WE HAVE HEARD TWO FULL ROUNDS of speeches from the three “miserable comforters,” plus responses from Job. There is one more round, a truncated and imbalanced one. Eliphaz speaks and Job replies (Job 22–24); Bildad speaks very briefly, and Job responds at great length (Job 25–31), with extraordinary sweep and fervor. The comforters have nothing new to say, and are winding down. Job’s persistent defense of his integrity, though it does not convince them, grinds them into sullen silence.

Eliphaz’s last speech (Job 22), though it extends the limits of his poetic imagery, does not extend the argument; it merely restates it. God is so unimaginably great, says Eliphaz, that he cannot derive any benefit from human beings. So why should Job think that the Almighty is impressed with his righteousness? That same greatness guarantees that God’s knowledge and justice are perfect. If so, Job’s sufferings are not groundless: God has winkled out Job’s hidden sins—sins that Eliphaz tries to expose by shots in the dark.

While he responds with some arguments he has used before, Job embarks on a new line of thought (Job 23). He does not now charge God with injustice but with absence, with inaccessibility: “If only I knew where to find him; if only I could go to his dwelling!” (Job 23:3). This is not a longing to escape and go to heaven; it is a passionate and frustrated desire to present his case before the Almighty (Job 23:4). Job is not frightened that God will respond with terrifying power and crush him (Job 23:6); he is frightened, rather, that God will simply ignore him. However, no geographical search Job can undertake will find God (Job 23:8–9).

Job’s words are quite unlike the modern literary protest that God is so absent that he must be dead. Job is not “waiting for Godot.” His faith in God is at one level unwavering. He is perfectly convinced that God knows where Job is, and knows all about the fundamental integrity of his life (Job 23:9–11). This integrity is not the bravado of a self-defined independent; Job has carefully followed the words of God, cherishing them more than his daily food (Job 23:12).

That is why God’s absence is not only puzzling, but terrifying (Job 23:13–17). Job’s continued confidence in God’s sovereignty and knowledge are precisely what he finds so terrifying, for the empirical evidence is that, at least in this life, the just can be crushed and the wicked may escape. The “comforters” claim that Job should be afraid of God’s justice; Job himself is frightened by God’s absence.

When such days come, it is vital to remember the end of the book—the end of the book of Job, and the end of the Bible.

1 CORINTHIANS 9:19–23 IS ONE OF THE most revealing passages in the New Testament regarding Paul’s view of the Law.

On the one hand, Paul states that to evangelize Jews he has to become like a Jew; more precisely, to “those under the law” he has to become like one under the Law, even though “I myself am not under the law” (1 Cor. 9:20). Thus although Paul certainly recognizes himself as a Jew as far as race is concerned (see, for instance, Rom. 9:3), at this point in his life he does not see himself as being under the law-covenant. When he sets himself the task of winning his fellow Jews, however, he wants to remove any unnecessary offense, so he adopts the disciplines of kosher Jews; in this sense he becomes like a Jew, like one under the Law.

On the other hand, when he sets himself the task of evangelizing Gentiles, he becomes like “those not having the law.” Recognizing that this stance could be understood as simple lawlessness, Paul adds, in a parenthetical aside, that this does not mean he is utterly lawless. Far from it; he writes, “I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law” (1 Cor. 9:21).

So on the one hand, Paul is not himself under law; on the other, he is not free from God’s law, but is under Christ’s law. What does this mean?

(a) The “law” under which Paul sees himself cannot be exactly the same as Torah (the Pentateuch), or more generally the demands of God from the Old Testament Scriptures. True, Paul elsewhere says, “Keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1 Cor. 7:19). But these are not simply the commands found in the Old Testament. After all, the previous line reads: “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts.” The thoughtful Jew would reply, “But circumcision is one of God’s commands.” Not, however, for Paul: keeping God’s commands or obeying God’s law is not, for him, the same thing as adhering to the Mosaic Law.

(b) What binds Paul and establishes the limits of his flexibility as he strives to evangelize Jews and Greeks alike is “Christ’s law” (1 Cor. 9:21). His statements make no sense if “Christ’s law” is exactly identical to God’s law as found in Torah. He must flex from his “third position” (the position of the Christian) to become like a Jew or like a Gentile.

