Job 9 Devotional

Someone to Stand Between

“Nor is there a mediator between us, to lay his hand upon us both.”Job 9:33 (BSB)

Job agrees that God is just, but that is exactly his problem. How can a mortal ever be in the right before God (9:2)? God moves mountains, stretches out the heavens, walks on the waves of the sea, and made the stars (9:5-9). Who could argue with someone like that? Even if Job were in the right, all he could do is plead with his Judge for mercy (9:15). Some of his words, like the claim that God destroys the blameless and the wicked alike (9:22), are bitter, and the book does not endorse every charge. But it lets him say them.

Near the end, Job names what he lacks. God is not a man like him, and there is no one to stand between them with a hand on each (9:32-33). Paul writes that the one mediator between God and humanity is Christ Jesus, himself a man (1 Timothy 2:5). The go-between Job could not find, God has provided. Coming to God no longer depends on finding the right argument.

To think about: How does knowing that Christ stands between you and God change the way you approach him today?