Love - The Ultimate Apologetic

John 17, 1 Cor 13:4-7

Preached 1/11/2015

[audio]

 

I. INTRODUCTION

From the beginning until the end of time, the operating principle of God’s law and the basis for all social interaction has been love.  Remember the story from Matthew:

Matthew 22:36-40 [ESV] ³⁶ "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" ³⁷ And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets." 

In other words, the basis of everything we are commanded to do is love for God and our fellow man. In Jesus final night with his disciples he taught about the importance of love over and over.  We have a lot of Jesus’ final teaching in John 13-17 which ends with his final high-priestly prayer for the church in the garden of Gethsemane right before his arrest.  First we see our familiar passage about communion starts with this verse about his love for us:

John 13:1 [ESV]  Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

After washing their feet and teaching them about sanctification and serving one another humbly he says:

John 13:34-35 [ESV] ³⁴ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

In chapter 14 he connects love for Him with obedience:

John 14:15-17, 23-24 [ESV] ¹⁵ "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.    ...    ²³ Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.

Note that He also tells them how they would be able to manifest this love – through the Holy Spirit which would be sent from God to indwell them after his glorification. The purpose for this is clear, as he relates in chapter 15:

John 15:8-10 [ESV] ⁸ By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. ⁹ As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

There is no doubt here.  We are to love God by bearing fruit in our lives and that fruit starts with love.  We must abide in that love.  The word abide (menō) means to continue.  Think of moving into a house and staying there – not moving to another house.  It is where you live.  Remember the old saying: “home is where the heart is”.  So we demonstrate the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives as believers through one thing more than any other – our love for God and other people.

Finally, alone while his disciples sleep and Judas approaches with the soldiers to begin the day of his final sacrifice for us, Jesus prays for the entire church (those who will believe in me through their word).  Notice what He considers to be the final and determinative apologetic for the existence of God and of the truth of the message of the Gospel:

John 17:20-26 [ESV] ²⁰ "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹ that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, ²³ I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. ²⁴ Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. ²⁵ O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

Many of us have read the excellent books by Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, Francis Schaeffer and institutions like Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, etc.  We go to debates and watch movies like “God Isn’t Dead” with non-Christian friends and family, hoping that the arguments given will convince them that Jesus is real and that they can be saved by trusting in his finished work on the cross – that they will be convinced of the power of the gospel.  This field is called apologetics, from the Greek word apologia, which means defense.  The word comes from

1 Peter 3:15 [ESV]   …in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

So we brush up on facts about creationism or philosophy or biblical reliability, but really we are missing the boat.  There is one real apologetic, and Jesus actually says in John 17 that people will know the truth of the gospel through this witness.  What was it?  It was the unity of believers in Jesus through love for Jesus and for each other.  Period.  Think about this.  All of the other intellectual sounding arguments fall flat if there is not a supernatural love between those who name Christ - one that goes beyond our common humanity – an inexplicable, powerful, all-inclusive, triumphing love.  This is not a love that can be explained by psychology, sociology, biology or law.

This love is what defines us as Christians.  As the old song says “they will know that we are Christians by our love”.  That is not just a touchy-feely folk song.  It is sober truth, based on the very words of Jesus Christ in his most solemn moment on Earth.  John, who recorded the discourses we have read today, was so amazed by the love of Christ for him that he referred to himself in his gospel as “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. This was not an exclusive claim to special preference.  He was aware as few others are, I think, of the wonders of the grace of God, and preferred to define himself and his significance by the fact that God had in his mercy shown love for him that he referred to himself that way.  We should also be this amazed.  When we talk to others would we describe ourselves that way? Getting back to the command, we see that John wrote in his first epistle:

1 John 4:7-12, 19-21  [ESV]  ⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.  …  ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us. ²⁰ If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

So we certainly see the importance and significance of Christian love.  Paul in his list of the fruit of the spirit puts it first:

Galatians 5:22-23 [ESV] ²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

 

The Problem In Corinth

It is interesting that the chapter in the Bible that we refer to as “the love chapter” is written to a church filled with problems.  The church at Corinth, which had been started by Paul 4-5 years previously to his letters to them, is suffering from many problems, They are filled with fighting and divisions (1-4), immoral relationships (5), suing each other in secular courts (6), problems related to marriage and sex (7), problems with people asserting their rights to the hurt of weak believers (8), problems with self-control (9), problems with idolatry (10), problems in communion (11), breakdown of order in church services and exercise of spiritual gifts (12-14), problems with doctrine (15), and problems with giving (8,16). The problem with having all of these problems is that they were actually saved.  This was a Christian church.  Paul makes this clear in his introduction in chapter one, where he praises God for saving them and giving them everything they needed to live their Christian lives.

