Does the Book of Job point ahead to Jesus? Read this slice of Michael Williams's How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens.
If anyone had the right to call foul over his situation, it was God's own Son. No one else was sinless like him. No one else had a closer relationship with the Father. And yet no one else suffered more. Jesus makes it perfectly clear that there is no necessary connection between suffering and goodness. A person can even be perfect and suffer.
Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. (1 Peter 3:18)
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A person can even be perfect and suffer.
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Christ gives us the ultimate picture of the righteous sufferer as he accomplishes God's saving purposes. It was not easy for our Lord to endure what he did. He even asked that, if possible, God would exempt him from it (Luke 22:42). But he was willing to suffer because he trusted that this was the best way to get to the wonderful end the Father had in view — our salvation.
[What this Means for Us Today]
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What we can be sure of is that God is about his redemptive work.
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When we submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ, we offer ourselves to him as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). It should not surprise us, therefore, if God occasionally calls on us to make good on our offer by suffering, for his purposes — even if we, like Job, don't fully understand why. It could be for our own growth in faith, for the growth or encouragement of those who see us bear up under the load by the power of God's grace, or for a host of other reasons beyond our ability to grasp. What we can be sure of is that God is about his redemptive work, as he always is, and has chosen us to participate in that work by sharing, at least for a while, in some of the same kind of suffering his own Son experienced.
Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4:12–13)
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When Our circumstances, too, can occasionally lead us to doubt God's justice or goodness.
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Job's horrible circumstances led him to question God's justice. Our circumstances, too, can occasionally lead us to doubt God's justice or goodness. Perhaps without our realizing it, we might be relapsing into the way of thinking that characterized our lives before we were Christians. That is, we might be placing ourselves at the center of our world. Our understanding, our desires, and our comfort are once again asserting their control. God, not we ourselves, should be at the center of our Christian lives. It can be difficult to see God at work in our suffering. Like Job, we might not see how he could be at work in it at all! But suffering is used by God to accomplish his purposes just as effectively as the good times are…
Yes, suffering is ultimately the result of the sin that human beings introduced into God's good creation. But, thank God, he has not abandoned us to sin's full effects. Even in the midst of those negative effects he is relentlessly pursuing our redemption and the redemption of the whole creation… Are we willing to be used by God to accomplish his redemptive work, even when that work includes suffering that we don't understand?
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God's redemptive plan involves nothing less than the liberation of creation and his people from sin and death.
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There is a realm beyond the created in which God dwells… We must be willing to acknowledge our status as created beings on an entirely different level than the Creator, and to acknowledge the limitations our created status imposes on us. Primary among these limitations, although perhaps the most unacceptable to us, is the limitation on our understanding of how and why God acts as he does. God alone knows the end from the beginning, as well as the best way to get to the end from the beginning. God's redemptive plan involves nothing less than the liberation of creation and his people from sin and death. There can be no greater good than that! He has given us, his children, a taste of that redemption even now, along with an abiding relationship with him that no circumstance, however horrible it may be, can ever sever…
-Michael Williams
Learn more about Dr. Williams's book, How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens.
Where to Go Now
How Sorrow Prepares Us for Joy via Walt Wangerin, Jr.
Closed Door Stories: Looking Back on God's Love by the Zondervan Team
Looking for Your Life's Purpose? via Michael Williams
-Adam Forrest, Zondervan
(Images & some styling above are web-exclusive features not included in the text of How to Read the Bible through the Jesus Lens. Image attribution: By 18 century icon painter (Iconostasis of Kizhi monastery, Russia) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's personal opinions are shared only for information purposes. To receive new Zondervan Blog posts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)
