FEBRUARY
FEBRUARY 1
Genesis 33; Mark 4; Esther 9—10; Romans 4
HISTORY LOOKS DIFFERENT IN different cultures. I do not simply mean that different cultures interpret the same past differently (though that is often the case), but that the understanding of what history is may vary from culture to culture. Indeed, even within one culture there are often competing notions as to what history is.
This issue has become ever more complex during the past several decades, owing to the advance of postmodernism and its innovative ideas about what history is. As important as that debate is, I do not wish to explore it here. At the moment I am painting on a larger canvas.
Many ancient Greeks thought that history went around in circles. This does not mean that each cycle repeats itself exactly, but that there is an unending repetition of patterns, with no end, no ultimate climax, no telos. A great deal of contemporary naturalism thinks that our sun will finally burn out, and life on earth will come to an end. Some hold that the universe itself will eventually settle into a more or less even distribution of energy, and die; others think that somehow it will rejuvenate itself by collapsing and exploding again to repeat a cycle something like the present one. By contrast, in university history departments events on such a scale are irrelevant. History—whether this refers to what happened, or to our reconstruction of it—covers the period of human writing. Everything before that is “prehistoric.”
The Bible has its own perspectives on history, and some of them are nonnegotiable: if we lose sight of them or deny them, we can no longer understand the Bible on its own terms. Certainly the Bible sometimes retells “what happened” in parabolic categories (compare 2 Sam. 11 and 12), or in highly selective condensations (e.g., Acts 7), or in poetic form (Ps. 78). But more importantly, we cannot rightly understand the Bible unless we grasp several key elements of its sequence. On the largest scale, history begins at Creation and ends at the supreme telos, the final judgment and the new heaven and new earth. We are not simply going around in circles. In Galatians 3 (see vol. 1, meditation for September 27), Paul’s argument turns on the fact that the Mosaic Law came after the promises to Abraham. Somewhat similarly here (Romans 4), Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness before he was circumcised, so circumcision cannot be made a condition of righteousness. Under Semitic notions of sonship, Abraham becomes the father of all who believe, circumcised or not (4:1-12). Something similar can be said of Abraham’s relation to the Law of Moses (4:13-17). The sequence of the biblical history is critical.
FEBRUARY 2
Genesis 34; Mark 5; Job 1; Romans 5
THE BIBLE DEALS WITH THE REALITY of evil in many different ways. Sometimes justice is done, and is seen to be done, in this life. Especially in the New Testament, the final recompense for evil is bound up with judgment to come. Sometimes suffering has a humbling role, as it challenges our endless hubris. War, pestilence, and famine are sometimes God’s terrible weapons of judgment. These and many more themes are developed in the Bible.
But the book of Job is matchless for causing us to reflect on the question of innocent suffering. That is made clear in Job 1, which in some ways sets up the rest of the book. Job “was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (1:1). Although Job was blessed with wealth and a large family, he took nothing for granted. He even engaged in what might be called preemptive intercession on behalf of his grown children: he prayed and offered sacrifices on their behalf, fearful that perhaps at an otherwise innocent gathering, one of his children had sinned and cursed God (1:5).
Job does not know, as the reader knows, that another drama is playing out in the throne room of God. Little is said about these “sons of God,” these angels, who approach the Almighty; little is said about Satan, though transparently he is evil and lives up to his name, “Accuser.” The exchange between Satan and God accomplishes three things. First, it sets up the drama that unfolds in the rest of the book. Second, implicitly it establishes that even Satan himself has restraints on his power and cannot act outside God’s sanction. Third, it discloses that Satan’s intention is to prove that all human loyalty to God is nothing more than crass self-interest, while God’s intention is to demonstrate that a man like Job is loyal and faithful regardless of the blessings he receives or does not receive.
Job, of course, knows nothing of these arrangements. He couldn’t, for the drama that follows would be vitiated if he did. In short order Job loses his wealth and his children, all to “natural” causes that Job knows full well remain within God’s sway. When the last bit of bad news reaches him, Job tears his robe and shaves his head (both signs of abasement) and worships, uttering words that become famous: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (1:21).
The narrator comments, “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (1:22)—which of course means, in the context of this chapter, that God’s assessment of the man was right and Satan’s was wrong.
FEBRUARY 3
Genesis 35—36; Mark 6; Job 2; Romans 6
IT IS ONE THING TO ENDURE WITH steadfast loyalty when the losses, however painful, are all external; it is quite another thing to endure when one loses one’s health (Job 2). Some reflections:
(1) We are still dealing with innocent suffering. God himself declares of Job, “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity” (2:3).
(2) Up to this point, God has proved Satan wrong: Job’s loyalty to God is not conditioned by crass, self-serving bartering. Here is a man who is upright and faithful when all his wealth and even all his children are stripped away from him. That is what makes Satan up the ante: “Let me take away his health,” Satan says in effect, “and he will surely curse you to your face” (2:4-5). So a new level of entirely innocent suffering is introduced, and the stage is set for the rest of the book.
(3) At this point believers must ask painful questions. Doesn’t this sound as if God is using Job in some fantastic experiment? Why should the poor chap have to lose his wealth, his family, his health, and (as we shall see) his reputation, merely to prove God right in a challenge God might well have ignored?
That question could call forth a very long book. I have no final, exhaustive answers. But some things should be borne in mind. (a) We belong to God. He may do with us as he wishes. There is something deep within us that rebels at being reminded of that elemental truth. But truth it is. Indeed, our rebellion in the face of it is a reminder of how much we still want to be at the center of the universe, with God serving us. That is the heart of all idolatry. (b) Suppose Job had known of the arrangement between God and Satan. A lesser man might have protested violently, but it is at least plausible to think that Job would have used such information to invest his suffering with profound significance, thus making it easier to endure. Indeed, he might have seen his suffering as bound up somehow in a larger cosmic struggle between good and evil. (c) Other factors to be borne in mind must await the conclusion of the book of Job—indeed, the conclusion of the Book, the Bible. But I shall return to some of these matters in the devotional for March 13.
