Expositor's Bible: The Book of JobWatson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Religion
Expositor's Bible: The Book of Job
Watson, Robert A. (Robert Alexander)
Bible. Job -- Commentaries
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the individual life. To
enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to which Job reached forth, you or
I must make the bold assumption that our personal controversies are
of eternal importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in a very
narrow circle. He has done little, he knows little. His sorrows have
been keen, but they are brief and limited. He has been held down,
scorned, afflicted. But after all why should God care? To adjust the
affairs of nations, to bring out the world's history in righteousness
may be God's concern. But suppose a man lives bravely, bears
patiently, preserves his life from evil, though he have to suffer and
even go down in darkness, may not the end of the righteous King be
gained by the weight his life casts into the scale of faith and
virtue? Should not the man be satisfied with this result of his energy
and look for nothing more? Does eternal righteousness demand anything
more on behalf of a man? Included in this is the question whether the
disputes between men, the small ignorances, egotisms, clashing of
wills, need a final assize. Are they not trifling and transient? Can
we affirm that in these is involved an element of justice which it
concerns our Maker to establish before the worlds?
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How
is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and
consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human
story and be gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant"
of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the
faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite
the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, "I am the
resurrection and the life," even to Christians the vision is often
clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the
author of Job pass this barrier--in thought, or in hope? Are we
content to pass it only in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the answer lies in the very
existence of the idea of justice, our knowledge of justice, our desire
for it, the fragmentariness of our history till right has been done to
us by others, by us to others, by man to God, and God to man--the full
right, whatever that may involve.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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