Grace Alone, Not By Living A Righteous Life

"What good are you as friends?" Job asks, as he listened to those who came to comfort him. "What good are you?"

"Have I any help in me, when resource is driven from me? "He who withholds kindness from a friend forsakes the fear of the Almighty. My brothers are treacherous as a torrent-bed, as torrential streams that pass away, which are dark with ice, and where the snow hides itself. When they melt, they disappear; when it is hot, they vanish from their place. The caravans turn aside from their course; they go up into the waste and perish. The caravans of Tema look, the travelers of Sheba hope. They are ashamed because they were confident; they come there and are disappointed. For you have now become nothing; you see my calamity and are afraid." - Job 6:13-21 ESV

His friends were nothing but melted snow and ice that disappears when it gets hot. He felt like men in the caravans of Tema (Gen. 25:12-16), the travelers of Sheba who found no water in the desert. They plodded along in the dry lands, hoping to find water, but found nothing but parched desert. They were but dried up streams. Job's friends accuse him of some wretched sins for which God is punishing and disciplining him.

But now, be pleased to look at me, for I will not lie to your face. Please turn; let no injustice be done. Turn now; my vindication is at stake. Is there any injustice on my tongue? Cannot my palate discern the cause of calamity? - Job 6:28-30 ESV

Poor, wretched, miserable Job (Job 6:1-10). He loathes his life. He cannot sleep. His flesh is clothed with worms and dirt. His skin hardens, then breaks out with new sores. He complains to his "friends" and to his God. In the anguish of his spirit and the bitterness of his soul he cries out. Instead of being comforted he is terrified and scared with dreams and visions. When will it ever end?

What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him, visit him every morning and test him every moment? How long will you not look away from me, nor leave me alone till I swallow my spit? - Job 7:17-19 ESV

OK! Enough already. If I am guilty of sin and deserving of this sick and troubling disease, show me.

If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be." - Job 7:20-21 ESV 

Cyperus Papyrus

Next it is the turn of Bildad the Shuhite. He says the same thing as Job's other friend. God does not pervert justice and the right way of life. If you are pure and upright God will restore you to your former life. You must not forget God. To emphasize this he uses a number pictures drawn from the natural world.

"Can papyrus grow where there is no marsh? Can reeds flourish where there is no water? While yet in flower and not cut down, they wither before any other plant. Such are the paths of all who forget God; the hope of the godless shall perish. His confidence is severed, and his trust is a spider's web. He leans against his house, but it does not stand; he lays hold of it, but it does not endure. He is a lush plant before the sun, and his shoots spread over his garden. His roots entwine the stone heap; he looks upon a house of stones. If he is destroyed from his place, then it will deny him, saying, 'I have never seen you.' Behold, this is the joy of his way, and out of the soil others will spring. - Job 8:11-19 ESV

So Job and his friends struggle with a type of religion that continually seeks to bargain with God. It is a religion that tells us that if we live a righteous life God will bless us. If we do not, He will punish and humble us until we repent and return to His ways. This is a religion of works. It does not look deep into the teaching of God's Word to discover what the Apostles of Christ taught. Listen to Paul as he despairs of ever being righteous. No one is. All have gone astray. This is the true teaching of Scripture.

As it is written: "There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one." "Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit"; "The poison of asps is under their lips"; "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness." "Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known." "There is no fear of God before their eyes." - Rom 3:10-18 NKJV 

How then shall anyone be saved from eternal death and destruction? Paul's answer:

Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, - Rom 3:20-25 NKJV 

It is all by God's grace, undeserved and unearned, yet given and available to all who put their faith and trust in the death and resurrection of the promised Messiah, the Christ whose birth we Christians celebrate at this time of the year.

Why Only Jesus Can Solve The Dilemma Of Death

I ended yesterday's post with these words about our troubled world: "Everything is in confusion. It was never to be this way. God did not want it this way, but what could He do about it?" We pick up our discussion, based upon a book written by Athanasius of Alexandria on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.

The law of death prevails upon the entire human race despite our best efforts. In earlier posts of this blog I outlined how some believe they will soon be able to reduce our individual human personhood to a computer program that can be stored and retrieved when repairs to one's body or mind are needed. Cf. blogs about The Singularity. At that point, they say, humans will become immortal. Death will be conquered—at least for those with access to such cloud-based computers.

We all share a desire to live. And we Christians know with certainty that you cannot reduce human life to a computer program, regardless of its complexity. But how then will death be conquered? Here is our dilemma. It is quite unthinkable that God should go back on His Word that we children of Adam and Eve must die because of disobedience, our sin. He cannot falsify Himself. On the other hand it is equally unworthy of God's goodness that we who are created in His image be brought to nothing both by our sinfulness and by the deceit of the devil and those rebel spirits that follow him.

Like so many of us, I distinctly recall thinking in my youth about this issue. What's the point of living if it all leads to death? Surely it would have been better for the Creator never to have created us than to be thrown away and die. Is God so helpless that he cannot do something about this horror? To leave us to corruption and death is unfitting and unworthy of a loving and all-powerful God.

To solve this dilemma some suggest that instead of relying upon computer programming and other forms of science, we need to repent, that is change our way of thinking and acting. By openly admitting our guilt and promising to change we should be able to reverse the situation, right? Wrong! It might sound good, but repentance doesn't change human nature. Granted, the witness of Scripture is that the Lord GOD has no pleasure in the death of anyone (Ezekiel 18:32). We may accept and rejoice in that truth, but it still changes nothing. To be honest not a single one of us even comes close to keeping God's commands to love Him and to love one another. No one is righteous, no not one (Rom. 2:10-18; Psa. 14:1-3).  And God cannot change His Word that pronounces death upon sinners. The dilemma remains.

This is why the Word of God had to do it for us. In the beginning He called forth all things out of nothing (in today's language: the Big Bang). Consequently He is the only one who can reverse the situation and maintain the heavenly Father's consistency. Jesus Christ, God's Son, is God's Word by which all was made and without whom nothing was both created and made (John 1:1-3). He was, is and ever will be above and outside creation. One must rightly describe Him as immaterial. He is not created. He is "God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds" (see Athanasian Creed:31). He is eternally one with His Father (John 10:30; 17:11, 21). As God's Word He fills all things. Everything exists by Him. In Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

The Word Was Made Flesh

Since He alone can deal with our dilemma, the Word of God came down to our level to do just that. He who occupies and has created all dimensions of this creation confined Himself to the four of our existence. He became a man, borne of the Virgin Mary. He did it out of compassion for us. He was unwilling that death should remain our master. Out of sheer love He lived a life of complete and total obedience to His Father—for us. Out of sheer love He surrendered His body to death—for us. In this manner He robbed death of its power. Death disappeared as utterly as straw from fire (1 Cor 15:55-57). With His death the Lord Jesus became the Victor over death. We who have been born anew of God share in that victory (1 John 5:4).

The writer to the Hebrews puts it this way:

But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. - Hebrews 2:9-10 ESV

By His suffering and death He completed the work He set out to accomplish. By the sacrifice of His own body He did two things:

• He put an end to the law of death that barred our way to the eternal presence of God

• He made a new beginning of life for us, giving us the certain hope of resurrection.

Paul puts it this way:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. - 1 Cor 15:20-22 ESV

We still die, but no longer as men and women condemned. Death for us is now a part of the process of putting away sin and death in order to rise again in the general resurrection that will be openly displayed at the time appointed (1 Tim. 6:13-16).

This, then, is the first reason of our Savior's becoming Man. There are other things, however. We will consider them in the next blog post.