(c) What the relationship is between the Mosaic “Law of God” and “Christ’s law” is complex and glimpsed, in Paul, in Romans 3:21–26 (see meditation for January 31). Here it is enough to observe that the motive for all of Paul’s magnificent cultural flexibility is that he may “win as many as possible,” “so that by all possible means I may save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” – 2 Corinthians 3:18

Last month we wrapped up our three-week teaching series, “Imago Dei: Why Image Matters.” It was a brief series on the Image of God. We learned how all humans are created in the image of God (Week 1), how that image was distorted at the Fall (Week 2), and how this image is renewed in Christ (Week 3). For this blog entry, I will reiterate a key-point from the final message, “Image Renewed.” It’s clear from 2 Corinthian 3:18 that it’s by beholding the glory of Christ, that we’re transformed into the image of Christ, “who is the image of God” (4:4). This verse gives us the spiritual key to unlock our image renewal – beholding Christ’s glory!

This verse also suggests a broader spiritual principle of transformation, for good or for evil, which is: “what we behold is what we become.” What we watch, study, meditate upon, gaze upon – it changes us. Said another way: “we become what we worship.” What is worshiped shapes and reforms the image of the worshiper into the likeness of the object worshiped. That’s why worshiping and beholding Christ is so essential to our image renewal. It’s also why idolatry, worshiping things other than God, is such a terrible sin. Certainly, it redirects worship that God alone deserves. But secondarily, it corrupts the image of the worshiper. Idolatry corrupts you to the core.

Romans 1 makes this abundantly clear. It describes how, when we give up the glory of the Creator in exchange for created things, it ignites evil, dishonorable passions within us (vv. 21-32). This concept certainly isn’t unique to the Apostle Paul’s writings. For example, the LORD says in Jeremiah 2:5, the Israelites, “went after worthlessness, and became worthless.” In 2 Kings 17:15 God’s indictment is, “They went after false idols and became false.” Do you see it? We become what we worship.

This means, if you worship money, you will become greedy. If you worship pornography, you will become perverted. If you worship your reputation, you will become an egomaniac. If you worship a god of another religion, you will be changed into the likeness of that false god. Throughout the Bible, idols are repeatedly described as deaf, dumb, mute, blind. It’s not coincidental that we, in our fallen state, are described in the very same terms! We become what we worship.

This is important to recognize, because it reveals both the problem and the ultimate solution to our image renewal. On the most fundamental level our image-problem is a worship-problem. That’s why, when we worship Christ – when we gaze upon his beauty – when we behold Him in all his glory – we experience renewal. Christ is the perfect image of God. By beholding Christ, we exchange false images for the true likeness of our Creator! By beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another!

THE SECOND SPEECH OF ZOPHAR (JOB 20) brings to a conclusion the second round from the three “miserable comforters.” Job’s response (Job 21) brings the cycle to a close.

If they cannot give him any other consolation, Job says, the least they can do is listen while he replies (Job 21:2). When he is finished, they can continue their mocking (Job 21:3).

The heart of Job’s response is thought-provoking to anyone concerned with morality and justice: “Why do the wicked live on, growing old and increasing in power?” (Job 21:7). Not only is there no obvious pattern of temporal judgment on the transparently wicked, but all too frequently the reverse is the case: the wicked may be the most prosperous of the lot. “Their bulls never fail to breed; their cows calve and do not miscarry” (Job 21:10). They have lots of healthy children, they sing and dance. While they display total disinterest in God (Job 21:14), they enjoy prosperity (Job 21:13). It is rare that they are snuffed out (Job 21:17). As for popular proverbs such as “God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons” (Job 21:19), Job is unimpressed; the truly wicked do not care if they leave their families behind in misery, provided they are comfortable themselves (Job 21:21). That is why the wicked need to “drink of the wrath of the Almighty” (Job 21:20) themselves—and that is not what usually happens. True, God knows everything; Job does not want to deny God’s knowledge and justice (Job 21:22). But facts should not be suppressed. Once the rich and the poor have died, they face the same decomposition (Job 21:23–26). Where is the justice in that?

