My One Defense
Scripture Reading: Job 13:15
The first half of Job 13:15 is the one most Christians recognize and are familiar with. The second half is relatively unknown. Job’s declaration that he would, “argue my ways to his [God’s] faces sound defiant and bold, and not in a good way. If we were there when Job said that we might have taken a step or two back and looked up in anticipation of a lightning strike to make a direct hit on him, turning him into an ashen heap. After all, what claim of righteousness could Job make before the face of an infinitely holy God?
By itself, in isolation, one might conclude that this was a bold and misguided claim. But when we consider the text in the light of the context of the rest of the Scriptures, Job’s declaration might not be so misguided after all. The Bible consistently teaches justification by faith. Abraham’s believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That seminal text becomes the grid for how the apostles interpreted the meaning of the cross and our response to it.
We receive what the Church Fathers called an “alien” righteousness” when we put our faith in Christ. His righteousness is “imputed” to us. That is, it is credited to our account. We come before God, not only with our unrighteousness blotted out but with Jesus’ righteousness viewed by God as ours. As Agustus Toplady put it “Rock of Ages:”
Be of sin the double cure,
Save from wrath and make me pure.
Standing before the throne of God our defense is not and must not be our own righteousness. Our righteousness is as “filthy rags” in the sight of God. Our one defense is the perfect righteousness that is ours in Jesus Christ.
Like Job, it is when everything in life seems to argue against us when the reality of righteousness seems most in question when Satan’s arrows are piercing my heart when it seems that even God is against me that I need to know and believe that I stand righteous before God through Jesus Christ.
Job’s hope in God and his claim of righteousness are not two distinct, disconnected things. He was counted as righteous because his hope was in God. He believed God and that was counted to him as righteousness. Then, knowing his acceptance by God, his hope was strengthened and he could say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him”
