My Redeemer Lives

Passage: Job 16:20-21; 19:23-29

The author of a commentary I’m reading argues that although Job is an Old Testament book, its text points periodically to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians at times risk reading too much into certain Old Testament texts; we sometimes assume the human authors of the Old Testament books already knew Jesus. They didn't. They knew the God whose love came to perfect expression in Jesus at a much later time. That being said, there are Old Testament texts that so clearly portray certain characteristics of God that we can't help recognizing Jesus when we read them.

Job, and those belonging to his religious and cultural tradition, did not yet know the name of their promised Savior. But what they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt are the characteristics of God embodied in Jesus Christ. In chapter 16 Job says, “My intercessor is my friend…” Whereas Job has, in the midst of his trial, felt as though God is his adversary, he also clings to the conviction that God is on his side – that somehow he has an ally and intercessor in Heaven. In chapter 19 Job says, “I know my Redeemer lives…” The God who redeemed the children of Israel is the God who presides over Job’s world – even now, in Job’s darkest hour. The Book of Job explores one man’s experience of a God who feels very distant. Yet embedded in this exploration is the message that the inscrutable God who rules everything from on high is also a God who comes close enough to listen to the cries of one child’s heart; he is also a God who intervenes when his children are in trouble. Job holds out hope in a God who is at once Lord, Intercessor and Redeemer.

This is the God in whom we hope. The God to whom we cry out when we’re in trouble. He is a God who became human in order to redeem humanity and who even now stands as our human intercessor before the throne of heaven. We now know him by name: Jesus, our intercessor; our friend; our Redeemer.