Even allowing for Job’s exaggerations—after all, some wicked people do suffer temporal judgments—his point should not be dismissed. If the tallies of blessing and punishment are calculated solely on the basis of what takes place in this life, this is a grossly unfair world. Millions of relatively good people die in suffering, poverty, and degradation; millions of relatively evil people live full lives and die in their sleep. We can all tell the stories that demonstrate God’s justice in this life, but what about the rest of the stories?

The tit-for-tat morality system of Job’s three interlocutors cannot handle the millions of tough cases. Moreover, like them, Job does not want to impugn God’s justice, but facts are facts: it is not a virtue, even in the cause of defending God’s justice, to distort the truth and twist reality.

In the course of time it would become clearer that ultimate justice is meted out after death—and that the God of justice knows injustice himself, not only out of his omniscience, but out of his experience on a cross.

“Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, ²⁴ but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 9:23–24 (ESV)

There is great temptation to boast in wisdom, riches and strength.  These things impress us.  They impress us and they impress others, and I find that I love to impress others!  This idolatry, biblically designated as the fear of man, at times leads me to want to appear to be really wise or really strong in order to gain the approval of others.

One of the menacing ways that sin manifests itself in our lives is that we fret over offending others; we worry over appearing to be unholy and we worry about saying or doing the wrong thing.  And so, when this concern pops up we apologize.  Or, at the very least we are apologetic in tone and approach.  Have I offended you?  Have I done the wrong thing?  Please forgive me and please approve of me!

Of course it is right and good to apologize when we have given could cause for offense.  Otherwise, we should stop apologizing and start boasting in the knowledge of God.  Knowing God and this alone will be sufficient for replacing the allurement of the approval of others and of wisdom, riches and strength.  The result will be something quite contrary to an apologetic existence, but confidence to serve and lead all to the glory of God!

WHEN PAUL BEGINS TO RESPOND to the questions raised by the Corinthians (“Now for the matters you wrote about,” 1 Cor. 7:1), the first thing he treats is marriage, divorce, and related issues (1 Cor. 7). And the first part of his discussion deals with sex within Christian marriage (1 Cor. 7:1–7).

(1) Typical of many of his responses to this divided church, Paul here displays his “Yes … but” pastoral sensitivity. “It is good for a man not to marry. But … each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband” (7:1–2). “I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God” (7:7). In short, Paul must answer not only their questions but their extremes. Ideally he must do so by bringing the factions together, commending each for whatever light it brings to the subject, while nevertheless helping each side perceive that it does not have all the truth on the matter and is in fact distorting wisdom.

(2) The NIV reads, “It is good for a man not to marry” (7:1). The Greek literally reads: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” The NIV translators assume this is a euphemism for marriage. But more recently scholars have shown that this is not the case. Apparently there were Christians in Corinth who advanced an ascetic agenda. Paul is prepared to say there is merit in that perspective: after all, later in the chapter he points out the advantages of being single in gospel ministry. But asceticism is not the only value; indeed, it may become an idol, or a way of disparaging God’s good gifts, or of refusing to recognize the diversity of gifts God bestows on his people. After all, marriage relieves sexual pressure; to deny sexual pressure and cling desperately to celibate asceticism may lead to gross sexual sins (as it often has). The societal answer, biblically speaking, is not open sex or lasciviousness, but marriage. That is not the only value of marriage, of course, but it is a real one.

(3) Notice how, in the arena of marriage, Paul insists that sexual privileges and responsibilities are reciprocal: e.g., “each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband”—which is a long way from treating the woman like chattel. How many reciprocal statements are found in this paragraph?

(4) Within marriage, neither partner is to deprive the other of normal sexual intercourse except under three conditions: (a) by mutual consent; (b) for the purpose of devoting themselves to prayer; (c) and even then only temporarily. Thus, according to Scripture, sex must never be used as a weapon, offered as a bribe, or withheld as a punishment.

OUR TWO PASSAGES ARE linked in a subtle way.

Job’s response to Bildad (Job 19) is striking in its intensity. It is almost as if he is willing to spell out the tensions and paradoxes in his own position. There are four essential planks to it. First, Job continues to berate his miserable comforters for their utter lack of support.

