JOB
Though he slay me, I will hope in him!
Job is famously the “book about suffering.” Yet it is much more than that. The Book of Job is really about wisdom in the experience of suffering and about how God risks resting his reputation on his people. It is about recognizing our place in the universe and trusting God’s ultimate and loving control of that universe. We are meant to empathize with Job’s suffering, not (like his friends) to treat him as a theological problem to be solved. Many people approach this book in the hope of explaining suffering, as though the book gives the answer to the question: If God is loving and all-powerful, why is there suffering in the world? This is an important question in the book but, when God speaks in the final chapters, he does not engage with this question at all. The problem with the question is that our human perspective is limited. We do not know enough, nor are we powerful enough, to deal with evil in the world. It is only God, the creator, and sustainer of the universe, who can make these decisions and direct the affairs of human history to their proper and glorious end. Thankfully, it is in his hands that all of our suffering rests, meant for good and not for evil (Gen 50:20).
As the book opens, God allows Satan to test Job. He does this not just to reveal and deepen Job’s faith, but to be glorified as the God who should be worshipped for who he is, not just for what he can do for us. Behind Satan’s question “Does Job really love God?” is the deeper question “Is God actually loveable for himself?” As we come to the conclusion of the book, we see that the God who tests is also the God who restores, and Job miraculously receives a double-portion from God; not as a reward, but as a gracious blessing. Job easily could have died and joined the dust in which he sat, as many others who have suffered have. Instead, mercifully, God delivers Job and allows him to die “an old man, and full of days” (42:17).
Yet there is still something deeply unsatisfying about the Book of Job. It is an unfinished book. Though everything we learn about God in this book is true, it is not the complete expression of God’s character, nor the final word on his plans for mankind. Through the progressive revelation of Scripture, Job anticipates and yearns for the arrival of the one who can sympathize with him in his every weakness and deliver him from it. In Chapter 19, as Job reflects on his loneliness and isolation, recognizing that God is a God of justice, he makes a startling and prophetic declaration of faith:
For I know that my redeemer lives,
And at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
Yet in my flesh I shall see God,
Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold,
And not another.
My heart faints within me!
Though Job could not have known the full beauty of what he was proclaiming, his confidence is clear. Another would come after Job’s death to be his advocate before the LORD and even to make right the terrible suffering he endured. Job prophesies the coming of the God-man Jesus Christ, which is why the epistle from James can speak about “the steadfastness of Job’’ as an example of how we ought to suffer (James 5:11). In Christ, like for Job, our suffering is redeemed, and, at the last, with Job, we will behold Christ face to face, when the world is made new, and every tear is wiped away (Rev 21:4).
