Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Commentary on the Book of Job part twelve

                                      Job 9:1-35

In Job 9:1-3, Job answered Bildad's charges against him by asking the question, "How should a man be just with God?" God put this question into Job's heart because God knew that the answer was that He would make a way for man to become just with Him, and accepted by Him. Job knew that Bildad's charge that Job must make himself absolutely perfect in order to be just with God could not work because Job knew himself to be a hopeless sinner unacceptable to God. In verse 3, Job demonstrated that he understood his hopelessness by his admission that no man can argue with God. If God made a thousand charges against a man, he could not justify even one of them.

In Job 9:4-11, God revealed to Job that He possesses absolute and almighty power. God can do whatever He pleases, and no man can thwart His will. Even though God gave man free will to do as he pleases, man's choices that go against God's will can only temporarily delay God's will. In the end, God's will to cleanse and restore absolutely everything He has ever created, including all mankind, to its original, pristine goodness will be accomplished. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 21:1-5. In the end, God will separate the spiritual deaths; that is, the total evil, from the living image of God in every human not already saved by grace, and cast their spiritual deaths into the lake of fire forever. Every human is a system which God can create or disassemble as He wills. Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:8. In verse 11, Job recognized that he could not directly see God in His creations. One can assume that God exists behind His creations, but God revealed to Job that he could personally know Him only by direct revelation of His Word to Job's heart.

Job was beginning to know God personally through God's revelations. In Job 9:12-19, Job realized that God's judgments are always right. For this reason, Job understood that he could never justify himself before his Holy God. Job realized that even the righteous part of him could not become good enough to reason with God on a one to one basis because it was defiled by sin. Isaiah 64:6. In verse 16, Job revealed that his weakness caused him to disbelieve God's revelations to him. In verses 17-19, Job blamed God for his wounds and his bitterness, but God demonstrated that He understood that Job's blame of Him was just temporary feelings in a weak human. God always displayed compassion for Job.

In Job 9:20-22, Job showed that he understood that God had judged him to be as perfect as is possible for a sinful man to be. But Job also realized that even his limited perfection did not entitle him to become justified by God. God revealed to Job that even his perfection had become soiled and ruined by his sinful nature. God revealed to Job in verse 22 that He destroys both the perfect and the wicked. But that which God destroys, He always recreates.

Following physical death, God judges all sinful humans. Hebrews 9:27. God judges humans saved by grace differently because He has already cleansed them of all sin. God cannot accept sin, and so He consigns all sinners to one of three places of the dead called the Sea, Death, and Hell. Revelation 20:13. All three are hellish places, but the Sea is not as hellish as Death, and Death is not as hellish as Hell. These individual judgments belong solely to God, but one can assume that, as a general rule, God consigns those who tried to live a righteous life to the Sea, those who led immoral lives to Death, and those who led cruel and wicked lives to Hell. God destroys both the perfect and the wicked because, in the end of the world, God will effect a general resurrection of the living from the dead, recover and recreate the good and living parts of them and consign the dead and wholly wicked parts of them to the lake of fire forever. John 5:28-29; Revelation 20:5; Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 21:1-5. God will use His consuming fire to separate man's good life from his evil death. I Corinthians 3:11-15. Christ made this separation possible when He descended into hell in order to leave all the sins of mankind not already saved by grace behind there so that He could rise immaculate from the dead. John 12:47; John 1:29; I Corinthians 15:21-22.

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