Job 4:17
Can mortals be righteous before God?
Can human beings be pure before their Maker?
Human being, mortal, and man are used interchangeably by the various sources. The idea is that we are less than God, so I picked the two I felt were least offensive and a random order.
Alternatives to “be pure” and “be righteous” include illusions to the court hearing Job is requesting with options like “be acquitted” and “be cleared”. Also included were extremes like “be more just than”, “be more righteous than”, or “be more pure than”. The court options seemed ok, but also seemed to be limiting in the ideas that could be pulled from the verse. The extremes made the verse rhetorical and while not inaccurate, may not have caused enough internal retrospection when read.
A different meaning would have been created by the alternatives that indicated the questions was whether God could make the person be acquitted, be cleared, or be made pure. The obvious answer is that of course God can make them pure, but the verse seemed to be about the person coming to God righteous from their own efforts.
One verse had “He who made them” rather than “their maker”, but I went with the plurality from my sources.
The overall idea is whether Job can prevail in court against God. The answer is that he cannot unless God provides Job the righteous standing he claims. Job is not claiming to be sinless, he is claiming to have a correct relationship with God. He talks with God. He walks with God. He is not being punished for turning away from God. The audience knows Job’s relationship to God is being tested and while job does not know this. He knows that something beyond the everyday is happening to him.
Job’s story is not about the outlandish thing that happened to him that is worse than will ever happen to anyone ever again. His story is about the everyday opportunity to follow God and find pain and suffering you did not expect. Job shows us that we are to have faith in God and to live according to this faith. Yes, job was in a pile of dung wailing, but the idea is that he was calling out to God to overcome the pain and suffering.
Our country today is being led by individual people trying to do the right thing as they see it. Some are desperately trying to follow God, and some are actively fighting any hint of Christian influence. Some are working for themselves, and some are actually working for the people they represent. God has created each one with a need for right relationship with Him. Job had that, the rest of us need that. Through this story, God is trying to tell us how to have it and what to do with it once we have it.
The election of last week is over and the next round of political activity starts. Your first duty? Ask God for godly leaders to win the elections. Your second duty? Ask God to make our current leaders righteous and pure. We have leaders in our country that are active against our interests. Know that God can twist their actions or change their hearts just as He did and seeks to do for us. That is how we can be righteous and pure; if God makes us so.