(4) So Job now faces painful and degrading physical breakdown, emotional abandonment by his wife, and the arrival of the three miserable comforters. Innocent suffering is immeasurably difficult to endure; it is still worse when every emotional support proves to be a broken reed.
FEBRUARY 4
Genesis 37; Mark 7; Job 3; Romans 7
FROM JOB 3 UNTIL THE FIRST PART of the last chapter of the book, with a small exception at the beginning of chapter 32, the text is written in Hebrew poetry. The book is a giant drama, like a Shakespearean play. Speech follows speech, the movement of the drama carried forward on the sustained argument between Job and his three “friends.” Eventually another character is introduced, and finally God himself responds.
The opening speech belongs to Job. The burden of his utterance is unmistakable: he wishes he had never been born. He is not ready to curse God, but he is certainly prepared to curse the day that brought him to birth (3:1, 3, 8). Everything about that day he wishes he could blot out. If he could not have been stillborn (3:11, 16), then why couldn’t he have just starved to death (3:12)?
Implicitly, of course, this is criticism of God, however indirect. “Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in?” (3:23). What Job is experiencing is what he feared throughout his years of plenty (3:25). He has no peace, no quietness, no rest, but only turmoil (3:26).
Four reflections will put this first address in perspective:
(1) This is the rhetoric of a man in deep anguish. So many of the things about which we complain are trivial. Even our most serious grounds for complaint are usually only some fraction of what Job faced.
(2) Before we condemn Job, therefore, we must listen attentively, even fearfully. When we come across those who for good reason are in terrible despair, we must cut them some slack. It would have been wonderful if one of the “friends” had put an arm around Job’s shoulder and wept with him, saying, “We love you, Job. We do not pretend to understand. But we love you, and we’ll do whatever we can for you.”
(3) Job is transparently honest. He does not don a front of feigned piety so that no one will think he is letting down the side. The man hurts so much he wishes he were dead, and says so.
(4) Both here and throughout the book, for all that Job is prepared to argue with God, he is not prepared to write God off. Job is not the modern agnostic or atheist who treats the problem of evil as if it provided intellectual evidence that God does not exist. Job knows that God exists and believes that he is powerful and good. That is one reason why (as we shall see) he is in such confusion. Job’s agonizings are the agonizings of a believer, not a skeptic.
FEBRUARY 5
Genesis 38; Mark 8; Job 4; Romans 8
THE FIRST SPEECH OF ELIPHAZ takes up two chapters. In the first part (Job 4), Eliphaz gives shape to his argument:
(1) The opening lines are seductive (4:2-4). One might almost think that Eliphaz is respectfully pursuing permission to offer helpful counsel to Job, in the same way that Job in times past has offered helpful counsel to others. But that is not it at all. Eliphaz is not asking permission; rather, he is fixing blame on Job because he is discouraged. It turns out, Eliphaz says, that the great Job who has helped others cannot cope when he faces a bit of trouble himself (4:5).
(2) The next verse transitions to the heart of Eliphaz’s argument: “Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?” (4:6). In other words, if Job were as pious and as blameless as many had believed, either he would not be in this fix, or else he would at least be able to live above discouragement. The disasters that have befallen Job, and Job’s reactions to them, prove that Job is hiding shame or guilt that must be confronted.
(3) In brief, Eliphaz holds that in God’s universe you get what you deserve (4:7). God is in charge, and God is good, so you reap what you sow (4:8).
(4) Eliphaz claims nothing less than revelation to ground his argument (4:1221). In some sort of night vision, he says, a spirit glided by his face (4:15) and uttered words of supreme importance: “Can a mortal be more righteous than God? Can a man be more pure than his Maker?” (4:17). God is so transcendently powerful and just that even the angels that surround him are tawdry and untrustworthy in his eyes. So human beings, “those who live in houses of clay, whose foundations are in the dust” (4:19), are less significant, less reliable. The implication, then, is that a man like Job should simply admit his frailty, his error, his sin, and stop pretending that what has befallen him is anything other than what he deserves. The way Job is carrying on, Eliphaz implies, he is in danger of impugning the God whose justice is far beyond human assessment or comprehension.
We should pause to evaluate Eliphaz’s argument. At one level, Eliphaz is right: God is utterly just, transcendently holy. The Bible elsewhere avers that a man reaps what he sows (e.g., Prov. 22:8; Gal. 6:7). But these truths, by themselves, may overlook two factors. First, the time frame in which the wheels of God’s justice grind is sometimes very long. Eliphaz seems to hold to a rather rapid and obvious tit-for-tat system of recompense. Second, Eliphaz has no category for innocent suffering, so he is embarking on a course that condemns an innocent man.
FEBRUARY 6
Genesis 39; Mark 9; Job 5; Romans 9
IN THE SECOND PART OF HIS SPEECH (Job 5), Eliphaz presupposes the stance he adopts in the first part (see yesterday’s meditation), yet adds several new wrinkles to his impassioned presentation.
First, he says that Job’s approach to God in this crisis is fundamentally flawed. By all means call on God (5:1)—but why imagine that someone as exalted as God will answer? Meanwhile, Job’s attitude is what is killing him: “Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple” (5:2). Eliphaz speaks out of his own observation: he has seen such fools prospering in the past, but suddenly they are uprooted. The implication is that Job’s former prosperity was the prosperity of a “fool,” and his current loss is nothing but his due. Somewhat inconsistently, Eliphaz adds that human suffering is a function of the human condition: “Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (5:7).
