These are the devotionals that are taken from the book For the Love of God by D.A. Carson. It goes along with the church's bible reading plan
February 8 - Job 7
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?” (Job 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” (Job 7:11). To God, Job says, in effect, I am not a monster—so why pick on me? My life is without meaning (Job 7:16); I would rather be strangled to death than continue to live as I am now living (Job 7:15).
Why should God make so much of a mere mortal as to pay him the attention God is obviously paying Job (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?” (Job 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 - Job 8
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” (Job 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?” (Job 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” (Job 8:4). In other words, the proper explanation of the storm that killed all ten of Job’s children (Job 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” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 8:11–19). Conversely, “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers” (Job 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 10 - 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 (Rom. 13:1–4). So it is important to submit to such authorities, not only so as to avoid punishment, “but also because of conscience” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 13:9; Lev. 19:18). Love is thus the “fulfillment” of the Law (Rom. 13:10)—that is, love is that to which the Law points, in this time of eschatological fulfillment (Rom. 13:11–14), and this we always owe.
February 11 - Job 10
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” (Job 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?” (Job 9:2). So Job argues that that is precisely the problem: in this particular case, Job insists he is blameless (Job 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” (Job 9:32). There is not even available a suitable arbitrator (Job 9:33). As for Job’s “friends,” they increase his suffering, for they will not admit that he is innocent (Job 9:28); they are more than eager to drop him into the nearest slime pit to prove that he is dirty (Job 9:30–31).
Job now turns to address God (Job 10). He wants to know what charges God has against him (Job 10:2). Full of self-acknowledged bitterness (Job 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?” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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” (Rom. 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 12 - Job 11
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 (Job 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” (Job 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?” (Job 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 (Job 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 13 - 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 16:26).
February 14 - Job 13
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!” (Job 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?” (Job 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” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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” (Job 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” (Job 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 15 - 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’s 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 16 - Job 15
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.
February 17 - Job 16-17
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 Job 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 18 - Job 18
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.
February 19 - Job 19
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.
February 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” (1 Cor. 7:1-2). “I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God” (1 Cor. 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” (1 Cor. 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 21 - Job 21
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.
February 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” (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).
February 23 - Job 23
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.
February 8 - Job 7
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?” (Job 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” (Job 7:11). To God, Job says, in effect, I am not a monster—so why pick on me? My life is without meaning (Job 7:16); I would rather be strangled to death than continue to live as I am now living (Job 7:15).
Why should God make so much of a mere mortal as to pay him the attention God is obviously paying Job (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?” (Job 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 - Job 8
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” (Job 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?” (Job 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” (Job 8:4). In other words, the proper explanation of the storm that killed all ten of Job’s children (Job 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” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 8:11–19). Conversely, “Surely God does not reject a blameless man or strengthen the hands of evildoers” (Job 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 10 - 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 (Rom. 13:1–4). So it is important to submit to such authorities, not only so as to avoid punishment, “but also because of conscience” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 13:9; Lev. 19:18). Love is thus the “fulfillment” of the Law (Rom. 13:10)—that is, love is that to which the Law points, in this time of eschatological fulfillment (Rom. 13:11–14), and this we always owe.
February 11 - Job 10
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” (Job 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?” (Job 9:2). So Job argues that that is precisely the problem: in this particular case, Job insists he is blameless (Job 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” (Job 9:32). There is not even available a suitable arbitrator (Job 9:33). As for Job’s “friends,” they increase his suffering, for they will not admit that he is innocent (Job 9:28); they are more than eager to drop him into the nearest slime pit to prove that he is dirty (Job 9:30–31).
Job now turns to address God (Job 10). He wants to know what charges God has against him (Job 10:2). Full of self-acknowledged bitterness (Job 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?” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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” (Rom. 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 12 - Job 11
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 (Job 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” (Job 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?” (Job 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 (Job 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 13 - 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 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” (Rom. 16:26).
February 14 - Job 13
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!” (Job 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?” (Job 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” (Job 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 (Job 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 (Job 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” (Job 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” (Job 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 15 - 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’s 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 16 - Job 15
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.
February 17 - Job 16-17
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 Job 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 18 - Job 18
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.
February 19 - Job 19
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.
February 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” (1 Cor. 7:1-2). “I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God” (1 Cor. 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” (1 Cor. 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 21 - Job 21
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.
February 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” (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).
February 23 - Job 23
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.