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straight away, in this life. They start specu-
lating as to what sins of Job would’ve merited
this suffering. Was it a woman? Abuse of
workers? Idolatry? Job searches himself and
finds himself innocent of such sins, and
becomes increasingly worked up and
distressed. He really is innocent, so he feels;
and that God is unfair. And as the book
progresses, the friends become increasingly
convinced that they are right and Job is
wrong; he needs to just admit and confess
what he has done wrong, and his
blessings will return. The book
ends with all of them being
demonstrated as seriously
wrong. Yet until that point, our
sympathies are actually with all
the characters and all the argu-
ments; they all seem fair
enough, from a human view-
point. The Divine answer is not
what we at first impression would like to hear.
We are all sinners, Job included. And God
simply doesn’t pay out immediately. He is
working according to a far bigger program,
which wishes only our eternal good at our
latter end. And Job becomes a prototype of
the future sufferings of the Lord Jesus, the
parade example of the righteous suffering
unfairly. It is the issue of human sin which is
one of the keys in all this. We are sinners, and
we need to take that more seriously. We have
no right to life, for the wages of sin is death.
It’s no good blaming Adam; for if we were in
his shoes, we would have done the same. That
is how I understand Rom. 5:12 “For as by one
man [Adam] sin entered the world, and death
by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for
that all have sinned”.
If we have no right to life, how much less do
we have a right to a life free from suffering
and full only of what we perceive as blessings.
Here again the Bible has a case study to help
us. Solomon had all that men would regard as
blessings. Health, wealth, women, reputation,
ability and freedom to pursue whatever path
of interest took his fancy. And the book of
Ecclesiastes shows us that without God as the
central factor in human life, all those blessings
do not bring happiness. Happiness, in the
sense of freedom from suffering, therefore
doesn’t exist in ultimate terms- without God.
Our calling as believers is to walk humbly with
our God (Mic. 6:8). Happiness is often only
perceived in retrospect- we look back at a
period in our lives as happy, but that’s only
because memory is selective. We simply have
to ditch the idea that life now must and can
be just great. The life without suffering is not
for now; believers shall eternally live it, in
God’s Kingdom. But for now, we must live in a
suffering world, and suffer ourselves, prepare
ourselves for that eternity. Human history is
not even a millimetre along the
eternal line of God’s infinite life
which He wishes to share with
us. And yet some miserably
object having to suffer briefly
now. Throughout infinite future
time, God will lavish His grace
upon us in the ages of eternity.
So says Eph. 2:7.
Suffering for Believers
As believers, we cannot immediately attach
meaning to an event. We don’t pass through
life with the smug impression that everything
makes perfect sense. But we do have the
strong impression that we are on a journey,
and that life experience is not a sequence of
random events. Our baptism into Jesus was
like Israel passing through the waters of the
Red Sea (1 Cor. 10:1,2). Our life afterwards is
like their wilderness journey towards the
promised land of God’s Kingdom on earth. We
have a destination. Every step of the path is
towards a definite, clearly defined point of
destination. The New Testament speaks of how
the Lord is working with us towards our
perfection, a point of final maturity. The
human lifespan is not even a millimetre long,
compared to the life eternal which awaits us.
God, as it were, has to pack a lot in to a short
space to prepare us. As cotton wool clouds
pass lazily across the sky, we can easily lose
this sense of the urgency and intensity of His
work in our lives. But all things are in fact
moving at breakneck speed towards the
achievement of God’s final, saving purpose
with this earth. There is a climax to human
history, which shall be in the return of the
Lord Jesus. My point is simply that life for the
believer is not a random event. Nothing is
chance. All has an intention, even if we
“...that in the ages
to come he might
shew the exceeding
riches of his grace in
kindness toward us
in Christ Jesus”
Ephesians 2:7