Second, rather self-righteously Eliphaz tells Job what he would do if he were in a similar situation (5:8-16). He would appeal to God and lay his case before him—not with Job’s attitude, which Eliphaz finds insufferable, but with humility and contrition. After all, God reigns providentially and is committed to humbling the arrogant and the crafty and exalting the poor and the needy. So Eliphaz would approach God as a suppliant.
Third, Eliphaz insists that at least one of God’s aims in bringing about loss and disaster is discipline: “Blessed is the man whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he also binds up; he injures, but his hands also heal” (5:17-18). Those who recognize this point discover that God quickly restores their life and prosperity. They find themselves secure in every trial. Job cannot miss the implication: if he feels he has suffered unjustly, not only is he insufficiently humble, but he fails to recognize the gracious, chastening hand of God Almighty, and therefore he remains under God’s rod instead of finding mercy. “We have examined this,” Eliphaz concludes rather pompously, “and it is true. So hear it and apply it to yourself” (5:27).
What Eliphaz says carries some measure of truth. God does indeed chasten his children (Prov. 3:11-12; Heb. 12:5-6). But this presupposes that they need it; God certainly does not chasten his children when they do not need it. Eliphaz thus presupposes that Job deserves God’s chastening; readers of chapter 1 know he is mistaken. True, God saves the humble and abases those whose eyes are haughty (Ps. 18:27); but Eliphaz mistakenly assumes that Job must be haughty, or he would not be suffering. So here is a lesson: false or improper application of genuine truth may be heartless and cruel—and, as here, it may say false things about God.
FEBRUARY 7
Genesis 40; Mark 10; Job 6; Romans 10
JOB’S RESPONSE TO ELIPHAZ TAKES UP two chapters. In Job 6 he argues as follows:
(1) In the opening verses (6:1-7) Job insists he has every reason for bemoaning his situation: his anguish and misery are beyond calculation (6:2-3). Nor does Job flinch from the obvious: in God’s universe, God himself must somehow be behind these calamities—“The arrows of the Almighty are in me . . . God’s terrors are marshaled against me” (6:4). Not even a donkey brays without a reason (6:5), so why should Job’s friends treat him as if he is complaining without a reason?
(2) Job utters his deepest request: that God would simply crush him, “let loose his hand and cut me off” (6:9). This is more than a death wish: “Then I would still have this consolation—my joy in unrelenting pain—that I had not denied the words of the Holy One” (6:10). From this, three things are clear. (a) Despite his agony, Job is still thinking from within the framework of a committed believer. His suffering is not driving him to agnosticism or naturalism. (b) More importantly, his primary desire is to remain faithful to God. He sees death not only as a release from his suffering but as a way of dying before the intensity of his suffering should drive him to say or do something that would dishonor God. (c) Implicitly, this is also a response to Eliphaz. A man with such a passionate commitment to remain faithful to “the words of the Holy One” (6:10) should not be dismissed as a light and frivolous prevaricator.
(3) Eliphaz’s position depends on the assumption that if Job acts as Eliphaz advises, all his wealth and power will be restored to him. Job insists he is well beyond that point: he has no hope, no prospects. He cannot conduct himself in such a way as to finagle blessings from God (6:11-13).
(4) Meanwhile, Job reproaches Eliphaz and his colleagues (6:14-23). “A despairing man should have the devotion of his friends, even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty” (6:14); that is what real friendship is like. Job analyzes the real reason why his friends have proved “as undependable as intermittent streams” (6:15): they have seen something dreadful and they are afraid (6:21). Their neat theological categories have been blown away by Job’s suffering, since they had believed he was a righteous man. They must now prove him to be unrighteous, deserving of his sufferings, or they too are under threat.
(5) Job ends with a wrenching plea (6:24-30). As far as he is concerned, his own integrity is at stake; he will not fake repentance when he knows he does not deserve this suffering. “Relent, do not be unjust” (6:29), he tells his friends.
FEBRUARY 8
Genesis 41; Mark 11; Job 7; Romans 11
IN THE SECOND PART OF HIS RESPONSE TO ELIPHAZ, Job addresses God directly (Job 7), though we are meant to understand that this agonizing prayer is uttered in such a way that Eliphaz and his friends overhear it. In fact, as we shall see, there is a tight connection between chapters 6 and 7.
The first ten verses of moving complaint, full of descriptions of sleepless nights and festering sores, are focused on “reminding” God how brief human life is. “Life is hard, and then you die” is the contemporary expression; more prosaically, Job asks, “Does not man have hard service on earth? Are not his days like those of a hired man?” (7:1). Physically, he will not last much longer.
“Therefore,” Job argues, “I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul” (7:11). To God, Job says, in effect, I am not a monster—so why pick on me? My life is without meaning (7:16); I would rather be strangled to death than continue to live as I am now living (7:15).
Why should God make so much of a mere mortal as to pay him the attention God is obviously paying Job (7:17-18)? Though he is unaware of any sin in his life that has attracted such suffering, Job knows he is not sinless. But why should that attract so much suffering? “If I have sinned, what have I done to you, O watcher of men? Why have you made me your target? Have I become a burden to you?” (7:20).
Now it should be easier to see how this chapter is tied to the argument at the end of chapter 6. There Job protests to Eliphaz that his (Job’s) integrity is at stake. The thrust of Eliphaz’s argument was that Job must be suffering for wrongdoing he had never confessed; the way ahead is self-abnegation and confession. But Job replies to the effect that his friends should still be his friends; that they are condemning him because they themselves cannot bear the thought that an innocent person might suffer; that their rebuke calls into question his lifelong integrity. In chapter 7, when Job turns to address God, his stance is entirely in line with what he has just told Eliphaz. Far from confessing sin, he tells God that he is being picked on. Or if he has sinned, he has not done anything to deserve this sort of minute attention and painful judgment. Indeed, Job comes within a whisker of implying that God himself is not quite fair. Thus Job maintains his integrity.
