Why did God take Job through such terrible suffering? Why this deep experience of the cross? What was God doing to Job? We have to read the Book of Job several times upon our knees to understand. We have to go through bitter experiences to empathize. We cannot understand the Book of Job unless we ourselves have gone through bitter trials and sufferings.
All along we see Job occupied with Himself. He is satisfied with his own goodness and own righteousness. He continually defends his righteousness before his accusing friends. But his goodness and righteousness are outward and legal; they are not inward and spiritual. His righteousness is based on his own good works. He lists them out in Chapters 29 to 31. He is so occupied with himself that he becomes self-righteous; he even accuses God of wronging him. We can’t blame Job because the light he had (back in that patriarchal age of the Old Testament) is not the light we have in this New Testament period. His life pre-dated Calvary. He knew little about the sacrifice of Christ. But with the limited knowledge he had, he had tried to serve God with all his integrity and goodness and righteousness. But it was not the righteousness of Christ.
What was God doing to Job? He was bringing him to the end of himself. At rock-bottom Job meets God and realizes his own nothingness. He realizes all his righteousness is nothing but ‘filthy rags’. He abhors himself, Job 42.6; he says he is vile, insignificant, Job 40.4. It was because Job did not truly know God that he did not know his own (treacherous) heart. I say treacherous, because Job’s insistence on his own goodness and his own righteousness was leading to pride, to a dangerous self-absorption, to a conceit where he almost elevated his own righteousness above the righteousness of God. Job 32.2.
What was God doing? God was bringing Job through a transition from self-occupation to occupation with God, from ‘hearing’ to ‘seeing’, from ‘outward’ to ‘inward’, from the righteousness that comes from ‘works’ to the righteousness that comes by faith (faith in the Redeemer, Job 19.25, the Redeemer who is none other than our Lord Jesus Christ). From the beginning Job had faith, but not the kind of faith that God wanted. It was a faith that came by ‘hearing’; what God desired was the faith that comes by ‘seeing’. God took that faith of Job and by His grace He made it a ‘tried and tested’ faith, Job 13.15. Even more than that, as Job went through the fires, He came to have a glorious revelation of God – which humbled him in the dust (Job 42.6), but which resulted in him becoming an even greater man of God; one who could pray even for his ‘enemies’ (his miserable ‘friends’).
God takes us through trials and sorrows and failures. He knows how much we are occupied with ourselves. He knows our hidden pride; our tendency to get puffed up. He knows also our peculiarities. He deals with each of us differently. We each go through different kinds of ‘fires’, till we are emptied and broken. Only then do we come into the revelation and the fullness of Christ. Only through experience and suffering do we come to ‘know’ Christ (Phil 3.10). It is not by way of reading spiritual books, or by going to church, or by indulging in pious religious activities. No, we have to go through the experience of the Cross. Only that can transform us into the image of Christ.
It was God who initiated the trial of Job. Satan was only an instrument. We notice that Satan disappears after Chapter 2. Job goes through the terrible suffering of friends turned enemies; and through the agony of seeking the inscrutable and hidden God. He is in total darkness, and on the verge of despair. But God’s grace is always there, holding him up, so that he does not drown in despair; and God’s grace is lighting up those flashes of faith that come from Job – remarkable words, so New Testament, so Christ-like, coming from the Old Testament patriarch. (Job 13.15, Job 14.14, 15; Job 16.19; Job 19:25-27; Job 23.10,14) Job is ‘overcoming’. He is coming into spiritual ascendancy; he is coming to the Throne. He is an example of the man-child who overcomes Satan in Rev 12. (The man-child, of course, is a corporate company of overcomers.) Job is a symbol of the Church coming into her regnant position in heaven. Without going through inward experiences of the cross, we cannot obtain the ‘crown’.
JK
e
KNOWING GOD 
Well written and speaks volume. Keep up the good work!