Job was a righteous man. This was God's remark about him. During the time of his suffering, his three friends thought that he had sinned and had offended God. But he himself denied this and used great efforts to argue with them to prove that he was clean and righteous. We all know that when God revealed Himself to him, the Bible recorded it and said: "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; / but now mine eye seeth thee: / wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5-6). When the light of God came, he realized how despicable he was. The words of man could not make him reprove himself, but the light of God caused him to be humble.
Before God sent Isaiah, He first manifested His own glory to him. In this glory the prophet of God could not but cry: "Woe is me, for I am finished! / For I am a man of unclean lips, / And in the midst of a people of unclean lips I dwell: / Yet I have seen the King, Jehovah of hosts, with my eyes" (Isa. 6:5). Before he saw this vision, Isaiah's lips were unclean, and he was already dwelling in the midst of a people of unclean lips. But he did not feel it, and he probably thought that he could be a prophet serving God. When the bright light of God came, he was able to see the real condition of the people surrounding him. He was also able to see his own real condition, how unclean his mouth was and how unworthy he was to be a mouthpiece for God. So he cried, "Woe is me, for I am finished!" Truly, the holiness of God will bring out our "woe." After he knew himself in this way, the seraphim cleansed his mouth with live coal. Here we see a very good sequence: first uncleanness, then the light of God, then the self-knowledge of uncleanness, then the possibility of being cleansed, and finally the readiness to be sent.
In the Bible there are two persons for whom there is no record of their sins. Daniel is one of them. From this, we know that before God he was pleasing to God. Yet the Bible tells us that when he saw the Lord and was shined upon by God, he said, "No strength was left in me, but my color turned deathly pale; and I retained no strength. Yet I heard the sound of His words; and when I heard the sound of His words, I fell into a deep sleep on my face, with my face to the ground" (Dan. 10:8-9). In the light of God, even the best saint cannot stand up. He had to bow to the ground.
When Habakkuk was shined upon by God, he also had the same experience. He said, "I heard and my body trembled; / My lips quivered at the sound. / Rottenness entered my bones, / And I tremble in my place" (Hab. 3:16).
We know that Peter was a self-approving and self-trusting man. But when God shined a little bit of light through the Lord Jesus, giving Peter a glimpse of himself, he could not help but confess his own uncleanness. We know the story of how the disciples labored the whole night without catching anything. Then the Lord commanded them to cast the net in the deep water. They obeyed and caught many fishes, even filling up two boats. In this way the Lord manifested a ray of His glory and caused Peter to fall down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord" (Luke 5:8).
Paul was the one who fought the good fight, finished his course, and kept the faith. When he was close to departing from this world, he told us, "I am the foremost" of sinners. What we want to note here is that the word "am" in the original language is in the present tense. This tells us how he considered himself at the time close to his death. He considered that the Lord Jesus came into the world to save sinners and that among the sinners he was the chief. He had nothing to boast about. He had no achievements, he had nothing special. He was like the other sinners, saved by the grace of Christ. Not only so, he considered himself to be worse than the others; therefore, he needed the grace of the Lord even more than they. Who has received more of the light of God than Paul? Because the light he received was more than that of the others, his self-knowledge was clearer than that of the others, and his self-judgment was more severe than that of the others. Only those without self-knowledge will consider themselves to be so holy, advanced, and special. The reason that they do not know themselves is because they have not received the light of God.