Reading Job
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 11.11.06I began reading Job a month or two ago; figured it’d put me in my place, give a better perspective on life. Always a good thing.
Somehow I started by reading the last chapter, the epilogue. It’s interesting because as you start again, from the beginning, you read everything knowing it’s all wrong. In the last chapter God tells Job’s three friends to make sacrifices for saying untrue things (Job 42:7). Giving faulty counsel, they denied God’s character. I’m paraphrasing a bit, so do read it for yourself!
Elifaz is the first of Job’s friends to speak, and what he says seems so good and righteous. God won’t let evil prevail, or piety falter. Oh, how frail is man! How could God look upon him? But take heart, and trust in God… He will be sure to save the righteous, and uphold those that are truly just.
It’s all “good” stuff. You could probably hear this in any Bible believing church in America or elsewhere! But it’s wrong. So what’s wrong with it? The only thing I could think of is that they believed their own righteous works beholden them to God, they could make themselves good enough that God would have to bless them. They believed their faith guaranteed earthly prosperity.
But that’s not the case, God is so insurmountably Holy, nothing we do even comes close to making our sin-stained life tolerable (Isaiah 64:6). It’s merely by His grace that he reaches down and saves us, it was true when Christ died on the cross, as it always was throughout the Old Testament. Something I’d never realized before… it’s always been God’s grace. He really hasn’t changed! People were never saved by the blood of animals, or by rules and regulations (Hebrews 10:3-4). Those were in place to remind people, but it was never about the externals. God has always saved by grace.
He is so much greater, more wonderful than can be comprehended. Easy to say, I suppose, and impossible to really grasp.
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