“How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?” — Job 25:4
A Theology of Distance
Bildad’s final speech is short—just six verses—but it is dense with theology. He declares, “Dominion and fear belong to Him; He makes peace in His high places. Is there any number to His armies? Upon whom does His light not rise?” (vv. 2-3). Bildad affirms God’s sovereignty, majesty, and purity. And he’s not wrong. God is holy, glorious, and far above creation. But Bildad’s vision of God is cold.
His conclusion flows from that grandeur: “How then can man be righteous before God? Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?” (v. 4). On its own, this is a profoundly true statement. Man is sinful. God is holy. We cannot stand before Him on our own merit. But in Bildad’s mouth, it becomes a condemnation, not a confession. There’s no invitation to grace—only distance.
If you’ve ever been told God is holy but never that He is near, you’ve heard the voice of Bildad. His theology can describe God’s majesty but cannot imagine His mercy. Many carry that same weight today—a sense that God is too high, too pure, too vast to care about someone small and sinful. If that’s how you see Him, it’s no wonder you feel unworthy, unloved, or afraid. But the Gospel does not leave you under the crushing weight of God’s distance. It draws near with the voice of the Savior who says, “Come to Me, you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
You do not need to scale the heavens to reach God, for He has come down to you in Christ and continues this holy condescension in the Divine Service through His Means of Grace in the Word and Sacraments. The same God whose light shines on all creation has chosen to shine His face upon you—not in wrath, but in grace. His majesty is not a wall to keep you out; it is the power that upholds the promise of your salvation. Yes, He is holy. Yes, He is vast. But He is also Immanuel—God with us. And He delights not in staying distant but in drawing near to the lowly, the repentant, and the brokenhearted—to you.
The Problem Without a Promise
Bildad continues, “If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?” (vv. 5-6). His language is meant to humble, but it dehumanizes. Yes, human beings are finite, fallen, and flawed. But to leave it there is to silence the Gospel before it speaks. Bildad identifies the right problem but refuses to look for a solution.
This is the heart of the theology of glory: it can articulate God’s greatness and man’s guilt, but it cannot conceive of a God who condescends to redeem. It believes God can only be feared, not loved—that He must be obeyed and has no forbearance of a heavenly Father. There is no cross in Bildad’s words—no promise, no Mediator, no grace.
Many people today live under the weight of Bildad’s theology—a vision of God that exposes sin but offers no path to redemption. Perhaps you’ve heard sermons that left you feeling condemned but never comforted. Or maybe your own heart echoes with the fear that you’re too far gone, too impure, or too flawed to ever be loved by a holy God. If so, hear this clearly: conviction without promise is not the Gospel. The Gospel never leaves you in the dust—it meets you there and raises you in mercy.
To know your unworthiness is not the end of faith but it’s beginning. However, it must be joined to the deeper truth that Christ came not for the worthy but for the lost, the weak, and the unclean. “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance,” He said (Luke 5:32). That means you. The problem of our sin is real, but the promise of our Savior is greater. The devil would love for you to stop at Bildad’s question, “How can man be righteous before God?” But God’s Word answers it not with despair, but with Christ: You cannot be righteous before Me; therefore, I impute to you the righteousness of My only-begotten Son through the cross. You are not called to fix yourself; you are called to be found by the One who was broken in your place, and who will never leave you nor forsake you (Hebrews 13:5-6).
Christ, the Answer to the Question
“How then can man be righteous before God?” The answer does not come from Job’s friends. It comes from the Gospel. We are not righteous in ourselves. But God, in Christ, justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5). The question Bildad asked is not wrong, but it finds its fulfillment in the Incarnation, not in continued despair. In Jesus, God does not merely dwell in high places; He takes on flesh, walks among us, and gives us His righteousness.
This is why the Christian faith is not a religion of human striving but divine condescension. We could not climb to God, so He came down to us. The stars may not be pure in His sight, but in Christ, sinners are washed, clothed, and declared righteous (1 Corinthians 6:11). The God Bildad fears is the same God who justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies the very ones who cry out in helplessness.
Bildad ends with silence, offering no hope, pathway, or prayer. The God of Job will soon speak—not to crush, but to restore. And the God of the Gospel still answers Bildad’s question today, not by lowering His standard but by lifting up the sinner in grace. If you’ve ever felt like a worm, or a maggot, or one too unclean to be loved by God, know this: the cross answers the question of righteousness before God. It does not pretend we are pure—it declares us righteous through the blood of the One who is.
As Paul clearly states, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the Law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God has passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:21-26).
The final word is not man’s unworthiness—it is Christ’s worthiness given to man.
The Lutheran Column 