But by the standards of Jesus, it is pretty clear that the world (and certainly the huge city of Corinth) would be able to look at this floundering church and declare “there is no truth to the gospel – Jesus obviously never came to save their sins.  Just look at them! There is no power there – they are just like us – maybe worse!”

Our passage is from the middle of the section talking about the abuse of spiritual gifts in the church at Corinth. Rather than concentrating on the humility of preaching and living the gospel, the Corinthians had taken their culture’s love for flashy speakers, “media idols” and spectacles and brought it into the church.  Though there was a long list of spiritual gifts that God had given to the church in Corinth for the building up of the body in love, they had pounced upon various “sign gifts” and were making church about them.  Paul has to spend chapters 12 and 14 methodically putting them in their place and exalting the everyday gifts that built the church (which were somehow not flashy enough for the Corinthian believers).  In the middle of this passage, however, he takes a detour, and in a passage of just 17 verses he lays out the solution not only to their spiritual gift problem, but to every other problem that they have as well.  We know this as “the love chapter”. Let’s turn to 1 Cor 13:

II. The Solution – A More Excellent Way

IIa. Love is the Way

The introduction to this inspiring passage is actually at the end of chapter 12.  After a technical discussion of the relative benefits of each gift and the preference for the church-building (but less flashy ones), he says this:

1 Corinthians 12:31 [ESV] But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

Technical discussions were good and necessary, but even if they conceded his argument, they could still miss the boat.  So Paul introduces “a still more excellent way”, they way of love.  Before we proceed, there are a few more thoughts to introduce.

The world knows about love – in its own way.  It has been pointed out that, while in English we have one word for love, Greek had at least three.  Sexual attraction was described by the word eros – which was also the name of the god also known as Cupid.  This is a selfish love that desires to have the object of its affection for one’s own satisfaction.  We still use words like erotic which are based on that word, and a lot of people in modern society certainly mean eros when they say “love”.  Listening to most popular songs about love seem to indicate that a lot of what we talk about in love songs is that needy, self-pleasing type of love (I want you because you make me feel good).  There was also phileo, the love of close friendship between family and friends.  We see that word today in words like Philadelphia  - the city of brotherly love.   Even that type of love is generally limited to one’s own crowd or those like us. 

The early Christians and Bible writers, to describe the love of God (and the love that we should therefore show to others) could not use those words with their already defined meanings, so they used a different word and poured all the meaning of Christian love into it.  That word, agapē, was not much used in Greco-Roman culture, and was therefore sort of ‘ready made’ for Christianity.  For the most part it is used all through the Greek New Testament to describe God’s love (John 3:16 etc) and to frame the “new commandment” given to us to love one another.

Note that the word used in the King James version of the bible in our “love chapter” is charity.  This was actually derived from Wycliffe, who took it from the caritas of the Latin Vulgate, translated by Jerome in the 4^th century.  Love is a better translation, but Leon Morris points out that Jerome used the word caritas because “what the Latins meant by amor was not what the New Testament meant by agapē.”

Agapē is the love we see demonstrated on the cross.  Morris says: “It is a love for the utterly unworthy, a love that proceeds from a God who is love.  It is a love lavished on others without a thought whether they are worthy or not.  It proceeds from the nature of the lover, not from any attractiveness in the beloved.”

 

IIb. The Chapter

There are three parts to this chapter, and J. Vernon McGee’s outline will serve us well. 

• In verses 1-3 we see the Preeminence of love – its Value.
• In verses 4-7 we see the Prerogative of love – its Virtue.
• In verses 1-3 we see the Permanence of love – its Victory.

Paul introduces the subject of love in the first three verses simply.  He lists six things that the Corinthians held in high esteem and declares them NOTHING without love.