So the drama of this book builds. The way ahead is still to be explored. Meanwhile, meditate on Job 42:7.
FEBRUARY 9
Genesis 42; Mark 12; Job 8; Romans 12
BILDAD THE SHUHITE IS SCANDALIZED BY Job’s response to Eliphaz and offers his own searing rebuttal (Job 8).
“How long will you say such things?” Bildad asks. “Your words are a blustering wind” (8:2). We would say they are nothing but hot air. From Bildad’s perspective, Job is charging God with perverting justice. “Does the Almighty pervert what is right?” (8:3). But Bildad cannot let the point linger as a merely theoretical point to be debated by theologians. The implications of his rhetorical question Bildad now drives home in a shaft that must have pierced Job to the quick: “When your children sinned against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin” (8:4). In other words, the proper explanation of the storm that killed all ten of Job’s children (1:18-19) is that they deserved it. To say anything else would surely mean, according to Bildad, that God is unjust, that he perverts justice. So the way forward for Job is “to look to God and plead with the Almighty” (8:5). If Job humbles himself and is truly pure and upright, God will restore him to his “rightful place.” Indeed, all the fabulous wealth Job formerly enjoyed will seem like a mere piffle compared with the rewards that will come to him (8:6-7).
For his authority Bildad appeals to longstanding tradition, to “the former generations.” The opinions he and his friends express are not newfangled ideas but received tradition. Bildad and his friends, regardless of how old they are, can only have learned by experience what can be tasted in one lifetime. What they are appealing to, however, is not the experience of one lifetime, but accumulated tradition. That tradition says that the godless and those who forget God perish like reeds without water; they enjoy all the support of those who lean on spiders’ webs (8:11-19). Conversely, “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers” (8:20).
Of course, this is roughly the argument of Eliphaz, perhaps somewhat more bluntly expressed; and while Eliphaz appealed to visions of the night, Bildad appealed to received tradition. Once again, parts of the argument are not wrong. At one level, on an eternal scale, it is right to conclude that God vindicates righteousness and condemns wickedness. But as Bildad expresses the case, he claims to know more about God’s doings than he really does (neither he nor Job knows the behind-the-scenes setup in chapter 1). Worse, he applies his doctrine mechanically and shortsightedly, and ends up condemning a righteous man.
Can you think of instances where premature or unbalanced application of biblical truth has turned out to be fundamentally mistaken?
FEBRUARY 1 0
Genesis 43; Mark 13; Job 9; Romans 13
“LET NO DEBT REMAIN OUTSTANDING, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8). Some Christians have used this verse to argue that all debt is wrong and condemned by God. Pay your way as you go. “Let no debt remain outstanding.” The strongest voices argue that it is wrong to take a mortgage for a house or for a church building.
The flow of the passage, however, argues against such an interpretation. The opening verses exhort Christians to submit to the civil authorities, not only because they are constituted by God, but also because, when they function properly, they enforce what is right and punish what is wrong (13:1-4). So it is important to submit to such authorities, not only so as to avoid punishment, “but also because of conscience” (13:5): Christians want to keep a clear conscience by doing what is right. That is also why we pay taxes. The civil authorities are “God’s servants, who give their full time to governing” (13:6). Like others of God’s servants, they are sometimes disobedient and foolish, but in God’s ordering of society taxes are God’s means of supporting those whose task it is to govern. So we should pay what we owe: “If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue” (13:7).
More broadly yet, pay whatever is owed: “If respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another” (13:7-8).
“Debt,” then, in this context, has only a secondary reference to financial obligation. The passage has everything to do with the ongoing obligations of personal relationships in a society ordered by God. Moreover, insofar as finances are concerned, some financial obligations, such as taxes, are paid again and again; as they come due, we pay them. In precisely the same way, in a contracted mortgage, as the payments come due, we pay them. For all kinds of reasons it may be best to avoid fiscal debt of all kinds. But that is scarcely the point the apostle is making here.
The way Paul talks about love as “the continuing debt” reinforces the point. Some “debts,” such as taxes, recur; the debt of love does not so much recur as continue: it is ever with us. The commandments that bear on horizontal relationships (what today we would call social relationships) may be summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (13:9; Lev. 19:18). Love is thus the “fulfillment” of the Law (13:10)—that is, love is that to which the Law points, in this time of eschatological fulfillment (13:11-14), and this we always owe.
FEBRUARY 1 1
Genesis 44; Mark 14; Job 10; Romans 14
JOB 10 IS THE SECOND PART OF JOB’S response to Bildad the Shuhite. Bildad has argued that God cannot pervert justice (Job 8; see meditation for February 9). In chapter 9 Job replies, rather impatiently, that he knows all that: “Indeed, I know that this is true” (9:2). Job does not doubt that he too, like other mortals, cannot stand up beside the matchless righteousness of God: “But how can a mortal be righteous before God?” (9:2). So Job argues that that is precisely the problem: in this particular case, Job insists he is blameless (9:21), free from any evil that should have attracted the miseries inflicted upon him, but God remains unanswerable. Job is certainly not more evil than many contemporaries who are unscathed by the passing years. But how can a mere mortal plead his case before the Almighty? “He is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court” (9:32). There is not even available a suitable arbitrator (9:33). As for Job’s “friends,” they increase his suffering, for they will not admit that he is innocent (9:28); they are more than eager to drop him into the nearest slime pit to prove that he is dirty (9:30-31).
