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Job – Two Mistakes
Many know the mistake of Job’s friends. Their theological position was God intervened as a moral arbiter in everyday life. This meant only the wicked suffered (this is actually the general truth presented in Proverbs). Since Job suffered, he must have been unrighteous. Since he wasn’t unjust (at the beginning), his friends therefore unjustly accused Job.
What Job’s friends thought was true – about God being a moral arbiter within time – is what Job blames God for not doing but should. Since Job suffered, and yet claimed it was unrighteous of God to allow it, Job unjustly accused God.
Basically what Job’s friends thought was theologically true, Job wanted to be true and blamed God for it not being true. Because of Job’s false conclusion, Job ended up exactly like his friends in that all 4 falsely accused the innocent.
Going beyond the Yale lecturer; and beyond the teaching of Job, there is a related truth which we must understand and appreciate: 1. If God is not the arbiter of justice in real time…and He is not…
2. If God is to retain his own justness or righteousness…and He does…
3. Then for God to be righteous there must be an eternity wherein He intervenes as the arbiter of moral and religious righteousness.
Going beyond Job and the lecturer again, Romans 3 reveals how God maintained His righteousness by not punishing every unrighteous person but instead fellowshiping them – the exact opposite of the thinking of Job’s 3 friends. That answer is found in the cross where God is both justified and the justifier; and therefore the moral arbiter in a way Job and his friends could never foresee.
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