Job 19 contains one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. It is certainly the most quoted from the book of Job, the one we can really sink our teeth into and feel good about it, the one we like, the moment of hope and redemption in the midst of despair:

But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and he will stand upon the earth at last.
And after my body has decayed,
    yet in my body I will see God!
I will see him for myself.
    Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.
    I am overwhelmed at the thought! (Job 19:25-27)

These verses are beautiful, a true anthem for all who are suffering. This is the sturdier hope, the eternal hope that carries us through our worst moments! But we’ll come back to that. Job 19 is more than just these three verses, and there is a verse here that has haunted me for days. I have meditated on it, troubled over the errors I have found in my own heart at different points along the way, wondered if maybe we don’t talk about it enough.

What is so wrong about the argument made by Job’s three friends?

Remember when I said sometimes I wonder? Well, I think I’m starting to figure it out.

You think you’re better than I am,
    using my humiliation as evidence of my sin. (Job 19:5)

If we view suffering or punishment – humiliation, as Job puts it, or in other versions disgrace, reproach, troubles, problems, shame – as our sole evidence of sin — if we reject Job’s plea of innocence as the deceit of a guilty man — then who else will we accuse of the same? Who else will we not believe suffered though he was innocent? Who else endured punishment, the full weight of God’s wrath, though he himself did nothing wrong? If we take the side of Job’s three friends, we will look right over Jesus.

I don’t know if I said that loud enough.

IF WE VIEW SUFFERING AS EVIDENCE OF WRONGDOING, WE ARE BLIND TO THE MESSIAH.

In some small way, it reminds me of the doctors and other medical professionals who were so bent on fixing me, the young mom who clearly didn’t know what she was doing, and what I was doing “wrong” that they almost missed the heart defects in my babies. They were blind to the real problem because they had fixated on an assumed problem: me. What if we are blind to the real solution (Jesus!) because we are fixated on something else? What if we are trying so hard to do everything right to save ourselves that we don’t even see the humble, homeless, hungry and exhausted traveling tradesman who says things we don’t like and gets himself arrested and crucified? What if we let our own self-righteousness blind us to God’s greatest gift of mercy and grace?

What if Job had gotten everything he believed he deserved, what if he’d been allowed to keep it, and what if he’d died believing he’d been strong enough to save himself? What if he’d stood before the God of the universe and found, at the end, his own righteousness compared to God’s – what if he’d seen how short he fell, not because he was not the best he could be, but because he was just too small? What if God had let him believe he, in his own mere human power, could compare with God? Would that have been just? Is it just to let a toddler arm wrestle an adult for his salvation? What if the justice of God considers knowledge of things greater than our minds can hold – what if God’s justice is full and complete, based on things we can’t even know. Are we arrogant enough to say such things do not exist?

Throughout this conversation, because he has suddenly become aware of his own vulnerability, Job has repeatedly cried out for a mediator, someone to stand between him and God and turn away God’s wrath from him. He knows he has done all that he knows to do to earn God’s favor and blessing, and still it has been ripped from his hands. He knows there is nothing more he can do on this earth than what he has already done! He knows he needs someone with more oomph than he has to stand up for him. And it took coming to the absolute end of his own power and ability and failing to gain what he’d tried to gain – security – for Job to realize his need for a Savior, for someone stronger and wiser and more powerful. And it took suffering “unjustly” by his understanding for Job to understand that suffering is not only a direct punishment for the sufferer’s sin. It took all of this for him to be able to see and understand clearly the Savior who was coming. It took all of this for him to be able to recognize Jesus.

And when he finally sees clearly, that is when he cries:

But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and he will stand upon the earth at last.
And after my body has decayed,
    yet in my body I will see God!
I will see him for myself.
    Yes, I will see him with my own eyes.
    I am overwhelmed at the thought! (Job 19:25-27)

I know on the front cover of this book, I know in the prologue, the first two chapters, I KNOW it looks like what the Lord has allowed done to Job is completely and entirely unfair. The Lord doesn’t even like doing it – it’s not the sort of thing that brings him pleasure. But we know he is faithful and just and accomplishes his own purposes in his own ways, so how does these two truths reconcile? I don’t know the mind of the Lord, and I can’t see all he accomplished by allowing this to happen to Job. But I do see this: God, who loved Job with a love we cannot even fathom, faithfully corrected Job’s vision so that Job could see a hope that would outlast his own life. God, who loved Job with a love that has no boundaries, stripped Job of the belief that he could save himself, so that he could see what his friends could not – so that Job could see Jesus, plain and clear as day, thousands of years before he walked on this earth.

God looked at Job and said, “I love him so much, I will give him more than the earth. I will give him myself.”

Let that knock your brains around a bit. Thousands of years before Job’s Redeemer walked on the earth, Job said,

Oh, that my words could be recorded.
    Oh, that they could be inscribed on a monument,
carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead,
    engraved forever in the rock. (Job 19: 23-24)

And then he said –

I know that my Redeemer lives,
    and he will stand upon the earth at last. (Job 19:25)

…I will see God! I will see him for myself. (Job 19:26-27)

Of all the words Job wanted to save for us to hear, it was these. Of all the knowledge he had, it was this knowledge that he wanted to ring like a town bell through the ages for all to hear! That though even he, Job, with all his goodness and power and righteousness, was not enough to save himself from the hand of God should God decide against him, there is an even greater hope than self-sufficiency. There IS someone who stands between men and God, and there IS someone who turns God’s wrath from us all.

There IS A SAVIOR.

It is God himself, the Word made flesh.

There is a Jesus. ❤