In Job 22 Eliphaz opens with these questions:
“Can a man be of
benefit to God?
Can even a wise person
benefit him?
What pleasure would it
give the Almighty if you were righteous?
What would he gain if
your ways were blameless?”
Basically Eliphaz is asking, "Does a holy and wholly-other God really care?" There is something that seems intuitive about this, but it
is ultimately a very dangerous line of thinking.
On the one hand, God is not contingent upon us. He doesn’t
sit around waiting to see what we will do, wringing his hands hoping everything
will turn out ok. God didn’t have to create us, but in grace he did. God’s
grace means he acts in ways that people don’t deserve (and God’s mercy is that
he doesn’t act in the way people do deserve). In that sense God does not need us.
But do we provide no type of benefit to God? Does he not
gain any pleasure from us? On a practical note, if the answer is no, then it
seems to me that there would be very little joy (or purpose) in worshiping
God - for God or for us. If God was indifferent to us, it would be difficult to respond to him in
love. Simple duty (leading to drudgery) would be the order of the day. The only
wisdom we would have to offer to the world would be the empty words of Job’s
friends (and how tempting that is at times!).
Then we go back to the very beginning of the book. The story
begins with God pointing out Job to Satan precisely because God takes pleasure
in Job’s righteousness (Job 1:8; 2:3). That theme is not unique to Job. I think of Zephaniah
3:17 –
“The Lord your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing.”
Even more importantly we call to mind the work of Christ who
reconciles us to God. The holy and wholly-other God entered into our mess as one of us, making the ultimate sacrifice out of love for us, a love seen clearly in verses like Romans 5:8–
“But God
demonstrates his own love for us in this:
While we were still sinners, Christ
died for us.”
When we make God’s holiness and wholly-otherness eclipse his love
and grace, we turn God into something that he is clearly not. With good reason
he reveals himself as our Father.
The first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism
(the ones that set the tone for the rest of the teachings) say,
Q. What is your only comfort in
life and in death?
A. That I am not my own,
but belong body and soul,
in life and in death
to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven:
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.
