Job 19:25-27 For I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day on the earth:… Faith is most sorely tried when the hand of God touches ourselves. Yet even then the patriarch Job believed in the coming of Christ, whom on earth he was not to see; he believed that the Redeemer who was to come "akin to us," had then, too, life in Himself, and should come to redeem him also. "I know that my Redeemer liveth." He should at the end "stand the Last," as well as the First, with power "over the dust"; and though the worms should prey upon and bore through this poor body, he himself, for himself, should, out of that very flesh, behold and gaze on God. "I know," said the patriarch. True faith is solid, sure as knowledge. God writes it on the heart, and the heart knows what it believes, more surely than the senses know what they perceive. See how Job contrasts, not only life with death, but life as the produce of death. And so it must be. After our bodies had through sin become subject to corruption, it had been endless misery for them to have lived on forever. And so God the Son took our nature upon Him in its purity, to make it to us a new origin of being. For us He was born as man. For us, to pay the ransom for us, He died. For us, not for Himself, He rose again. Jesus rose to give us all which He is. After His resurrection, the very being of His body was spiritual. The glory of Christ began with the grave. As to Him, so to us, if we are His, the grave is the vestibule to glory. Claudius says, "The tokens of decay are the cock crowing to the resurrection." Yet the change and transformation must begin here. It consists in first giving our whole souls to God, yielding ourselves to His transforming grace, that He would change us as He wills; and then, with steady, unwavering step to obey each impulse of His grace, This will seem hard until thou knowest the sweetness of pleasing God. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:WEB: But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. In the end, he will stand upon the earth. |
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