Humanity said Job. "Wherefore I abhor myself ["I loathe my
The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers 83
We have not to bring God into our system of philosophy, but to found our philosophy on God. The source and support of all abiding exposition is a man's personal relationship to God. If we base our philosophy on reason, we shall produce a false philosophy; but if we base it on faith in God, we can begin to expound life rightly. Actual conditions come into account, but underneath lies the Redemption.
volcano. The fact that he has become good is no sign of his having become a Christian. The bedrock of Christianity is repentance. The apostle Paul never forgot what he had been; when he speaks of "forgetting those things which are behind," he is referring to what he has attained to; the Holy Spirit never allowed him to forget what he had been (see 1 Corinthians 15:9; Ephesians 3:8; 1 Timothy 1:13–15). Repentance means that I estimate exactly what I am in God's sight and I am sorry for it, and on the basis of the Redemption I become the opposite. The only repentant man is the holy man, i.e., the one who becomes the opposite of what he was because something has entered into him. Any man who knows himself knows that he cannot be holy, therefore if he does become holy, it is because God has "shipped" something into him; he is now "presenced with Divinity," and can begin to bring forth "fruits meet for repentance."
Sin is not man's problem, but God's. God has taken the problem of sin into His own hands and solved it, and the proof that He has is the Cross of Calvary. The Cross is the Cross of God. On the ground of the Redemption I can wash my robes, and make them "white in the blood of the Lamb." Pseudoevangelism has twisted the revelation and made it mean—"Now that God has saved me, I do not need to do anything." The New Testament revelation is that now I am saved by God's grace, I must work on that basis and keep myself clean. It does not matter what a man's heredity is, or what tendencies there are in him, on the basis of the Redemption he can become all that God's Book indicates he should be. The essential truth of Christianity in thinking is that I can wash my robes, and make them clean in the blood of the Lamb. That is the exposition of the Redemption in actual experience. Are we thinking along this line, or on the pagan line which makes out that the basis of things is rational, and leaves out God, and Jesus Christ, and the Redemption altogether?
A man may know the plan of salvation, and preach like an archangel, and yet not be a Christian (cf. Matthew 7:21–22). The test of Christianity is that a man lives better than he preaches. The reality of the heredity of Jesus Christ comes into us through regeneration, and if ever we are to exhibit a family likeness to Him it must be because we have entered into repentance and have received something from God. If the disposition of meanness and lust and spite shows itself through my bodily life, when the disposition of Jesus Christ is there, it will show through my bodily life too, and no one need ever be afraid that he will be credited with the holiness he exhibits. "Now mine eye seeth Thee," said Job. "Wherefore I abhor myself ["I loathe my words," rv mg], and repent in dust and ashes." When I enthrone Jesus Christ I say the thing that is violently opposed to the old rule. I deny my old ways as entirely as Peter denied his Lord.
4. Repentance and the Dawn of God's Humanity As the Source and Support of a "Second Chance" I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. ( Job 42:5–6)
Jesus Christ's claim is that He can put a new disposition, His own disposition, Holy Spirit, into any man, and it will be manifested in all that he does. But the disposition of the Son of God can only enter my life by the way of repentance.
Because a man has altered his life it does not necessarily mean that he has repented. A man may have lived a bad life and suddenly stop being bad, not because he has repented, but because he is like an exhausted
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dIsguIse oF the actual
Job 42:7–17
That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one, His hundred's soon hit: This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit. That, has the world here—should he need the
next Let the world mind him! This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed, Seeking shall find him.
Robert Browning
84 Baffled to Fight Better
Our actual life is a disguise, no one expresses what he really is. Job could not express actually, either before or after his suffering, what he really was. The "great Divine event" to which we look forward is when the earth will actually express itself as the work of God, and saints will actually express themselves as the sons of God. Meanwhile, actual appearances do not express the real things.
thing which is true of Me," the scourge must be appalling (cf. John 15:2–6). Eliphaz had spoken the truth abstractly, but he had misrepresented God all through. God is not an abstract truth; He is the Eternal Reality, and is discerned only by means of a personal relationship.
When one is found out by Eternal Reality the danger is to become defiant or despairing. When the friends were scourged by God they took the right attitude and did not get into despair. If the scourge of Eternal Reality comes, see that it leaves you face to face with God, not with yourself.
All through Job has maintained his belief that God is honourable; he declares that the friends' credal statement of God was not adequate because they have said things he could disprove from his own experience. "Why I am suffering, I do not know; but your explanation does not satisfy me. Though He slay me, though I am knocked to pieces really, I believe that God is honourable, a God of love and justice, and I will wait for Him, and one day it will be proved, that my faith was right." That is the sublime reach of Job's faith. Now God takes it in hand to deal with the friends.
2. The Surgery of Events Reacting Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept. ( Job 42:8a)
We only see along the line of our prejudices—our evangelical or un-evangelical prejudices, the prejudices of our belief or of our agnosticism; we cannot see otherwise until events operate on us. The surgery of events is a most painful thing. It has taken a devilish thing like this war to root up the prejudices of men who were misrepresenting God to themselves. A prejudice is a foreclosed judgement without having sufficiently weighed the evidence. Not one of us is free from prejudices, and the way we reveal them most is by being full of objection to the prejudices of other people. If we stick obstinately to any line of prejudice, there will come the surgery of events that will shift us out of it. Watch that you do not make an issue with God; it is a dangerous thing to do.
1. The Scourge of Eternal Reality The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath. ( Job 42:7)
Everyone who poses as a religious teacher is faced sooner or later by Eternal Reality. The friends had posed as religious teachers, they said they knew God, and their criticism of Job was along this line; but God says, "Ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath." In reading what Job says we should probably have come to the conclusion that a man who talked as he did could not be a good man, he said such wild, extravagant things; and yet in the end God, who is Eternal Reality, said that he had spoken rightly of Him. A man may utter wild things which seem to us all wrong, but it will be a humiliation to find that he has spoken of God more truly than we have. When Eternal Reality strikes, pose is no good, religious humbug is no good. The voice of God is scathing Eliphaz and the others, not because they had spoken untruths— they had spoken what was logically true all the time, but because they had misrepresented Him. Christianity does not consist in telling the truth, or walking in a conscientious way, or adhering to principles; Christianity is something other than all that, it is adhering in absolute surrender to a Person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The surgery of events brought the friends out of their prejudices. All along they had said to Job, "You are wrong, we can prove it, you are a bad man, and it is a wonder to us that God does not strike you dead." But the surgery of events brings them to their knees in utter humiliation. "Go to My servant Job," God says, "and he shall pray for you." "Go through the issue, or you will never get to Me." Think of the humiliation of it!
. . . lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of Me the thing which is right, like My servant Job. ( Job 42:8)
What is it to speak "the thing that is right" about God? I have never seen God; to call Him omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient means nothing to me; I do not care one bit for an Almighty Incomprehensible First Cause. To speak the thing which is right about God, I must be in living personal relationship with Him. God is riddling the friends because while preaching the right thing, they have misrepresented Him and told a lie about the Author
If the Reality of God is a scourge to a man who has never pretended to be religious, it must be ten times more so to a man who has been a religious teacher, who has said to people, "I can tell you why you suffer." "I can tell you why God has allowed this war, and what He is doing with the British Empire." When such a man comes up against eternal realities and hears God say, "You have not spoken the