Job now turns to address God (chap. 10). He wants to know what charges God has against him (10:2). Full of self-acknowledged bitterness (10:1), Job asks, “Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands, while you smile on the schemes of the wicked?” (10:3). Certainly Job is prepared to acknowledge that God shaped him in the womb, carefully nurtured him, gave him life, and providentially watched over him (10:8-12). But now, it seems, there is another side: God will not only hunt him down if he sins, but even if Job is innocent he finds he cannot answer this God or compete against the pressures God is able to bring to bear (10:13-17). So why did God bring him to life in the first place? Or why did Job not die as soon as he was born, carried from the womb to the grave (10:18-22)?
This is the rhetoric of anguish and despair. We still await God’s answer. But Romans 14 may have something to say to Job’s miserable “friends”: “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (14:19). Of course, in the context of Romans 14, Paul is focusing on Christian self-restraint for the sake of others, especially in the matter of eating food offered to idols (as in 1 Cor. 8; see vol. 1, meditation for September 3). Yet the broad principle applies nonetheless to Job’s friends: do they speak out of passionate commitment to “mutual edification” or out of frightened self-justification?
FEBRUARY 1 2
Genesis 45; Mark 15; Job 11; Romans 15
I SHALL COMMENT BRIEFLY on the two readings set for the day.
Zophar’s speech (Job 11) carries forward the unfolding drama of the book of Job. Like Bildad, Zophar begins by condemning Job’s addresses (11:2-3). To him, it sounds as if Job is claiming personal perfection: “You say to God, ‘My beliefs are flawless and I am pure in your sight’” (11:4). Job has been wishing that God would answer him. Well and good, responds Zophar: “Oh, how I wish that God would speak” (11:5). No less than Job, he would love it if God would reply—and he is quite certain that, were God to do so, he would powerfully rebuke Job.
Just for a moment, Zophar seems to take a healthy turn. He begins to deal with the fathomless knowledge and wisdom of the Almighty, far beyond human capacity. If that had been all Zophar had said, he would have anticipated part of the answer of God himself later in the book (chaps. 38—41). Sadly, however, Zophar immediately turns this in a mischievous direction, following the same path as Eliphaz and Bildad: a God so great in knowledge can certainly recognize deceitful men, “and when he sees evil, does he not take note?” (11:11). Once again, the argument degenerates to a fairly mechanical theory of recompense. There is no category for innocent suffering. Job must be very wicked, for he is suffering much; the only reasonable option for him is to turn from the sin that must obviously be engulfing him (11:13-20).
The second passage is of a very different sort. Consider the way Paul here exhorts the Romans to pray: “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen” (Rom. 15:30-33). Note: (a) What Paul asks for is prayer for himself. (b) If the Romans respond by praying, they will by their prayer be joining Paul in his struggle. (c) The particular struggle Paul has in mind is his relationship with unbelievers in Judea; he wants his service for the poor there to be so acceptable that he will be able to leave quickly and make his way to Rome. (d) Within the context of the chapter, this trip to Rome is part of his plan to evangelize Spain. In short, Paul asks for prayers that will further the Gospel in various ways.
What do you characteristically pray for?
FEBRUARY 1 3
Genesis 46; Mark 16; Job 12; Romans 16
THE CLOSING THREE VERSES OF ROMANS are extraordinary (Rom. 16:25-27). Formally they constitute a doxology—a word of praise to God. God is introduced as the One “who is able to establish you by my gospel” (16:25), and he is reintroduced into the structure in verse 27: “To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.” So in this context the wisdom of God, presupposed in the expression “the only wise God,” is displayed in God’s ability to establish the Roman Christians by Paul’s gospel.
This gospel is further described in the intervening lines, and here God’s wisdom is particularly stunning. God establishes people, we are told, by the Gospel, by “the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past” (16:25). There is a sense in which the sweep and focus of the Gospel was not clear. It remained hidden until the coming of Jesus Christ. Even when he was here, his own disciples did not grasp, before the cross and resurrection, that he, the Messiah, would also be the suffering servant and would die an odious death to redeem lost sinners.
Yet if this Gospel was hidden in “long ages past,” it is “now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God” (16:26). Here it sounds as if this Gospel has been disclosed “through the prophetic writings,” that is, through the Scriptures. So on the one hand, the Gospel has been hidden in ages past but is now revealed; and on the other, the Gospel has been prophesied in ages past and is now fulfilled. How can both of these things be simultaneously true?
Part of the answer lies in the ways in which the Gospel is predicted in the Old Testament. So many of the predictions are wrapped up in “types” or models of what is to come. After the fact, we can see how Jesus is the true temple, the ultimate meeting-place between God and his sinful image-bearers; how he is the true Passover lamb; how he is the ultimate priest; how he is the ultimate “Son of God”; how he is the ultimate Davidic king. Indeed, we discover many clues distributed along the way. For instance, we read the prophecies of a new covenant, and reflect on how such announcements render the old covenant obsolete in principle and drive us to expect a new configuration. The fact remains, however, that no one expected the same person to fulfill all these images and types in himself. Indeed, some Jews in the first century expected two messiahs, one Davidic and the other priestly. But we see Jesus and his Gospel—comprehensively predicted, yet hidden for long ages past, and now disclosed “so that all nations might believe and obey him” (16:26).
FEBRUARY 1 4
Genesis 47; Luke 1:1-38; Job 13; 1 Corinthians 1
JOB’S RESPONSE TO ZOPHAR TAKES UP three chapters (Job 12—14), the first of which was part of yesterday’s reading. There Job accuses Zophar and his friends, in scathing language, of mouthing traditional platitudes and thinking their utterances are profound: “Doubtless you are the people, and wisdom will die with you!” (12:2). Job adds: “But I have a mind as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know all these things?” (12:3)—that is, the things to do with God’s sovereignty, greatness, and unfathomable power and wisdom. So Job spends most of chapter 12 reviewing and deepening this vision of God’s greatness.
