What is the meaning of Job 25:4? How then can a man be just before God? Job records Bildad’s sobering question, and the words strike at the heart of every reader. Scripture consistently teaches that no human effort can produce the standing God requires. • The psalmist confesses, “If You, O LORD, kept a record of iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?” (Psalm 130:3). • Paul echoes the same verdict: “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). • Even the faithful patriarch Abraham was declared righteous only because “he believed the LORD, and it was credited to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6; cf. Romans 4:3). So, when Bildad asks his rhetorical question, the expected answer is, “No one can, by his own merit.” The law exposes sin (Romans 3:20), leaving every mouth silenced and every heart aware of its need for grace. Yet the gospel reveals God’s remedy: “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28). The very inability highlighted in Job prepares us to embrace God’s provision—justification through faith in the finished work of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). How can one born of woman be pure? Bildad’s second question tightens the net: not only are our deeds insufficient, our nature itself is fallen. • David admits, “Surely I was brought forth in iniquity; in sin my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). • Paul explains the inherited problem: “Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men” (Romans 5:12). Left to ourselves, impurity is our default. Yet God provides a new birth and a cleansing that overturn the old condition. • Jesus declares, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3). • John comforts believers that “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). • Hebrews celebrates that Christ’s sacrifice “purifies our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14). The question “How?” finds its answer in the One who was miraculously born of woman (Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:23) yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). By union with Him, the impure are washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Corinthians 6:11). summary Job 25:4 confronts the reader with humanity’s deepest dilemma: we cannot make ourselves righteous or pure. All of Scripture agrees—our works and our very nature fall short. Yet the same Bible immediately points to God’s gracious solution: justification by faith and purification through the blood of Jesus. What Bildad posed as an unanswerable problem, God answered at the cross, offering every believer full acceptance and a new, clean heart. |
    |