Why did God let Job suffer?

It is carefully to be remarked here, that the spring and source of all these dealings is not Satan's accusations, but God Himself. God knew what His servant Job needed, and Himself brings forward his case and sets all in movement. If He demands of Satan if he had considered His servant Job, it is because He Himself had. Satan is but an instrument, and an ignorant though subtle instrument, to bring about God's purposes of grace. His accusations result really in nothing as against Job, save to disprove their truth by what he is allowed to do; but, for Job's good, he is left to his will up to a certain point, for the purpose of bringing Job to a knowledge of his own heart, and thus to a deeper ground of practical relationship with God. How blessed and perfect are God's ways! How vain in result the efforts of Satan against those that are His!

We are anxious that the reader should distinctly seize this point. It is, to a very great extent, the key to the entire book of Job. The Divine object was to expose to Job's view the depths of his own heart, in order that he might learn to delight in the grace and mercy of God and not in his own goodness, which was as a morning cloud and the early dew, that passes away. Job was a true saint of God; and all Satan's accusations were flung back in his face; but, all the while, Job was unbroken material, and therefore unprepared for "the end of the Lord" — that blessed end for every contrite heart — that end which is marked by "pity and tender mercy." God, blessed and praised be His name! will not suffer Satan to accuse us; but He will expose us to ourselves, so that we may judge ourselves, and thus learn to mistrust our own hearts, and rest in the eternal stability of his grace.

"It is carefully to be remarked here, that the spring and source of all these dealings is not Satan's accusations, but God Himself. God knew what His servant Job needed, and Himself brings forward his case and sets all in movement. If He demands of Satan if he had considered His servant Job, it is because He Himself had. Satan is but an instrument, and an ignorant though subtle instrument, to bring about God's purposes of grace. His accusations result really in nothing as against Job, save to disprove their truth by what he is allowed to do; but, for Job's good, he is left to his will up to a certain point, for the purpose of bringing Job to a knowledge of his own heart, and thus to a deeper ground of practical relationship with God. How blessed and perfect are God's ways! How vain in result the efforts of Satan's against those that are His!" (Synopsis of the Bible)

The controversy then is not between Satan and Job, but between Jehovah and Satan. Job is not so much on trial as the Lord Himself. Is God able to keep His servants loyal when the greatest afflictions pass over them? Has the Lord the power to sustain them? To manifest this power, to show forth His own glory, He permits the suffering of the saint. There are many blessed and comforting truths connected with all this. The best is that we learn that the Lord lovingly watches His people, as He watched Job and spoke well of him and that it is an honor not chastisement when He permits afflictions and sorrow to come.

Satan could not attack the righteousness of Job, but he impeacheth his motives in serving God. In this he only revealed his own character. He attributes the godliness of Job to the selfishness in Job. Then comes his challenge. The conflict is on and it is to be seen if one who is the Lord's, who trusts in Him, can be made by adversities to turn his back upon God and forsake Him; or is God able to keep?

It is important to see that Job was walking on the earth well pleasing to God, and owned by Him as such, when Satan first called in question his fidelity and imputed to him the unworthy motive which was couched in the question "Doth Job serve God for nought?" It affords us the clue to a true apprehension of the nature of the discipline to which he was subjected, when we see that it was not primarily on account of personal failure; but the rather for the purpose of exemplifying to Satan the truth of God's estimate of His servant. It will be seen that much personal failure was betrayed by Job, while under the divine discipline; for though the trials which he suffered were inflicted by Satan, and with the intent to verify his calumny on him, yet they were used of God to accomplish in Job that self renunciation and faith in God, which did eventually enable him to establish in full blessedness, the truth of the estimate which God had in His goodness given of him. It is wonderful and most interesting to trace the way and manner in which the blessed God at once confounds Satan, vindicates His own judgment, and educates His servant up to the standing He had ascribed to him, and having brought him to it, rebukes Satan by bestowing on Job twice as much as he had before.

It was at a moment when Job could little have expected it that the crash came. No doubt he often had his fears; for he says "that which I feared greatly has come upon me;" and this must ever be the case when the soul has no better security for the love than the evidence and presence of its gifts. The gifts are thus a snare to us, and Satan's imputation against us is often in a measure true; our ground for rest and quietness of spirit before God being His kindness and mercies to us, and not simply the knowledge of His love. This is very evident from the violent grief and despair many of His people fall into when they are deprived of any particular mercy. They had rested in the gift more than in God, and the gift was to them the evidence of His love — the love itself not the rest of the heart. Satan knows man's tendency and therefore hesitates not to accuse Job of it, asserting that he had no link with God, or reverence for Him, but on account of His abundant mercies to him. God in His grace had challenged Satan as to His servant that there was none like him in all the earth. Satan retorts, imputing to Job a sordid motive for his allegiance; and asserting that if he were deprived of all which now attached him to God, he would curse him to His face. The Lord on this, in order to verify His own estimate, and to render Job in himself worthy of this estimate, permits Satan to deprive him of all he has.