But here in Job 13, Job takes the argument a step farther. The common ground he shares with these three friends is plain enough: “My eyes have seen all this, my ears have heard and understood it. What you know I also know; I am not inferior to you” (13:1-2). The question is what to make of God’s transcendent sovereignty. His friends use this base to argue that such a God can certainly sniff out evil and punish it; Job himself now turns the argument in a different direction.
First, far from prompting him to cringe in fear, reflection on who God is prompts Job to want to speak with the Almighty, to argue his case with God (13:3). His conscience really is clear, and he wants to prove it. He is convinced that if he could get a hearing, at least God would be fair and just.
Second, by contrast, the miserable friends merely smear him with lies (13:4). They are “worthless physicians”—i.e., they do nothing to help Job in his pain.
Third, and worse, Job insists that they “speak wickedly on God’s behalf,” that they “speak deceitfully for him” (13:7). They cannot find concrete evidences of gross sin in Job’s life, yet they think they are speaking for God when they insist Job must really be evil. Thus in their “defense” of God, they say things that are untrue and unfair about Job: they “speak wickedly on God’s behalf.” How can God be pleased with their utterances? Ends do not justify means. It is always important to speak the truth and not fudge facts to fit our theological predispositions. Far better to admit ignorance or postulate mystery than to tell untruths.
Fourth, Job himself, for all that he wishes to enter into dialogue with God, is still not speaking as an agnostic. True, Job wants his day in the divine court. But for him, God is still God, and so he confesses, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (13:15). Even the alternative reading (NIV footnote—the issues are complex) acknowledges that God is God: the difference is in Job’s response.
FEBRUARY 1 5
Genesis 48; Luke 1:39-80; Job 14; 1 Corinthians 2
SOME HAVE TAKEN 1 CORINTHIANS 2:1-5 to suggest that the way Paul preached in Athens (Acts 17:16-31) was a mistake, and that by the time he arrived at Corinth, Paul himself had recognized his error. In the passage before us he tells us how he “resolved to know nothing” while he was with them “except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” So away with the quasi-philosophical preaching of the Areopagus address in Acts 17. Just stick to the simple Gospel.
There are good reasons for rejecting this false reading:
(1) This is not the natural reading of Acts. As you work your way through that book, you do not stumble upon some flag or other that warns you that at this point Paul goofs. This false interpretation is achieved by putting together an unnatural reading of Acts with a false reading of 1 Corinthians 2.
(2) The theology of the Areopagus address is in fact very much in line with the theology of Paul expressed in Romans.
(3) The Greek text at the end of Acts 17 does not say that “a few men” believed, as if this were a dismissive or condemning assessment, but that “certain people” believed. This expression is in line with other summaries in Acts.
(4) In Athens Paul had already been preaching not only in the synagogue to biblically literate folk, but to people in the marketplace who were biblically illiterate (Acts 17:17). What he had been preaching was “the good news” (Acts 17:18), the Gospel.
(5) Transparently Paul was cut off in Acts 17 before he was finished. He had set up the framework in which alone the Gospel is coherent: one transcendent God, sovereign, providential, personal; creation; fall into idolatry; the flow of redemptive history; final judgment. He was moving into Jesus’ resurrection, and more, when he was interrupted.
(6) Paul was not a rookie. He had been through twenty years of tough ministry (read 2 Cor. 11), much of it before pagan biblical illiterates. To suppose that on this occasion he panicked and trimmed the Gospel is ridiculous.
(7) Acts 17 shows that Paul thinks “worldviewishly.” Even after 1 Corinthians 2, Paul still thinks worldviewishly: 2 Corinthians 10:5 finds him still striving to bring “every thought” into submission to Christ—and the context shows this refers not simply to isolated thoughts but to entire worldviews.
(8) 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 does not cast Paul’s resolution to preach nothing but the cross against the background of Athens (as if he were confessing he had failed there), but against the background of Corinth, which loved eloquence and rhetoric above substance. The apostle does not succumb to mere oratory: he resolves to stick with “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
FEBRUARY 1 6
Genesis 49; Luke 2; Job 15; 1 Corinthians 3
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 (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” (15:2-3). The result is that he even undermines piety and hinders devotion to God (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” (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?” (15:7). At most, Job is one old man. But a panoply of old men share the opinions of Eliphaz (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 (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 (15:14-15): “How much less man, who is vile and corrupt, who drinks up evil like water!” (15:16). So Eliphaz repeats the heart of his argument again (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” (15:25-26).
(4) Eliphaz says that where there are apparent exceptions to this rule, time will destroy them (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.
FEBRUARY 1 7
Genesis 50; Luke 3; Job 16—17; 1 Corinthians 4
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!” (16:2). Ostensibly they have come to sympathize with him and comfort him (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” (16:3). Job insists that if their roles were reversed he would not stoop to their level; he would bring genuine encouragement and relief (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.
FEBRUARY 1 8
Exodus 1; Luke 4; Job 18; 1 Corinthians 5
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 (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?” (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” (18:17). People from the east and from the west alike are “appalled at his fate” (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” (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.
FEBRUARY 1 9
Exodus 2; Luke 5; Job 19; 1 Corinthians 6
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” (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (6:12-20). These things Job already knew.
FEBRUARY 2 0
Exodus 3; Luke 6; Job 20; 1 Corinthians 7
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.
FEBRUARY 2 1
Exodus 4; Luke 7; Job 21; 1 Corinthians 8
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 (21:2). When he is finished, they can continue their mocking (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?” (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” (21:10). They have lots of healthy children, they sing and dance. While they display total disinterest in God (21:14), they enjoy prosperity (21:13). It is rare that they are snuffed out (21:17). As for popular proverbs such as “God stores up a man’s punishment for his sons” (21:19), Job is unimpressed; the truly wicked do not care if they leave their families behind in misery, provided they are comfortable themselves (21:21). That is why the wicked need to “drink of the wrath of the Almighty” (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 (21:22). But facts should not be suppressed. Once the rich and the poor have died, they face the same decomposition (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.