Even if he had “gone astray” (Job 19:4), it is not their business to humiliate him. Second, Job puts into concrete form what he has been hinting at all along: if he is suffering unjustly, and if God is in charge, then God has wronged him (Job 19:6). Once again, a string of verses colorfully describes the way God has torn him down, blocked his way, shrouded his paths in darkness. Third, Job provides some graphic descriptions of his suffering. His breath is offensive to his wife; he is loathsome to his own brothers (Job 19:17). In a culture where youth should respect their seniors, he finds that even little boys scorn him. His health has vanished; his closest friends display no pity or compassion. But fourth, the most paradoxical component is that Job still trusts God. In a passage renowned for its exegetical difficulties (Job 19:25–27), Job affirms that he knows his “kinsman-redeemer” lives: this is the word that is used of Boaz in the book of Ruth (Ruth 2:20), and probably here carries the overtone of “defender.” Despite the evidence of his current sufferings he affirms that God his defender lives, and “that in the end he will stand upon the earth” (in light of the next verse, this may be an eschatological reference, or it may refer to the end of Job’s suffering with God standing on Job’s grave). Job himself will see God with his own eyes, and for this his heart yearns within him.

The integrity and faithfulness of the man is astounding. He refuses to “confess” where there is nothing to confess, but he never stops acknowledging that God alone is God. Satan is losing his bet.

Interestingly, Paul, too, calls the Corinthian Christians to a certain kind of integrity (1 Cor. 6). The sad dimension of this chapter is that at least some of the Corinthians were compromising their integrity for no greater reason than the usual temptations plus a subliminal desire to act like the surrounding culture. They were not at all facing the kinds of pressures that confronted Job. They needed to learn that lawsuits between Christian brothers, trying to win against another, already signaled defeat (1 Cor. 6:7); that Christian freedom is never an excuse for license, since believers pursue what is beneficial and they know that their bodies belong to another (1 Cor. 6:12–20). These things Job already knew.

THE SECOND ROUND OF BILDAD the Shuhite (Job 18) has a note of desperation to it. When the argument is weak, some people just yell louder.

Bildad begins by telling Job, in effect, that there is no point talking with him until he adopts a sensible stance (Job 18:2). Job is worse than wrong: he is perverse or insane. In Bildad’s view, Job is willing to overturn the very fabric of the universe to justify himself: “You who tear yourself to pieces in your anger, is the earth to be abandoned for your sake? Or must the rocks be moved from their place?” (Job 18:4).

The rest of the chapter is given over to a horrific description of what happens to the wicked person—destroyed, despised, trapped, subject to calamity and disaster, terrified, burned up, cut off from the community. “The memory of him perishes from the earth; he has no name in the land” (Job 18:17). People from the east and from the west alike are “appalled at his fate” (Job 18:20)—and of course this means he serves as an admirable moral lesson for those with eyes to see.

Up to this point, the three “miserable comforters” have united in agreeing that Job is wicked. Unless the last verse of the chapter is mere parallelism, the charge now seems to be ratcheted up a notch: “Surely such is the dwelling of an evil man; such is the place of one who knows not God” (Job 18:21). Job, in short, is not only wicked, but utterly ignorant of God.

It is time to reflect a little on this sort of charge. At one level, what Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar keep saying is entirely in line with a repeated theme of the Scriptures: God is just, and justice will be done and will be seen to be done. Everyone will one day acknowledge that God is right—whether in the reverent submission of faith, or in the terror that cries for the rocks and the mountains to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. 6). The theme recurs in virtually every major corpus of the Bible. The alternative to judgment is appalling: there is no final and perfect judgment, and therefore no justice, and therefore no meaningful distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. Not to have judgment would be to deny the significance of evil.

But to apply this perspective too quickly, too mechanically, or as if we have access to all the facts, is to destroy the significance of evil from another angle. Innocent suffering (as we have seen) is ruled out. To call a good man evil in order to preserve the system is not only personally heartless, but relativizes good and evil; it impugns God as surely as saying there is no difference between good and evil. Sometimes we must simply appeal to the mystery of wickedness.

