Job - Part 2

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Job 13:15

Suffering and why it is allowed is a thread woven through out the bible. In the first verse of the book, we’re told that Job is a good man who feared God and shunned evil. How fair was it that God allowed all of that calamity to fall upon him.

In John 9, we see the story of Jesus and the man who had been blind since birth. The disciples asked Jesus whether the blind man’s or his parent’s sin had caused the blindness. Then as now, it was common to think that handicaps, calamity or illness was caused by sin. But Jesus told them that sin wasn’t the root cause of this man’s blindness, but that “that the works of God should be revealed in him.” Does that seem fair – that God would use a person’s lifelong blindness in order to show His glory?
During the spread of the gospel, the disciples died martyrs’ deaths except for John. Paul and James were beheaded, Peter was crucified upside down – was that fair? Take it one step further. Jesus, the sinless Son of God was beaten, spit upon, humiliated and crucified for our sins – was that fair?

Romans 8:28-30 says:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

God’s purpose for us is to conform us to the image of Christ and eventually glorify us and that process can hurt and even kill us – consider a lump of clay on a potter’s wheel. After being smashed and turned and remolded in order to make it into what the potter wants, I don’t think the clay believes the potter is very fair.

Job is a picture of the suffering that was to befall Christ and an example of the suffering that comes to believers in an effort to conform us to the image of Christ. In spite of everything, Job still trusted God – compare the attitude of Job 13:15 with Jesus’ word in garden, the night before His crucifixion: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

Job’s trust in God foreshadowed the trust of the Son for the Father that would lead to our redemption. In Philippians 2, we’re told that Jesus took on the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of a man and began his path of suffering and it all started in a stable in Bethlehem.