- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
THE LIVING REDEEMER.
By G.Campbell Morgan.
“I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19 v25).
“He always lives to intercede” (Hebrews 7 v25).
The words of Job, “I know that my Redeemer lives”, are contained in his answer to Bildad, who had described the sufferings of Job and by describing them had added to them. He had implied that wickedness, somewhere in Job’s life, was the reason for his sufferings. That was the persistent argument of his friends. Job, angry and scornful, declared that he knew his afflictions were allowed by God, and said that these men had no right to add to them. His reply as a whole was a definite denial of the charge they made against him.
In the midst of that reply, and out of the deep darkness in which Job found himself, there suddenly broke this great cry, this affirmation shining as a gleam of light. He had declared previously that his Witness was in heaven and his Recorder on high, but in this he went still further and gave his Witness the name of Redeemer.
The beauty of these words is self-evident. It is impossible for us to read them without being conscious of the final interpretation of them in Christ by the Incarnation. Suddenly amid the darkness, and overwhelmed by the sorrows of the hour, Job seems to have caught the music of eternal things. He could have had no sense of the historic fulfilment of what he said, nevertheless the great underlying eternal truth was recognised, and Job broke out in these wonderful words:
“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes - I, and not another.”
The words “My Redeemer” have a fulness of meaning to us which can only be interpreted in the incarnate Son of God, but it is important that we understand what the words meant to Job. The Hebrew word is Goel, which is found scattered across the pages of the Old Testament. The Goel was the nearest and next of kin whose duty it was to give support to another in times of need. We find most about the Goel in the Book of Ruth where we have an illustration of the activity of such a one. We may summarise by saying that the Goel stood for another to defend their cause, to avenge wrongs done to them, and so to acquit them of all charges laid against them. It is in this sense that Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives”. The statement did not only mean that his Redeemer existed, it is as though Job had said, ‘Even though I die, He lives’. His declaration proved that in the midst of his agony he was convinced that while there was no one to stand for him in life, all his friends having misunderstood him, all his acquaintances having left him, he yet had a Kinsman who was his Advocate, his Avenger, the One through Whom he would be acquitted.
He affirmed that this Redeemer would yet stand upon the earth. He affirmed that somewhere in the future, if not at the moment, his Goel would stand as a Witness to his integrity. This is emphasised as he said:
“yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him,”
This was a consciousness, not merely of the fact of the existence of the Vindicator, but a conviction that he himself would see Him. Whether Job was then thinking of his existence as a spirit beyond the death of his body, or whether he was affirming a belief in resurrection cannot be dogmatically decided. The one certain thing is that he was conscious of the continuity of his personality beyond what we call death. Suddenly, for a passing moment, there came to this stricken man the widest outlook, including all the truth concerning God and himself, the fact of the interrelationship of the present with the future. Continuing he declared on the basis of that conviction that his Vindicator, his Goel, would not only stand for him but that he would see God.
The gloom in which Job was then living, and which seems to have settled back upon him immediately afterwards, serves to make more remarkable this declaration that he found in God One who was committed to him as a Redeemer. Previously he had asked, “If a man die, shall he live?” Here for a moment he passed beyond the question and affirmed that beyond death he himself would live and would see God, and see Him as his Redeemer.
When God became flesh in Jesus He did not come nearer to human nature than He had ever been, but He became visible. By that coming there was revealed the fact that what Job had said was literally true. Here we find the value of the words of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, “He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, because He always lives to intercede for them”. He is the Goel, pleading our cause and undertaking for us in every way.
It is an interesting fact that this statement in the letter to the Hebrews is found in close connection to the writer’s references to Melchizedek. Melchizedek is only referred to twice in the Old Testament, once in the history of Abraham and once in a great Hebrew song. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews now takes hold of that Person and declares that Jesus is a Priest of that order and affirms that He “always lives to intercede for them”.
In Jesus therefore we find the complete fulfilment of what dawned upon Job in the midst of the darkness as the shining of a light of hope and confidence. The One who ever lives came into our earthly life and argued our case for us. By that unveiling we are brought to an understanding of how He for ever represents us and argues our case in the high courts of heaven.
Was Job right or was the thing that he saw a mirage of the desert, having no substance and no value? The answer is given in Jesus. When Job, amid the desolation, declared that he had a Goel living and active, he was uttering a profound truth, the truth that in God man has his Redeemer in all the fullest senses of that great word. It was a spiritual grasp of an abiding fact, which became clear when God was manifest in flesh.
Jean Ingelow had a glimpse into the heart of the truth when she sang:
“And didst Thou love the race that loved not Thee?
And didst Thou take to heaven a human brow?
Dost plead with man’s voice by the marvellous sea?
Art Thou his Kinsman now?
0 God, 0 Kinsman loved, but not enough,
0 Man with eyes majestic after death,
Whose feet have toiled along our pathways rough,
Whose lips drawn human breath.”
He ever lives, our Goel, our Kinsman Redeemer, vindicating us, in spite of our sin, by His redeeming work, filling to the full the word that Job employed. Job throughout was arguing that he was not suffering for his sin, and he was right in doing so. To us also the great Word applies in the Divine purpose and accomplishment, for as a Kinsman He takes our sin, and so deals with it that we may be justified. This One always lives to intercede for us.
From ‘The Answers of Jesus to Job’.
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