Today's encouragement comes from Job 4:17, where we read these words from the lips of Eliphaz, one of Job's "comforters":
"Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?"Eliphaz, whose diagnosis of the reasons for Job's sufferings was misguided and wrong, nevertheless asks a good two-pronged question here. It is a pe-culiar perversion of the Fall, that we sinners think—as I like to say it—that we can "Out-God" God. In other words, if the Lord says to do “A"; we, in our self-righteousness say, "Let's do A, and require B, C, & D, etc., too.”
No mortal can be more righteous than God; neither can anyone be more pure than his Maker. In Christ, however, the regenerated Christian churchman is made perfectly acceptable to The Holy God; and is welcomed into His em-braces.
[Augustine quote of the day: “God is more ancient than all things because He is before them all; and newer than all things because He is also after them all.” —from, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,” Bk. 8.]
