The Pride of Job: Five Lessons for Mankind
In many conversations with others, I have both used the phrase and heard the phrase used, “That was my ‘Job moment’.” What is a “Job moment?” A reading of the biblical book of Job will reveal a man who was an exceptionally good man by human standards and was tremendously blessed here on earth. However, Job was ironically allowed by God to suffer great and awful tragedies. To the human eye, Job did everything right and was arguably one of the “best” people written of in the Old Testament. In a patriarchal era when children were a cultural display of wealth, Job had seven sons and three daughters. In any era, the ownership of livestock reveals much wealth. Job owned at least 11,000 livestock animals. The human race also views the employment of other people to serve our needs as a sign of outward wealth. Job obviously employed many people due to the amount of labor that would have been required to maintain his vast estate. A person is also admired and deemed honorable if they demonstrate a steadfast character and wisdom. Job embodied all these characteristics, but when God’s character was slandered before the unseen heavenly hosts, God used this man Job to accomplish several purposes. To most eyes, Satan was allowed by God to unfairly destroy Job’s wealth, his family, and even Job’s health. So what can we learn from this original “Job moment?”
A “Job moment” to most is a period of excruciating trials we undergo where we feel like omnipotent God allows us to be put through the wringer. It is often referred to as a “moment,” but it rarely lasts only a moment. “Job moments” often last weeks at a time, and some of them appear to last even many years. Most people primarily focus on Job’s perseverance through trials as the most important lesson in the book of Job, but I’d like to use this post to argue differently.
Apparently, God requires all his unseen creatures to present themselves before his throne in heaven and give an account of what they are doing. Satan too is one of these unseen creatures and is also held to this responsibility. One day, God’s goodness and his righteous character was slandered by Satan before the unseen hosts. Satan accused God of essentially “paying off” Job with wealth, health, and good fortune in exchange for Job’s honor and love. In response, God gave permission for Satan to destroy all of Job’s possessions. Satan quickly set out to accomplishing that task. Job lost everything except a wife who failed to support him and advised him to “Curse God and die.” Job lost his employees, his children, his physical possessions…everything. However, this was only the beginning of his “Job moment.”
After destroying all of Job’s possessions yet failing to temp Job into cursing God, Satan and God’s unseen hosts were again recalled to God’s throne room. Satan’s failure was put on display to these unseen creatures. Satan countered his humiliation with the accusation that Job remained a devoted servant of God only because God had prepared a “hedge” of protection and blessing around Job’s health. He said as much in front of the heavenly hosts. Instead of Satan admitting defeat, he chose to again slander God by declaring that Job would have rejected him had he allowed Satan to take away Job’s health. God again decided to defend his own righteousness and ability to be loved through free will by enabling Satan to ruin Job’s health with one exception: Satan was not allowed to take Job’s life. Satan again left God’s throne room and immediately attacked Job with some sort of disease that seems to have been something like smallpox. Job’s very life hung in the balance, yet he never turned against God despite his wife and three friends goading him into admitting some sort of actionable and secret sin was in his life.
Again, most people summarize the lessons learned by studying Job as one of perseverance. However, I’d like to offer a different perspective. Since most people claim to go through at least one “Job moment” in life, I’d also like to simultaneously point out that we are actually in the same boat that Job was. While very few of us have the wealth and wisdom of Job, we all are members of the same and utterly lost race called humanity. Throughout Job’s perseverance of Satan’s horrific acts, his being thrown under the bus by his wife, and the false accusations by his three friends, the one constant in the story of Job was that he always defended himself by claiming his case was so sound that he wanted an appearance before God to defend himself. This is actually pride. As “good” and “blessed” as the man Job was, he still was a descendant of Adam and therefore stained with the flaw of a sin-nature. In God’s eyes, Job’s righteousness was as filthy rags (Cf. Isaiah 64:6), but Job failed to see it this way. As a result of Job’s blessings, he had become eaten up with pride. Because God is both a loving God and a just God, he used this moment of Satan’s slander to teach his seen and unseen creatures, Satan himself, Job, and the rest of humanity a very important truth: Even the best of human men requires a savior.
Because of Job’s honorable human character, he was blinded from reality. He should never have requested to appeal his case before Holy God, hoping to depend on his steadfast character as his defense. Yet, how many people have you encountered who have said something like, “I am a good person, and I’ll go to heaven as a result”? At some point in our lives, every one of us likes to believe we aren’t “bad enough” to miss out on heaven, yet through Job’s story, we learn a very different truth. Out of all of the characters written about in the Bible, Job could arguably be considered the “best” man not named Jesus. Weigh Job against biblical stalwarts like Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, Peter, and Paul and one will discover the flaws of these men cannot be attributed to Job except the one thing that blinded him…his pride. And pride is abhorred by God (Cf. Proverbs 8:13; James 4:6).
God needed to humble the mighty Job and reveal to him that despite all of God’s blessings, the wealth bestowed upon him, the hedge of protection he received, and even his resolute character, he still could not be taken to heaven as he was. In fact, none of us can, and I posit that this is a good thing! You see, if God could take humanity to heaven as we are, heaven would never be heaven; it would just be the world but in a different location. Mankind’s sin-nature is the problem, even though secular sociologists psychologists, and even legislators try to tell us that it is how we are nurtured is what needs to change. They are incorrect. God used a great man, perhaps an ideal human being to show us that even the greatest of men still have a sin-nature and must receive a new nature for them to come into God’s presence.
I therefore posit that the story of Job reveals five alternate lessons to the more-prominent lesson that we all need to persevere through trials:
Satan is indeed the person he is described as in the Bible. It identifies him as a murderer, the tempter, and a slanderer. Satan slandered God right in front of God’s unseen counsel. Satan tempted Job, and unless God had restrained the devil, Satan would have killed Job.
Even the best of men are sinners by nature. All humans come from a lost race. Even throughout Job’s crazy ability to persevere through so much yet never deny God, he believed his character was good enough to clear his name before Holy God. He needed to learn the lesson that he too needed a savior because he was not righteous even though he believed he was.
The pride of life is one of the three ways Satan always tempts and often overcomes mankind. Job was proud and needed to repent, but he never understood that until God did give him the humbling opportunity to defend himself before God. The story of Job informs us that John 3:7, “You must be born again,” is detrimentally true.
We also learn that other people in our lives may say true statements about life, but they often miss the mark due to the fact that they too belong to the same lost race that we do. Job’s friends did give him some good advice and even made some true statements, but they believed he had committed some unspoken sin and believed that was the cause of his troubles. They were wrong.
God will defend his name and character, and one of the ways he does that is by using mankind’s free will to do so. God allowed Job to lose everything, but Job still remained devoted to God. Job even made the extraordinary statement, “Though he (God) kill me, I will still serve him.”
In effect, we discover in Job’s story a sort of precursor for the Gospel message. Satan’s accusations of man’s shortcoming are proven correct, yet his slander of God’s character was proven wrong. Job realizes that even he has a fatal flaw despite his high character and ultimately repented. The message of the necessity of the cross for all of humanity was foreshadowed. God’s righteous name and character was venerated through a display of his grace, and he was glorified as through the entire process. Even though Job’s story teaches us that we can persevere amidst troubles, it more importantly teaches us that “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” It teaches us that “no man can come to the Father except by Jesus.” It teaches us that “there is one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” Let us allow Job’s story to remind us that despite our best efforts here on earth, none of us can stand before a Holy God and defend ourselves on our works alone. We need Christ’s righteousness to be imputed unto us in order to make it to heaven.