FEBRUARY 2 2
Exodus 5; Luke 8; Job 22; 1 Corinthians 9
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” (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” (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” (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” (9:22).
FEBRUARY 2 3
Exodus 6; Luke 9; Job 23; 1 Corinthians 10
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!” (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 (23:4). Job is not frightened that God will respond with terrifying power and crush him (23:6); he is frightened, rather, that God will simply ignore him. However, no geographical search Job can undertake will find God (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 (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 (23:12).
That is why God’s absence is not only puzzling, but terrifying (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.
FEBRUARY 2 4
Exodus 7; Luke 10; Job 24; 1 Corinthians 11
IN THE SECOND PART OF HIS REPLY TO Eliphaz’s last speech, Job begins (Job 24) with a pair of rhetorical questions: “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?” (24:1). The argument is not that God never rights the books, but that meanwhile a great deal of evil takes place without any prompt accounting, and righteous people suffer without any prompt vindication.
So Job begins another long list of representative evils, frequently unrequited in the short haul, yet commonly observed; and of public injustices (24:2-17). The wicked move boundary markers, steal cattle, abuse the poor and needy, put the poor into indentured slavery, rebel against the light, and feed their sexual lust. Meanwhile the poor barely get by, eking out a living from the wasteland. They glean in the vineyards of the wicked, they are often cold and wet, they carry the sheaves of others and go naked themselves. “The groans of the dying rise from the city, and the souls of the wounded cry out for help,” Job contends. “But God charges no one with wrongdoing” (24:12).
The next big section of this chapter (24:18-24) is something of a puzzle. At first glance Job seems to be advancing the kind of argument his miserable comforters prefer: God answers the wicked in kind. Some scholars have suggested the passage has been misplaced; others think Job is deploying massive irony and means exactly the reverse. Yet perhaps the explanation is simpler. Job is not denying that justice will be done someday. To do that he really would have to change his view of God in very substantial ways. But Job acknowledges that the wicked will finally face judgment. They die; they are not remembered. God is not blind; he “may let them rest in a feeling of security, but his eyes are on their ways” (24:23). So in a while they are gone (24:24). All this Job acknowledges: “If this is not so, who can prove me false and reduce my words to nothing?” (24:25). But in the context of the first part of the chapter, the question remains: “Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?” In other words, why does he wait until the end? Granted that he is the God of justice and that justice will finally be done, why wait so long for it, the wicked becoming more wicked and the victims still suffering?
It is a searing question. Part of the answer emerges later in the book. But at the very least we should acknowledge that instant judgment on every sin would have most of us in pretty constant pain, yelping like Pavlovian dogs to avoid the hurt, but without inner transformation. Do you really want what Job seems to be asking for?
FEBRUARY 2 5
Exodus 8; Luke 11; Job 25—26; 1 Corinthians 12
1 CORINTHIANS 12 BEGINS A three-chapter unit on tongues, prophecy, and other “grace gifts” (charismata) and their relation to love, which is the supreme “way” (not a gift) for the Christian. We may at least follow the flow of thought.
First, 1 Corinthians 12:4-6 affirms that there are diversities of gifts but one source. The implicit Trinitarian reference is striking: different gifts, given by the same Spirit; different kinds of service, but the same Lord [Jesus]; different kinds of working, but the same God. This does not mean Paul is parceling these things up absolutely, as if, for instance, the gifts came from the Spirit but not from Jesus and not from God. Rather, this is a preacher’s device for insisting that however diverse the gifts and graces, there is but one source: the triune God.
Second, Paul enlarges upon this principle of unity tying together diversity (12:7-12). The various gifts mentioned—the message of wisdom, the message of knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, and so forth—are not only manifestations of the one Spirit, but their primary purpose is the common good (12:7). So both in source and in purpose, they serve unity in their diversity. Moreover, although Paul will shortly say that Christians are to pursue the greater gifts (12:31), here he insists that in the final analysis the Spirit distributes them as he sees fit—which means there should never be pride in having this or that gift, nor covetousness toward another who has a gift you desire.
Third, the theme of the chapter is driven home in an analogy (12:12-20). The body is one, but it is made up of many parts that must function together. The analogy is apt, for Christians were all baptized by Christ in one Spirit (the Spirit here is the medium in which Christians are baptized, not the agent doing the baptizing, who is Christ) into one body, the church. Transparently, all the body parts are needed: it would not do for the body to be nothing but one giant eyeball, for instance. So the diversity and distribution of gifts in the church is to be cherished.
Fourth, it follows further that no part of the body has the right to say to any other part of the body that it is neither wanted nor needed (12:21-27). Indeed, in some ways the least presentable parts of the body should be accorded the highest honor precisely because they otherwise lack it. There ought to be so much empathy among the diverse parts that if one part is honored, all are honored; if one part suffers, all suffer.
Even though the applications to the church are obvious, Paul takes care to spell them out (12:27-31).
FEBRUARY 2 6
Exodus 9; Luke 12; Job 27; 1 Corinthians 13
THE LAST SPEECH FROM JOB’S “miserable comforters” is that of Bildad (Job 25), and it is pathetically short because even he now recognizes that he has nothing new to say, and neither do his friends. Job’s answer is long and complex (chaps. 26—31), as if he is determined to drive his friends into silence. Some of it is mere review. The opening chapter (yesterday’s reading, Job 26) finds Job mocking these “comforters” for their callousness, the sterility of their counsel in the face of suffering like Job’s. It also finds him agreeing with them regarding God’s unfathomable power. After a breathtaking review of God’s powerful deeds, Job concludes, “And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him! Who then can understand the thunder of his power?” (26:14). While the “comforters” charge Job with reducing God to impotence, Job so insists on God’s transcendent power that he entertains the view that God is distant.
