Job 9:22

Job insists that he is blameless (v.21), yet even so he came to despise his life (v.21). He found himself on the same level as a wicked man: "it is all one thing." God's dealings lumped the righteous and the wicked together. "Therefore I say, He destroys both the blameless and the wicked" (v.22). It is true that this seems to be the case more often than not in our present life. But how different it will be in the long run!

The greatest disaster might come, and God send it, and many completely innocent people might die just as much as the wicked. Say the sack of a city, or a plague sent by God in His moral government. These things are real, I say, and Job stuck to that. All their talk never drove him from the plain fact they dodged and shut their eyes to. "The earth," he says, "is given into the hand of the wicked." … These things happen. Innocent people suffer. Guilty people escape. All of it goes on every day… Things are out of order, and will be until the Lord takes the reins.

The words that follow sound almost like the ravings of a madman. He speaks out, but not in the fear of God. He acts as if he does not care. He says it is all the same to him whether he is right or wrong, because God destroys the perfect and the wicked alike. In other words, God is unjust… If God has not done all this, who has? These are horrible words. The one who accuses God to believers as much as he accuses believers before God must have whispered them into his despairing soul.

At verse 20, Job suggested another possible answer. How could he be just with God? Could he justify himself?… Self-justification sounds very attractive, yet Job raised it only to dismiss it as impossible. He knew he had only to open his mouth to condemn himself. Anyone who would justify himself before the searching eye of God must prove his own perfection. Nothing less would do… He went on to say that even if he were perfect, God would judge and destroy him. He only knew perfection as people measure it.

A disaster comes, and the best family may fall victim to it. Shall I give up God then, and not trouble myself about it? But he has to do with God, and he cannot help it. He cannot escape His hand… Job would have got away from God's presence if he could, but he could not. He was all wrong about this, but he could not get away from God.

"For He is not a man, as I am, that I should answer Him, and we should come together in judgment. There is no arbitrator between us." That is what Christ became. Christ became the mediator between God and men. He is not only a mediator; He is a mediator who is just as divine as the God before whom He acts for us… What is brought in now is the righteousness of God. There is nothing against that. But it is a justifying righteousness, not a condemning righteousness. The same God who condemned under the law saved under grace, because of Christ.