“We know what God has said to the Satan, what the Satan has said to God, and what God has decreed for Job. We know that Job’s sufferings are not because he is an impenitent sinner but precisely because he is a real and faithful believer. We know that Job is not the story of everyman but the story of the faithful and obedient believer. We know that the sufferings of Job are in some strange and deep way necessary for the glory of God and the well-being of the universe. But Job knows none of these things. So the question is, why are we told what we are told, and what are we to learn from the drama? …
CHRISTOPHER ASH
We are naturally prone to keep slipping into not knowing what we know. We know, because God has told us, that there is such a thing as undeserved and redemptive suffering, and that as believers walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the shadow of the cross we too are called upon to suffer. We know that as forgiven sinners none of our sufferings are God’s punishment for our sins, for that has already been paid. We know that some of our sufferings are God’s loving fatherly discipline for those he loves. But we also know that some of our sufferings are the filling out of what was lacking in the sufferings of Jesus, undeserved and with no disciplinary purpose. We know these things because God has told us.
But because our hearts shrink from this darkness, we naturally forget that we know these things and behave as if we do not know them. We slip into a practical not knowing of what we know. The system (of the way the world works for Job’s friends) is the default assumption of all of us if we are morally serious. We naturally expect blessing for godliness and grief for sin. An immersion in the speeches of Job will help us really and deeply to know what we know, to remember that our default system is not true, and so to prepare us for the realities of discipleship.”
Reflection:
The story of Job in the Bible is typically rehearsed to make a point about suffering. And this is rightly so, since Job suffers more in the Bible than anyone other than Jesus. But there are deeper heart issues revealed through the book of Job that touch everyone, whether we have suffered deeply or not.
The main thing that the book of Job draws out is how we view God’s justice, our morality, and the impact of grace and redemption. The suffering in the story actually creates the tension that draws out our own ideas of these things. When someone around us goes through something difficult, aren’t we quick to think, “Well, they deserved it,” or “Wow, I can’t believe something so bad would happen to someone so good”? These thoughts, drawn out by suffering, betray our moralism.
God draws us to examine our own hearts in this book through Job’s “friends,” who deliver a series of speeches. They buy into a system of thought that is very just and moral. They know that God is just and that He rewards and punishes based on merit. What they don’t understand is how sin has ruined anyone’s chance of knowing God through just deserts or how God has provided gracious redemption through forgiveness.
When we understand how sin has infected this world and how God’s grace has infiltrated it, it changes how we interpret all situations around us. This understanding begins to make sense of how good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people. Ultimately, it is through the cross of Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, that Job’s experience makes sense to us. For in Jesus, we see a perfect one suffering, not because He deserved it, but because we did. In Jesus Christ, we see how God transforms suffering to flow out in good outcomes that have redemptive purpose and, in the end, bring glory to God.
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