│<Previous│>Next│Table of Contents│

SEEING OURSELVES IN THE LIGHT OF GOD’S HOLINESS

“Behold I am vile” (Job 40:4a)

The more one grows in grace the more one realizes he is only a sinner saved by the grace of God.  Such was the case of the patriarch Job.  He was described in Job 1:1 as on who “was perfect and upright, one that feared God and shunned evil”.  Job then was a man who, though not sinless, wanted to wholeheartedly please God.  He was a spiritually mature man who was described as the “greatest of the men of the east” (Job 1:3b).  However, after an encounter with a holy God, Job had a very different opinion of himself.  He now abhors himself and repents in dust and ashes (Job 42:6).

If anybody has ever seemed to have a right to complain it would have been Job, after all that happened to him.  When he was at a distance he could argue and contend with God; but when brought into the presence of God’s holiness, he sank down in astonishment and shame and was filled with self-loathing.  The manifestation of God’s glory to the sinner always produces the same effect.  Isaiah felt as Job did and cried “woe is me!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for  mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of Hosts” (Isaiah 6:5).  Pride and self-righteousness can never live in God’s presence.  The nearer we come to God, the more we discover our depravity, the more we come to loathe ourselves and the sin which does so easily beset us.  The more we see ourselves as we are, the more precious does the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ become to us.  Like the apostle Paul we must affirm: “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief” (I Timothy 1:15).  There is no room for selfish pride and boasting at the foot of the cross (Gal. 6:14).  The gospel of “how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3-4) is really good news to us.  It is only when we see our vileness that we value our Saviour’s righteousness, which has by faith been credited to our account.  It is only as we feel our own weakness that we shall prize Him, and pray for His power and His wisdom.  It is only as His power works in us will God be glorified in us and through us (Phil. 2:12-13).  May we learn to see ourselves in the light of God’s holiness, and have no other desire than to be found in Him and clothed with His righteousness.  An old hymn declares:

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins

And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in His day;

And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sins away.

Larry Windham

│<Previous│>Next│Table of Contents│