"But how can man be in the right before God?"

Roughly two thousand years ago, a man named Job, from the land of Uz, asked a question that theologians and philosophers have been asking for centuries, "How can man be in the right before God?" Another way to put this is, if there is a God, how can we be right with Him? How can we stand before Him and answer Him?

The short answer that Job provides through his writings is very simply that we can’t. We are not able to stand before the great, awesome, marvelous God that he describes. Even if we were to be blameless this would not be enough, because the God Job describes is perfect.

This naturally presents a problem for people like me and you. Not only am I not blameless in and of myself, I tend to regularly fall short of living up to the standard that God desires for my life. As much as I want to be in the right before God because of my behavior, my good works, or even my lack of bad works, this too is not enough to put me in the right before the God who made me.

Which naturally leads to us asking the question, what is it then that allows a man to be in the right before God? Essentially, what is the solution? What is the solution when I know I am not what I ought to be, and that my inadequacies keep me from being right with God?

Job asked this question without knowing the answer at the time of his writing. The reason he asked this question was because he found himself in a difficult place at the time. He was afflicted by the difficulties of life. He had lost everything. His family had been taken from him, his wealth was lost, and his life was hanging on by a thread. Day by day, he sat in physical agony because of the wasting away of his body.

All the while, he acknowledged not only God’s presence in his life, but God’s goodness. He didn’t curse God or turn away from Him as others would have. He sought an opportunity to plead his case before God with the hope that God would hear, and his misery would be abated.

Still, one problem remained. Job had no one worthy enough to plead his case before God. With this being the case, Job concludes the following:

“I shall be condemned; why then do I labor in vain? If I wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye, yet you will plunge me into a pit, and my own clothes will abhor me. For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us, who might lay his hand on us both.” (Job 9:29-33)

Job accepts his fate. He realizes there is no way for him to cleanse himself to the point where he is on equal footing with the God who made him. To go back to our original question, he realizes there is no possible way that he can be in the right before God. With this being the case, he recognizes the need for something, or someone who can plead his case before this Holy God.

He needs someone who can go into the court room on his behalf to plead with the judge to hear his case, so just maybe he can be pardoned and set free from all the pain and turmoil surrounding his life circumstances. Job needed an arbiter. He needed a rescuer. He needed someone holier than him, and altogether different than him. He needed someone who was not merely a mortal man to approach this holy God.

He needed Jesus. He needed the one who was promised to come long ago, the one who would ultimately come to be the great high priest, who would intercede on behalf of sinners to the Father. The writer of Hebrews says, “we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man”. (Hebrews 8:1-2)

In the Old Testament, the people of God worshipped God in the tabernacle, in a tent that was set up as a place of worship. They had faith in God, tried to live out His commandments, and trust in His promises, but they did not see the day when their Savior would come to fulfill the promises God had given them and their ancestors.

Today, you and I see the full picture of God’s plan of redemption in that He sent Jesus, to be the perfect arbiter, so that you and I may be in the right before God. You may ask, "how? How does the coming of Jesus make any difference in my life"?

The answer is that the coming of Jesus changes everything. With the coming of Jesus comes the opportunity for feeble people like you and me to be forgiven through faith. This is our greatest need; forgiveness. This is my greatest need, pardon for all the wrong that I have done over the course of my life, wrong that disqualifies me from experiencing a loving relationship with the God who made me.

But God.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:4-7)

New life is possible because of the death that took place on the cross. Jesus went to the cross so you and I wouldn’t have to. He paid a debt that He didn’t rack up. He was punished for crimes he never committed so people like you and me would never feel like Job, hopeless, condemned, and without any prospect of rescue.

So, if you still have any doubt or question as to what the clear, definitive answer is to the question, “But how can a man be in the right before God?”, there is only one answer. There is only one solution. The answer is Jesus, and the solution is surrendering your life to Him fully on a daily basis to be your arbiter, before the God who loves you and longs to know you.

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