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Who is the strongest Christian you know? Hopefully, you read that question and right away you realize that it is theologically inaccurate. The more likely response for most of us, however, is to start letting the names of people we know run through our minds so we can make a judgment on who we consider "strongest". The reason it is theologically inaccurate is because being a Christian really has nothing to do with OUR strength, but that of the One we follow. The Apostle Paul wrote a wonderful passage on the power and sufficiency of Christ's grace when we are weak in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. However, that doesn't stop us from our desire of the flesh to judge people, both positively and negatively. We elevate mere men because of their deeds or seemingly endless ability to stay on the straight and narrow path, and we just as easily condemn others in our hearts for their inability to escape their struggles or abandon the sins of their flesh.

The person that this week's topic is about is a man who many of us would be tempted to glorify if we walked with him today. His name was Job and some of the adjectives used to describe him in Job 1 are "blameless", "upright", and "God-fearing". As Katie already pointed out in Monday's blog, Job remained faithful to God despite the adversity he faced. Both Job 1:22 and Job 2:10 (the verses we come to immediately after reading about the extreme loss that he suffered) state: "In all this, Job did not sin". However, there is a 2nd part to each of those verses we often miss. In the first one, it says that he did not sin "by charging God with wrongdoing". In the second one, it says Job did not sin "in what he said". The interesting thing about that for me as I read those verses is that I think I may have missed those important parts of the verses in the past. If you miss the qualifying phrases, then you start going down that slippery slope of thinking that maybe Job didn't sin - AT ALL.

I've always believed that no one perfect and truly holy ever walked this earth except for Jesus himself, but I know that in the past I wondered how the story of Job fits into that belief. I think it's important to know that, while Job did not sin by accusing God of wrongdoing (which would have been blasphemy) or by anything else he said in his initial reaction to the adversity (which is where about 99% of us would have failed), Job was still a sinner. He may have been blameless, but he was not sinless. Dr. Steven Lawson explains the difference in his commentary on Job: "Sin is vertical, blame is horizontal...as Job lived before the watchful eye of his peers, no one could justly charge him with moral failure, because his reputation was impeccable". Do you see the difference? Blame has more to do with what others think of us, while sin comes from an Old English archery team meaning "to miss the target". Sin has to do with disobedience toward our Creator because He is the One who designed our "target".

You may be wondering at this point how it is that Job sinned, and I intend to show you. Let's not kid ourselves; we know that sin begins in the mind. James tells us that we are tempted to sin by our own evil desires. "Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death" (James 1:15). After we read about how Job did not sin in the first 2 chapters, he begins to speak in Chapter 3. "After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth" (Job 3:1). Compare his attitude with that of the psalmist in Psalm 118:24: "This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it". You see, it doesn't matter what day those words are read or sung, because the point is that the Lord made EVERY day and we should be thankful for it. Do you know what it is when we curse anything that God made? That's right, it's a sin! I'm not saying it's the same as cursing a human being, because that would be like cursing God and Job did not curse God. But he did curse the day he was born and if you read the rest of the book of Job, you absolutely see the battle that is being waged between Job's flesh and His faith in God. He finds himself stuck between having no answer for why all the bad stuff is happening in his life, yet recognizing that God does not operate by man's expectations.

What clinched this new perspective on Job for me was some verses I came across in preparation for this writing where Job is talking about his dire situation under God's sovereignty. "He is not a man like me that I might answer him, that we might confront each other in court. If only there were someone to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God's rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot" (Job 9:32-35). What a perfect foreshadowing of Christ and his work in our lives! No matter how "upright and blameless" Job was, he could not even come close to comparing to Christ, the revelation of God in the flesh. Job recognizes his own sinful attitude by the end of the book, after much conversation with his friends and eventually, with God himself.

Folks, I believe one of the main reasons to include the story of Job in the Bible is to show us a picture of the closest thing to holiness that a sinful man can actually be, just to then show us that EVERY man has his breaking point. More than anything, the Book of Job reveals to us our ultimate dependency on the work of Christ. If Job could really be sinless, then every single one of us would be stuck in a trap of thinking we could attain the same thing without ever really getting there. The only man who did not reach a breaking point was Jesus Christ, and we have to remember that he was also fully God. So, is Job a wonderful earthly example that believers should try to emulate? Absolutely. It took a lot to break his attitude and even then, he eventually repented and saw the error of his thinking. But, is Job a model of perfection who can stand between sinful man and a holy God and arbitrate? Absolutely not. That work is done by Christ alone.