WHEN JOB RESPONDS TO ELIPHAZ’S second speech, his opening words are scarcely less tempered than those of his opponents—though doubtless with more provocation (Job 16–17): “I have heard many things like these; miserable comforters are you all!” (Job 16:2). Ostensibly they have come to sympathize with him and comfort him (Job 2:11), yet every time they open their mouths their words are like hot, bubbling wax on open sores. From Job’s perspective, they make “long-winded speeches” that “never end” (Job 16:3). Job insists that if their roles were reversed he would not stoop to their level; he would bring genuine encouragement and relief (Job 16:4–5).

There is a way of using theology and theological arguments that wounds rather than heals. This is not the fault of theology and theological arguments; it is the fault of the “miserable comforter” who fastens on an inappropriate fragment of truth, or whose timing is off, or whose attitude is condescending, or whose application is insensitive, or whose true theology is couched in such culture-laden clichés that they grate rather than comfort. In times of extraordinary stress and loss, I have sometimes received great encouragement and wisdom from other believers; I have also sometimes received extraordinary blows from them, without any recognition on their part that that was what they were delivering. Miserable comforters were they all.

Such experiences, of course, drive me to wonder when I have wrongly handled the Word and caused similar pain. It is not that there is never a place for administering the kind of scriptural admonition that rightly induces pain: justified discipline is godly (Heb. 12:5–11). The tragic fact, however, is that when we cause pain by our application of theology to someone else, we naturally assume the pain owes everything to the obtuseness of the other party. It may, it may—but at the very least we ought to examine ourselves, our attitudes, and our arguments very closely lest we simultaneously delude ourselves and oppress others.

Most of the rest of Job’s speech is addressed to God and plunges deeply into the rhetoric of despair. We are unwise to condemn Job if we have never tasted much of his experience—and then we will not want to. To grasp his rhetoric aright, and at a deeper level than mere intellectual apprehension, two things must line up: First, we should be quite certain that ours is innocent suffering. In measure we can track this by comparing our own records with the remarkable standards Job maintained (see especially chaps. 26–31). Second, however bitter our complaint to God, our stance will still be that of a believer trying to sort things out, not that of a cynic trying to brush God off.

THE BOOK OF JOB NOW STARTS ON a second cycle of arguments from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, with responses in each case from Job (Job 15–21). In many ways the arguments are repeated, but with deepened intensity. Almost as if they are aware of the repetition, the three friends say less this time than in the first round.

Here we briefly follow the line of thought of Eliphaz’s second speech (Job 15):

(1) Eliphaz begins in attack mode (Job 15:2–6). From Eliphaz’s perspective, Job cannot be a wise man, for he answers with “empty notions” and “fill[s] his belly with the hot east wind,” uttering speeches “that have no value” (Job 15:2–3). The result is that he even undermines piety and hinders devotion to God (Job 15:4). Anyone who does not think that God fairly metes out punishment, Eliphaz thinks, is shaking the moral foundations of the universe. The cause of such renegade sentiments can only be sin: “Your sin prompts your mouth; you adopt the tongue of the crafty” (Job 15:5).

(2) Without responding to any of Job’s arguments, Eliphaz then returns to the authority question. Job has insisted that he is as old and experienced and wise as any of his attackers; Eliphaz rather sneeringly replies, “Are you the first man ever born? Were you brought forth before the hills?” (Job 15:7). At most, Job is one old man. But a panoply of old men share the opinions of Eliphaz (Job 15:10). Worse, in wanting to die, in wanting to justify himself before God, Job is declaring that God’s consolations—all the consolations that the three comforters have been gently advancing—are not enough for him (Job 15:11). It is as if Job wants to put God on trial.

(3) But how can this be? God is so holy that even heaven itself is not pure in his eyes (Job 15:14–15): “How much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!” (Job 15:16). So Eliphaz repeats the heart of his argument again (Job 15:17–26): the wicked person suffers torments of various kinds all the days allotted to him, all “because he shakes his fist at God and vaunts himself against the Almighty, defiantly charging against him with a thick, strong shield” (Job 15:25–26).

(4) Eliphaz says that where there are apparent exceptions to this rule, time will destroy them (Job 15:27–35). Such wicked people may be fat and prosperous for years, but eventually God’s justice will hunt them down. The implication is obvious: Job is not only wicked, but his former prosperity was nothing but the calm before the storm which has broken and exposed his wretched evil.

Reflect on what is right and wrong with this argument.