To their fascination with sign gifts, he says (v1)  “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”  Without love (and we see in the previous chapters there was a definite lack of love there) it was just noise.

To their fascination with wisdom, rhetoric and knowledge, as well as fascination with “miracles” he says  (v2) “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.”  The word nothing literally means “nobody”.  Having the raw gifts or talents and even exercising them without love did not make him “somebody”.  It meant nothing without agapē.

Finally Paul talks about great public works of piety (v3): “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  This is certainly reminiscent of the words of Jesus in Matthew 7: 22-23 ”²² On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' ²³ And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'”

We will spend more time on these verses when we get there in Sunday School later this year, so in the mean time we can sum up Paul’s argument, attain with the words of McGee: “Look at it this way: Write down a string of zeros – eloquence alone is zero, prophesy alone is zero, knowledge alone is zero, faith alone is zero, sacrifice alone is zero, martyrdom alone is zero.  Six zeros still add up to nothing.  But you put the numeral 1 to the left of that string of zeros, and every zero amounts to something. And, friend, love is the thing that needs to be added to every gift of the Spirit.  Without love your gift is worthless.”

Likewise in the last six verses of the chapter Paul talks about how all of these spiritual gifts were temporary - useful for a time on Earth but doomed to cease and pass away.  But love was never going to pass away.  He ends with the trio of “faith, hope and love” but states that “the greatest of these is love”.

 

III. Love in Action

IIIa. Intro

Now let’s dive into our main text.  The four verses in the middle of the chapter are jam-packed.  They form a “bullet list” of 15 truths about what the definition of this agapē love is.  A study of this list is grueling to any open and sensitive soul.  Paul has told the Corinthians back in chapter three that they needed to be sure to avoid being self-deceived. We tend to give ourselves an easy grade when evaluating our own motives and love for others, but verses 4-7 are a good checklist to check our own love level, and therefore our witness to an unbelieving world.  Let’s read through the list first to get our bearings. Here is how it reads in the ESV:

1 Corinthians 13:4-7  ⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

At a first viewing, a few things become obvious.  Kenneth Chafin says “As we look at each of the [15 succinct] phrases it becomes obvious that we are defining a style of life that is beyond our reach at a human level – something absolutely impossible unless God’s Spirit dwells within us and helps us.”  Another exercise he suggests is substituting “Christ” in the place of “love”: Christ is patient and kind; Christ does not envy or boast; He is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. Christ does not insist on his own way; He is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Christ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Notice that Paul starts his list with two positive attributes of love, then lists eight things that are NOT true about love, and then finishes with a quick list of positive points again.  Most of the points are only two words long in the Greek. 

Another interesting observation is that Paul writes in a very dynamic way – love is best described as a series of actions.  The verbs are in the present tense, describing “Habitual as well as present actions”. Anthony Thistleton translates these verse this way:  “Love waits patiently; love shows kindness. Love does not burn with envy; does not brag – is not inflated with its own importance.  It does not behave with ill-mannered impropriety; is not preoccupied with the interests of the self; does not become exasperated into pique; does not keep a reckoning up of evil.  Love does not take pleasure at wrongdoing, but joyfully celebrates truth.  It never tires of support, never loses faith, never exhausts hope, never gives up.” Love described as a set of verbs captures the spirit and feel of Paul’s words. 

Another thing that we should realize about this list is this.  It is hard-hitting but not exhaustive.  Most commentators think that Paul is specifically rebuking the Corinthian church for its own failings of love that are leading to the problems in that church. If we turn the sense of each item around we see a stark description of the sins of the believers in that city:

The Corinthian church members were impatient and unkind; envious and boastful; arrogant and rude. They insisted on their own way; they were irritable and resentful; they rejoiced at wrongdoing, but not with the truth. They put up with nothing, believed nothing, were skeptical about each other, and quit when they going got tough.

 

IIIb. The List

1. Love is patient or long-suffering (works patiently).  The word makrothymeō means to be of a long spirit.  It is the opposite of “short tempered”.  It is used of God in many passages (Luke 18:7; 2 Peter 3:9; Rom 2:4, 9:22) where He delays judgment on (deserving) people because of his mercy. (If He was not long-suffering with us where would we be now??)  Love does not give way to bitterness and wrath when evil is done.  It remains tranquil. It is self-restraint.  Love does not “blunder in” or “blurt out”.  It considers its words and reactions.  It realizes that there is a right time for things, and that when the emotions are hot that is not the right time.  As James wrote: “The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”  Love bears up under provocation WITHOUT COMPLAINT.

