Righteousness.

Job 25:1-6, 27:1-6, Then Bildad the Shuhite answered, “Dominion and awe belong to Him who establishes peace in His heights. Is there any number to His troops? And upon whom does His light not rise? How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman? If even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, that maggot, and the son of man, that worm!” … Then Job continued his discourse and said, “As God lives, who has taken away my right, and the Almighty, who has embittered my soul, for as long as life is in me, and the breath of God is in my nostrils, My lips certainly will not speak unjustly, nor will my tongue mutter deceit. Far be it from me that I should declare you right; till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast my righteousness and will not let it go. My heart does not reproach any of my days.”

They each are partly correct; Bildad recognizes man’s desperate condition before a Holy, Almighty God; Job recognizes his need to be pure before Him. Later, Job says that he has made a covenant with his eyes “not to gaze at a virgin;” most of us know the futility of making such covenants in our own strength. Fortunately God is our provision, “His right hand and His holy arm have gained victory for Him.” “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear Him.” It is not by works of righteousness that we are saved in our hopeless condition but by His grace through faith, His divine gift. He has removed our transgressions, those things that we know and even those thing that we don’t know, “as far as the East from the West.” And He opens up his good works that we may walk in them today!

Let Your good works flow through us as rivers of living water, that others may see Your glory. Thank You that one day we may rest from our labors, and that our deeds follow us into Your presence!