Year 5, Day 128: Job 34

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Character

• Character: Having the interior life that is necessary to support the work that God sets before a person.  It is hearing from God and obeying.  It is doing the right thing when nobody is looking.

Often when I talk about character I talk about our character.  But occasionally it is important to remember to track the idea of character back to God and remember that He is the model of character.  We should be about getting our life to look like Him.  As we draw closer to Him, our character will naturally improve.

Fundamental to God’s character is His righteousness.  He is just.  Everything that He does is just.  If God does something, it is by definition right.  That’s what it means to be a perfect God.  Our God is not a God like many ancient cultures whose love needs to be bought and whose wrath needs to be appeased.  He is just.  He is righteous.  He never looks to harm us.  So long as we do right, we have nothing to fear from Him.  This is the argument that Elihu makes in this chapter, and he’s spot on correct.

This might seem like a no-brainer.  But it really is an important concept.  How often do I get angry at God for something that happens?  If I get angry at God for something that happens to me, am I not intrinsically questioning God’s character?  Think about this, and you’ll see what I mean.  If I get angry at God, then I am assuming that He had something to do with it.  So if I am assuming that He had something to do with what happened and I am angry, then I am calling His action into question.  If I call God’s action into question, then am I not fundamentally questioning God’s justness and therefore questioning God’s character?

Unfortunately, this is what Job has occasionally done in this book and this is the error that God will highlight in a few chapters when He speaks to Job.  Job does call God’s character into question by arguing that God should have protected Him better.  That’s just not right.  If Job thinks God had anything to do with what is happening and Job also believes God is just, he should not be able to be angry at God because there must be something at work that God is doing that is just.

This is a really difficult position to take in one’s life.  It is difficult to not get angry at God for not using His omnipotent power for our benefit.  It’s tough for us to see God as being willing to let evil come into our life for some greater purpose because we don’t want to care about the greater purpose.  We want to care about ourselves more than anything else.  Because of this, we end up not seeing God for what He is actually doing and question His character.

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