2. Love is kind (shows kindness).  This is not merely passive – it is “actively engaged in doing good to others”.  It responds to others with the same tender heart and forgiveness that God has shown to us in Christ. The Greek word conveys more warmth than the English word kindness – “pure and unselfish concern for the well-being of the other”.   (Imagine putting Jesus’ name in some of the posts we see from self-professed Christians online – the kind that talk about how awful other people are and proclaim how we will put up with stupid people only so far.  Imagine if Jesus said that to us.)  The full word chrēsteuomai is not found anywhere else in the NT and some think Leon Morris says that Paul may have coined the term by combining two meanings: Love reacts with goodness toward those who ill-treat it, and it gives itself in kindness in the service of others.  Chrysostrom said that it reached out with works of kindness and mercy, which worked “to appease and extinguish: the community fires set by the anger of others “not only by enduring nobly, but also by soothing and comforting” One story I found fascinating is given by Tertullian, who said that the kindness of Christians in the second century so surprised their pagan counterparts that they called Christians chrestiani, “made up of mildness or kindness,” rather than christiani.

3. Now Paul moves to his series of negative statements about what love isn’t.  First of all he says it is not Jealous (not filled with jealousy, not envious, does not burn with envy).  Wordly society is based on envy (status, possessions, privilege, honor, etc.).  Corinthian society was like ours in that respect.  Nothing ruins a bonus better than finding that your co-worker got a bigger one.  Love, however, is NOT displeased with the success of others.  It is not “up in arms” and crazy.

4. Love does not boast (does not parade itself, is not vainglorious).  The word perpereuomai means to “heap praise on oneself”.  It is a rare word that is used to describe a “pompous windbag” and may apply to the self-styled orator types who were so popular in that part of the world and engaged in constant self-promotion of their abilities as rhetoricians.

Rom 12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.)

5. Love is not arrogant (“puffed up”, proud).  Physioutai.  Has the idea of having an exaggerated self-conception. (Picture Hans and Franz)  Paul has previously contrasted this with love in 8:1 where he says that knowledge “puffs up, but love builds up”.  One writer describes love as “not giving in to temptation to assume an air of superiority, protection from an inflated view of our own importance.”  Love builds up the building, the puffed-up spirit blows up the building.

6. Love does not act indecently (does not behave with ill-natured impropriety – does not behave rudely, does not dishonor others).  It means to not act according to a standard of decency – “disgracefully, dishonorably, indecently”.  This one makes me think of Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady, who has blundered through the movie stepping on other peoples’ feelings (especially Eliza’s) with impugnity, and when confronted with his rudeness he says: “You see, the great secret, Eliza, is not a question of good manners or bad manners, or any particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls. The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you've ever heard me treat anyone else better.”

• One writer describes this word as “the thoughtless pursuit of the immediate wishes of the self regardless of the conventions and courtesies of interpersonal life”. 
• It probably means to act with poor taste or bad manners or lack of courtesy – with a lack of respect for the dignity of others. 
• It is not self-assertive.
• Also refusing to accept restraint on our own behavior and self-will/advertisement.
• A few commentators think that Paul may be referring to something more serious – specifically the sexual impropriety of chapter 5.  Whatever the case, we might say this one as “love does not behave badly or impurely”

7. Love is not self-seeking. 

1. It is not hung up on personal rights – relationships are more important. 
2. It is not hung up on personal feelings. (Rom 15:3 Christ did not please himself)
3. “Love does not believe that ‘finding oneself’ is the highest good; it is not enamored with self gain, self justification, self worth.” [Pillar]

1 Cor 10:23-24 ²³ "All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. ²⁴ Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.