That brings us to Job 27. Here are all the tensions in Job’s position. Job puts himself under an oath (“As surely as God lives”) to make his point. He will never admit his opponents are right, for this would mean denying that he has lived his life with integrity: “Till I die, I will not deny my integrity. I will maintain my righteousness and never let go of it; my conscience will not reproach me as long as I live” (27:5-6). But ironically, the God by whom Job swears, whose greatness Job has praised in chapter 26, the God who provides the very breath in Job’s nostrils (27:3), is also, Job insists, the God “who has denied me justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul” (27:2-3).
More irony: this does not mean that God is corrupt or unjust. Job recognizes that God calls unjust and wicked people to account (27:7-10)—often in this life (27:11-23), but finally in death.
This is not Job’s final position, of course; the drama is not yet over. But we may reflect on the place we have reached so far.
First, it is always best to be honest in our reflections on God, to avoid positions that distort facts (the folly of the three “comforters”), to remain transparent before God. He knows what we think anyway. Hope of advance is possible where there is honesty, but almost impossible where deceit reigns.
Second, this means that at various stages of a believer’s pilgrimage there may be times when opponents will see in him or her conspicuous ironies or profound mysteries. One should not glory in contradictions, of course, but in matters relating to God, mysteries are inevitable. In time, some of these edge toward resolution, but almost always accompanied by the unfolding glory of new depths.
FEBRUARY 2 7
Exodus 10; Luke 13; Job 28; 1 Corinthians 14
A SUBTLE THEMATIC CONNECTION links Job 28 and 1 Corinthians 14.
People do not often understand just how rare real wisdom is. According to chapter 28, Job understands. The chapter is a poetic reflection on this very theme: “But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell?” (28:12). Job lists the places wisdom is not found and concludes, “It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air. Destruction and Death say, ‘Only a rumor of it has reached our ears’” (28:21-22). Where then is wisdom found? “God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells, for he views the ends of the earth and sees everything under the heavens” (28:23-24). And what is God’s own summary? “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding” (28:28).
Doubtless in the context of the book of Job this chapter accomplishes several things. It pricks the pretensions of the “comforters” who think themselves so wise. It demonstrates that despite his protests, Job is still profoundly God-centered in all his thinking. Even while he publicly raises questions about God’s fairness in his own case, Job insists that all wisdom finally rests in God. Moreover, because such wisdom is irretrievably tied to shunning evil, Job demonstrates by his poetic utterance that not only does he retain humility of mind before the Almighty, but his commitment to righteous living is profoundly tied to his faith in God’s wisdom, to his own sheer God-centeredness.
There is no direct tie between this passage in Job and 1 Corinthians 14, of course. Wisdom is not specifically an issue in 1 Corinthians 14. Nevertheless, when one reads 1 Corinthians 14 after reflecting on Job 28, it is hard not to see how Paul’s wise counsel regarding the use of the grace-gifts in the congregation taps into this larger picture of sheer God-centeredness. The first part of 1 Corinthians 14 compares and contrasts prophecy and tongues. The apostle’s argument is that the key criterion is intelligibility. One can overhear the argument in the background. Some Corinthian Christians like to engage in a display of gifts that inevitably promotes someone’s reputation. But Paul insists that intelligibility is at stake, both for believers and for unbelievers who may be present. In other words, godly wisdom in this matter concludes that the good of others is paramount; that entails lowliness of mind. The aim is not to gain a reputation for spiritual power, but to encourage others to conclude that God is truly present (14:25)—and that demands intelligible communication. Even the instructions to limit tongues and evaluate prophecies disclose a stance that is self-denying, honoring to God, God-centered. In short: it is wise.
FEBRUARY 2 8
Exodus 11:1—12:20; Luke 14; Job 29; 1 Corinthians 15
THE SUMMARY OF THE APOSTOLIC GOSPEL at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15 is set out in a few points: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. The last point is then expanded upon: after his resurrection, Jesus Christ appeared to Peter, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred at the same time (some of whom have subsequently died, though at the time of writing most are still alive and thus able to bear witness), to James, to all the apostles, and finally to Paul. The list is not meant to be exhaustive, but broadly comprehensive, with special focus on the official bearers of the Christian tradition and on Paul himself as one of them. Something of the significance of the resurrection is then unpacked in the following verses.
Some preliminary observations:
First, “the Gospel” is not in the first instance about something God has done for me, but about something God has objectively done in history. It is about Jesus, especially about his death and resurrection. We have not preached the Gospel when we have told our testimony and no more, or when we have conveyed an array of nice stories about Jesus, but not reached the telos (the goal or end) of the story told in the four Gospels.
Second, the primary events of this Gospel unfolded “according to the Scriptures.” The precise way in which the Scriptures predicted these events—often by typology—is not our immediate concern; rather, it is the simple fact of the connection with Scripture that is so stunning. No one in the early church saw the significance of Jesus as something brand new, or standing in isolation from all that had come before. Rather, they saw him as the capstone, the culmination, the glorious goal, the climax of all of God’s antecedent revelation in holy Scripture.
Third, this Gospel saves us (15:2). A great deal of theology is already presupposed by these few words: in particular, what we are saved from. Embedded here are Paul’s understanding of human beings made in the image of God, the awfulness of sin and the curse of God that has separated us from our Maker, our inability to make ourselves over. The Gospel saves us—and always we must bear in mind exactly what it is that we are saved from.
Fourth, Paul makes clear not only the object of this saving faith (namely, the Gospel), but also the nature of this faith: it is faith that perseveres, that holds firmly to the word preached by the apostles. “Otherwise, you have believed in vain” (15:2)—a point often made in the New Testament (e.g., John 8:31; Col. 1:23; Heb. 3:14; 2 Pet. 1:10).