Cancer Blog #45
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry #45 – Death and Judgment
June 30, 2022
[Job 14:1-12 NASB95] 1 “Man, who is born of woman, Is short-lived and full of turmoil. 2 “Like a flower he comes forth and withers. He also flees like a shadow and does not remain. 3 “You also open Your eyes on him And bring him into judgment with Yourself. 4 “Who can make the clean out of the unclean? No one! 5 “Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. 6 “Turn Your gaze from him that he may rest, Until he fulfills his day like a hired man. 7 “For there is hope for a tree, When it is cut down, that it will sprout again, And its shoots will not fail. 8 “Though its roots grow old in the ground And its stump dies in the dry soil, 9 At the scent of water it will flourish And put forth sprigs like a plant. 10 “But man dies and lies prostrate. Man expires, and where is he? 11 “[As] water evaporates from the sea, And a river becomes parched and dried up, 12 So man lies down and does not rise. Until the heavens are no longer, He will not awake nor be aroused out of his sleep… (vss.16-17) 16 “For now You number my steps, You do not observe my sin. 17 “My transgression is sealed up in a bag, And You wrap up my iniquity.”
In our last entry we discussed the certainty of the time of our death. It is fixed in God’s eternal plan and cannot be changed. But, Job raised another consideration about our death: our judgment. Here Job voices a dismaying thought: that no one can turn something unclean into something clean. The Mosaic Law made possible the cleansing of unclean things, having them return to being clean – but not in all situations. In the context, however, in which Job raises this problem, we probably should think that he’s concerned about a more long term solution. For as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews in the NT points out, there was no permanence to cleanness under the old covenant. What is clean today becomes unclean tomorrow in that system. Even the high priest, who can enter the most holy of places, has to be cleansed once every year to make an entrance into the Holy of Holies. The process of cleansing had no end in the OT. It might seem that Job is saying that there is fixity to our uncleanness just as there is to our death.
But, Job reports he has a comforting hope: that God Himself can and will make us clean. Our faults will be sealed up, put away and hidden as they are covered over by God Himself. What a wonderful thought: that the infinite and perfect Judge will also be the infinitely merciful and gracious Redeemer, who brings forgiveness to us who are under a certain and fixed sentence of death, awaiting final condemnation at the Day of final Judgment.
How can this be? Job has no clear vision of such reconciliation of the God of judgment to the God of salvation. The same God who condemns our sin is the God who accepts for us our condemnation that results in a fixed and certain death. He offers to take our penalty, our sentence of death. Despite our seemingly fixed uncleanness, He instead will change it into a reprieve of eternal cleanness with a reward, our death sentence being commuted into a stay of execution. And even better, a stay of execution is transmuted into a pronouncement of blessing, a gift of life that can never be rescinded or withdrawn. It is not temporary, needing constant renewal as cleanness was under the old system. It is finished, just as Jesus proclaimed as He died on the cross. We are finally and completely and permanently free of all the filth of our sins.
Next: Death and Its Power Over Us