Furthermore, we have the outstanding example of Job. In his case, we see not only the patience of a sufferer, but also the end of the Lord. If, in the presence of suffering and wrongs, we patiently endure, we shall find that in the end, “The Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” Job's case is specially instructive, as in his troubles we learn that, whatever trials we are permitted to pass through, God uses them for our discipline. In all that Job passed through, we see the discipline and chastening of God for the blessing of His servant. Job had begun to take pleasure in his own goodness and trust in his own righteousness. To destroy Job's confidence in himself and his own goodness, the malice of Satan is allowed, to a limited point, to sift him with terrible trials. The result of all the trials that Job passed through from Satan the accuser, from his wife and from his friends, was that he not only triumphed over all the power of the enemy, but through the trials he learned and judged the secret and unsuspected evil of his own heart. Taking pleasure in his own goodness, which indeed was real and owned of God, he had said, “When the eye saw me, it gave witness to me”; but when at last he gets into the presence of God, he says, “Mine eye sees Thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 39:11; Job 42:5-6).

By the grace of God, Job is triumphantly patient in the presence of trials, and by this same grace he is brought to know himself in the presence of the Lord. Then, having learnt his own heart, he ends by learning the heart of the Lord, for he found “that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” God, having searched Job's heart and rebuked his enemies, abundantly blessed him, for we read that “the Lord turned the captivity of Job … also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before … so the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:10, 12).

The Book of Job plainly sets before us also the teaching of the Spirit, as to the place which Satan occupies in the dealings of God and His government, with respect to man on the earth. We may also remark the perfect and faithful care of God, from whom (whatever may have been the malice of Satan) all this proceeded, because He saw that Job needed it. We observe that it is God who sets the case of Job before Satan, and that the latter disappears from the scene; because here it is a question of his doings on the earth, and not of his inward temptations. Further, if God had stopped short in the outward afflictions, Job would have had fresh cause for self-complacency. Man might have judged that those afflictions were ample. But the evil of Job's heart consisted in his resting on the fruits of grace in himself, and this would have only increased the good opinion he had already entertained of himself: kind in prosperity, he would have been also patient in adversity. God therefore carries on His work, that Job may know himself.

There are two causes which, as we are taught in the book of Job, bring trial on the saint. First, God shews the transgressions in which man has exceeded, that is, positive faults. Secondly, He withdraws man from his purpose, and hides pride from him; Job 33:16-17; chap. 36:7-9. This book gives us full divine instruction as to God's ways in trying the righteous. There we learn another truth, important to exercised souls, who often dwell on secondary causes - that God is the cause, and moves in all these exercises. The origin of all Job's trials was not Satan's accusation, but God's word, "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" God had, and saw that he needed this. The instruments were wicked, or disasters caused by Satan; but God had considered His servant, tried the righteous, but measured exactly the trial - stayed His rough wind in the day of the east wind ["in measure debate with"]; and when He had done His own work (which Satan could not do at all), and shewn Job to himself, blessed him abundantly.

In coming back to read the book of Job there are two things that have struck me very strongly. The first is that right to the very end of the book Job never knew about that interview between God and Satan that began it all. Job wanted to understand and in the end he was given the understanding that was necessary, “ … now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6). The real origin of the calamities that came upon him he never knew. Neither is there any promise that we shall know the origins of the distresses that come upon us. The purpose of them we might know but when you read the story it is a staggering fact that Job never knew that it was all started by God when Satan came into His presence among the sons of God. The other very striking thing is when, in the end, all the cloud of words had died away and Jehovah answers Job out of the whirlwind. What will He say? How will He explain the things that Job's friends have failed to explain? How will He complete the explanations that were begun by Elihu? He didn't do it! Not one word of explanation of Himself did God utter. Not one word to answer the questions that Job had asked. His words were entirely concerned with the things of this earth and nature. The Lord spoke of the inanimate things, the sea and the earth and the storm, and then the animate things, the beasts and the birds. Then, right at the end, He speaks about Leviathan. There was not one word of a spiritual kind but the presence of God was in the word and it brought Job to know himself. That was the end of the Lord, to bring Job through to true prosperity by realising the presence of the Lord. The real problem for Job had been that although he was a saint, although he could say “I know that my Redeemer liveth” he was not really habituated to the effect of the presence of God. Think of statements made in Old Testament days by those who realised the presence of God. Isaiah: “ … Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:5). Think of Elijah and the still small voice and the voice that said to him “What doest thou here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:13). In the presence of God he realised that he had to condemn himself and get back to the work that God had given him to do. We have so many examples and Job is one of the clearest.

Thus, Job was inferring that God was unfair in recompensing evil for good. Of course God is not unfair, and his friends, in trying to defend God's righteousness, were guilty of deciding that God was recompensing Job for his secretly doing evil. How sadly wrong in their thoughts were both Job and his friends! God was seeking to teach Job that his relationship to Him must not be that of one working for wages, but that of one whom God loved and who loved God, therefore doing good simply out of a heart of love, expecting no payment for it. Job did not at this time understand this, and neither did his friends.