Day 22 | Righteousness Application

Read Job 40:1–14

The majority of the book of Job is a debate between Job and his friends about why he is suffering. His friends believe God is punishing Job for sins, but Job maintains his innocence and believes God is unrighteously inflicting suffering. The issue was that none of them truly understood God’s righteousness. They each had a different conception of how God’s world should work. But none of them were even close to how it really is. None of them were conformed to the righteousness of God.

So how do we conform to God’s righteousness? First, we must recognize (like Job eventually did) that on our own understanding, we do not know true right from true wrong. This is why Hebrews says that our senses must be trained to distinguish between good and evil (see Hebrews 5:14). If such distinction came naturally to our conscience, we wouldn’t need training! Second, after that recognition, we need to begin training. The best way to distinguish between the real deal and an imitation is to handle the real stuff a lot. Meaning, quite simply, we need to be reading our Bibles—a lot. We need to read stories of people who got it right and people who got it wrong and be told which is which. As time goes on and we spend more time training, eventually, we learn how to recognize in the world around us what God calls good and what He calls evil. We won’t be great at this at first, but over time, God will grant increasing understanding. Hebrews 6:10 assures us of this and other things when it says, “…God is not unjust; he will not forget your work…”

So today, let’s continue exercising the muscle of distinguishing between good and evil. Pray that God will help you see and understand these things and more in His Word and in His world.

Pray for 10 minutes