Job 4:17  ‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?

    

    There is an old joke about a person desperate to know God’s will. So he takes a Bible and flips through the pages randomly to find ‘God’s’ direction. He lands on a verse that says “Judas went out and hung himself.” Not comforted with that, he flips through again landing, this time, on “Go and do thou likewise.” Greatly distressed, he tries a third time, only to find, “What you do, do quickly.”! Tak-ing verses out of context is usually a problem. It’s not a good idea to use the  Bible like the old ‘Magic 8 Ball’!

    Job had endured serious calamity and three of his friends had come to sit with him. They sat with him for a week saying nothing! But then, they decided to speak. They are almost always thought of negatively, usually referred to, quite sarcastically, as “Job’s comforters.” But they were his friends and the first, Eliphaz, asks the question in today’s verse. “Can a mortal be more righteous than God?” Clearly the answer is ‘no!’ But how about a follow-up question? “Can a mortal be as righteous as God?” Again, a clear ‘no!’ 

    (I’d like to carefully lift this verse out of context. Eliphaz asks a great quest-ion, but perhaps his timing was a bit off.) But where does that leave us? God is the very standard of righteousness. And, He calls us to be righteous. How can we possibly hope to meet this expectation? We can’t! It’s impossible! The thing is, God knew it was impossible. Yet we can see throughout Scripture, calls to be righteous. So He provided a way for us. Paul wrote to the Corinthians (1:30)

        And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption

    Jesus became our righteousness. He lived a perfect, sinless life and died on a cross for our sins. He paid the penalty for us. The Just for the unjust. He holds out to us the promise of salvation. If we accept His free gift of salvation, His blood washes away our sin. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. 

    So, Eliphaz, can a mortal be more righteous than God? No. But a mortal can have the very righteousness of God if he or she has been born again to new life in Christ!

Blessings,

Pastor Russ