Have You Come to "When" Yet?

"I have to resign every kind of claim and cease from every effort, and leave myself entirely alone in His hands . . . " -- Oswald.

Again, Oswald reminds me that it is all too possible for me to be overly concerned with my own righteousness: "I cannot make myself right with God, I cannot make my life perfect; I can only be right with God if I accept the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ as an absolute gift . . . the thing is done."

1) Christ has done the work.
2) I am a poor judge of my own -- or any man's -- righteousness.

The book of Job has always troubled me a bit. While I love the speeches God makes from the whirlwind in chapters 38-41, the truth seems to be divided amongst the various characters throughout the majority of the book, and I am hard-pressed to explain why one viewpoint is wrong and one is right. I turned to Matthew Henry's commentary this morning for help.

On Job: "Those who are truly righteous before God may have their righteousness clouded and eclipsed by great and uncommon affections, by the severe censures of men, by the sharp reproach of conscience, and yet, in due time, these clouds shall all blow over, and God will bring forth their righteousness as the light and their judgment as the noonday, Psalm 32:6."

On Job's friends: "They had wronged God by making prosperity a mark of the true church and affliction a certain indication of God's wrath. . . Those do not say well of God who represent his fatherly chastisements of his own children as judicial punishments."

One application: "Job was in the right, and his friends were in the wrong, and yet he was in pain and they were at ease -- a plain evidence that we cannot judge of men by looking in their face or their purses. He only can do it infallibly who sees men's hearts."

On Oswald's subject of the day, intercession: "Notwithstanding all the wrong his friends had done him, he is so good a man, and of such a humble, tender, forgiving spirit, that he will very readily pray for them . . . True penitents shall not only find favor as petitioners for themselves, but be accepted as intercessors for others also. And, as Job prayed and offered sacrifice for those that had grieved and wounded his spirit, so Christ prayed and died for his persecutors, and ever lives making intercession for the transgressors."

My charge: Fret not about my own righteousness. Leave myself in God's hands, and begin to pray in earnest for the people God brings into my life. I cannot know (with any kind of certainty or clarity) what he is doing in my life, let alone anyone else's, but I can join in the work through prayer.