring him in touch with God, to make him just with God. He calls for a daysman, an umpire, one who might lay His hand on God and on him, the sinner, to take the rod away from him and set him free from fear… But He has come: Christ Jesus our Lord.

His only hope was for a third party to step in, and he knew of no such third party, no such "daysman." His three friends could not play that part, and no other man could either. The daysman must be great enough to lay one hand on Almighty God, and gracious enough to lay the other on poor, diseased, sinful Job.