Job CLI

 There are few absolutes in life without the caveat that there is always an exception to the rule. Even the one about not getting out of life and alive had its exceptions, since both Enoch and Elijah never died a natural death but were taken by God. One such absolute without a carve-out or exception is that God will not be mocked. Men have tried; they even thought they’d gotten away with it for a time, but eventually, the bill comes due, and there’s no squirming your way out of paying it.

Another such absolute is that your sin will find you out. This particular one is specifically tailored to those who pretend to be something they’re not, who insist upon their righteousness, and who present themselves as beacons of holiness when, in fact, they are heavily ladened down with sin and depravity.

Even if the sin in question occurred so long ago that the individual has forgotten about it altogether, if it remains unconfessed and unrepented of, it will be exposed, and the shame of it will be put on display for all to see. The most recent debacle with the pastor of the biggest church in America at its center is a testament to this absolute, wherein heinous sin, and by the metric of law, a crime that was committed four decades ago, has come to light.

Even in his rebuke of his friends, Job had enough love for them in his heart to warn them of the severity of the punishment that is visited upon those who speak for God when He has not spoken and who mock Him as though he were a man. It wasn’t so much a ‘God is going to get you’ lecture as it was a reminder of who God is and that He will not be mocked. Do you know what you’re doing? Are you aware of the consequences of your actions, or is your overriding need to find me guilty of something I didn’t do blinding you to the reality of the judgment you are bringing upon yourselves?

Unlike them, Job wasn’t being condescending or giving off an air of spiritual superiority, although, to be fair, it would have been hard to do so in his current state. Yes, he was direct in his response to Zophar the Namaathite, but unlike him, he wasn’t being belligerent and sanctimonious.

You can speak the truth in love, but you can also speak truthful words in a spirit of division or to try and defend a point that is more a personal conviction than it is a biblical direction. Especially when attempting to comfort someone who is going through a trial, it’s advisable to search our hearts and determine whether the counsel we are providing is coming from a place of love and compassion or one of antagonism and spiritual elitism. A wise man will curb his instinct to condescend or pour burning coals on another’s head just to make themselves feel spiritually superior, while a foolish one will do as fools often do, and whether to mollify their inferiority complex or feed their need to seem great in their own eyes, they will do so at the expense of another’s pain.

Another warning shot across the bow and a reminder by Job to his friends is that God would surely rebuke them if they secretly showed partiality. We’ve all seen situations where self-professing objective arbiters of truth turned out to be anything but. The same individuals who would tell anyone who would hear that they are unbiased and objective as though they’d been tasked with being the town crier reveal themselves for who they are in the partiality they show.

You cannot play favorites when it comes to rightly dividing the Word, nor can you show partiality to an individual at the expense of the truth. We’ve all seen the mind games some individuals like to play when it comes to their favorite preacher or teacher, who has demonstrably, verifiably, and undeniably strayed from the path yet continue to be vociferously defended, whether because of the good they did in the past or the size of their ministry. It always ends in a similar manner, wherein those defending the indefensible must backtrack and apologize for having shown partiality, whether secret or otherwise.

As far as platitudes are concerned, it is undeniable that they’ve become common fare for today’s modern church, and as was the case with Job’s friends, most of them are platitudes of ashes, absent of life or instruction. Some men build kingdoms on platitudes alone. They spend their entire lives repeating the same tired tropes, and because there is no insistence on the deeper things of God, those content with a superficial faith lap it up as though it were a fine feast.

It’s not that proverbs or even platitudes don’t have their place once in a while, but a steady diet of them, especially when they are vapid and superficial, only serves to weaken the desire for the deeper things of God and drive people to cling to mantras they repeat in the mirror every morning rather than to Christ.

Everything you’ve said to me is as ash and clay. It is as dross swept away by the wind, with no permanence of foundation. Try as you might to seem wise in your own eyes and lean on sanctimony, you’ve fallen short of the mark. If ever your desire was to comfort me, that too has failed, yet I am not forsaken or alone because I still have God to whom I can run, I still have God upon whom I can call, and I still have God in whom I trust.

This was the crux of Job’s rebuke of his friends and one that was heartfelt and filled with sorrow. In seeing their reaction to his suffering and their insistence that he had sinned and thus deserved what was happening to him and perhaps worse, Job realized what many throughout the ages have since come to realize: only in God is there permanence. Only He is a strong tower that abides.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr. 

Posted on 26 March 2025 | 11:32 am