The Suffering of Job in its Redemptive Context

A friend asked whether God was just playing a sick and twisted game with Job, all for a bet, as a friend of his claims. The following is an attempt at setting Job in its larger Scriptural and redemptive context in response.



********************

Usually when a person writes something like that they’ve got some pain of their own they’re dealing with that’s led them to write that. So to some degree you have to know what they’re dealing with to really sympathize with them. And that’s an important part of a full-orbed response - though, not knowing your relationship with this person, that might or might not be your role to play in this person’s life. The New Testament response to suffering is that Christ took on human flesh and so God knows and sympathizes with us in our suffering, all while having a purpose in it all. And we’re commanded to weep with those who weep, identifying with them in their suffering just as He identified with us in His incarnation, suffering, and death. And He points us to the reality that for those in Christ their suffering is not pointless, but serves toward their sanctification and preparation for eternal life, their being conformed to Christ’s image, the fulfillment of that for which they, we, were created. Part of that is for God’s glory, even before the angels and demons, which we see an element of in Job. But I think it’s a crass and inaccurate reading of it to try to boil it down to some bet. What was at stake was God’s redemptive plan in history and whether or not His working of salvation in the lives of His people was or would be efficacious as He planned. Is God really able to pull this off? If He isn’t, then He isn’t really God after all. Is Job, as an example of the people God created and is professing to be able to save, actually able to be saved? Is this faith these people supposedly have in You, by Your working, real? Is God really God? Or will somebody who really believes jump ship when the boat gets a little rocky? It’s the same thing as when God said He was going to kill all of Israel after the golden calf incident and Moses interceded and asked Him, “Okay, say you kill every Israelite. What will the nations say? They’ll say that you weren’t able to do what you said.” Suffering is a necessary part of the plan, and has to exist to make evident real faith, to show that God is as great and glorious as He claims. 

Now God does rebuke Job eventually, because he needed a reminder of how little of the picture he saw and how limited his understanding was. But one could easily spin that out as meaning that God lacked compassion for him. Scripture makes it clear the opposite is true, though, and that God does have compassion on us in our suffering. But sometimes though the most compassionate thing He can do is make us close our mouths. And every once in awhile we need a reminder that our lives are bigger than us and involve matters of cosmic importance. If we have a right perspective, one of faith, that should enoble us, and confirm that we have more value than we even know.