8. Love is not provoked (not cantankerous, not easily angered, not “touchy”)

• No tantrums, no flying off the handle, no fits of anger.
• The word paroxynetai means to stimulate, to irritate.
• Love IS good natured and calm.
• In other words, people should not be afraid of setting you off
• Does not parade its hurts, does not practice “social blackmail”

9. Love keeps no record of wrongs  (reckons no evil).  The image here is of an accountant keeping books.  Paul had asked earlier in 6:7 “why not suffer wrong”. 

Mat 5:43-48 [NASB] ⁴³ "You have heard that it was said, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.' ⁴⁴ "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ "For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ "If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Rom 12:14  [NASB] Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.

Rom 12:17-21 [NASB] ¹⁷ Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. ¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. ¹⁹ Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord. ²⁰ "BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD." ²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

• Love has no score to settle.
• It does not brood on hurt
• We are “shock absorbers”

10. Love does not rejoice in iniquity but
11.  rejoices with the truth.

• Love is not anxious to hear bad news (schadenfreude)
• Love does not take pleasure at wrongdoing
• Evildoers love company.  (I wonder if this means also that love does not say “that sin in the movies does not bother me”)
• Love rejoices instead with the truth (rejoice prefaces with “sun” in second positive case) 

 

Now there is a quicker staccato of four terms that convey very positive facets of love.  Each is only two words in the Greek, with one of them being panta – ALWAYS.  In other words, this is “what love continually does”.  Love has no limits:

 

12. Always protects (πάντα στέγει – stegō: to deck, thatch, cover, protect, preserve) – “never tires of support”

• Never caves in to pressure – not docile but “creative, innovative, transforming”
• Love puts up with anything. 

Proverbs 10:12 [ESV] Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses.

1 Peter 4:8 [ESV] Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

13. Always trusts (πάντα πιστεύει – always believes) – “never loses faith”

• The practice of “the benefit of the doubt” – ascribe the best motives to others.
• R.C. Sproul calls this “the Practice of Charity” and he speaks of the difference between the “best case analysis” and the “worst case analysis”.  WCA is attributing the worst possible motives to anyone who hurts us.  The likelihood that anybody was laying up late at night trying to figure out how to hurt you is really low.  But we do WCA all the time, don’t we.  Attributing the best possible motives for sinful actions is usually reserved for ourselves.  The first thing we say when confronted by hurting someone else is to say “I didn’t mean it” but we don’t say that of others.  We need to practice “best case analysis”.
• John Calvin said “Not that a Christian should knowingly and willingly suffer himself to be imposed upon; not that he should deprive himself of prudence and judgment, so that he may be the more easily deceived; but that he should esteem it better to be deceived by his kindness and gentleness of heart, that to injure his brother by needless suspicion.”

14. Always hopes (πάντα ἐλπίζει ) – “never exhausts hope”

• “Even when things are not looking good, love has a way of looking to God’s future and seeing a better day.  True love keeps us from being discouraged.
• Trusting Jesus so we can make ourselves vulnerable to others?
• We see this kind of love expressed by Joseph, when confronting his brothers who had mistreated him and sold him into slavery:

Gen 50:19-21 [ESV] ¹⁹ But Joseph said to them, "Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? ²⁰ As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. ²¹ So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones." Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.

15. Always endures (πάντα ὑπομένει – always abides under) – “endures all things”, “never gives up”

• “Love allows us to remain true in the most adverse circumstances and even to transform the situation by the enduring”.
• If there was a straw that “broke the camel’s back” then that means you have still been keeping score of evil (remember #9)

 

CONCLUSION

So we can summarize this as a series of commands to love:

• Stay calm
• Put yourself in the others’ shoes
• Rejoice in others’ blessings
• Stay humble – let God do any exalting
• Don’t get hung up on yourself
• Be classy
• Don’t serve yourself but others
• Don’t get mad
• Throw away your “I was hurt” record book
• Don’t love sin in others but rejoice when they obey God
• Put up with everything in love
• Always assume good motives in others, even for things that hurt you
• Remember that God is in charge and all things work for good and believe that this includes other Christians
• Never quit, never run off, stomping your feet saying “that’s IT!”

Is this a danger to us?  Remember that Paul wrote this to Corinth from Ephesus, where he was building up the church there.  Years later the apostle of love, John, would be their pastor for years.  Yet when John was exiled from their to Patmos and received the Book of Revelation, he was directed to rebuke the church in Ephesus because they had “left their first love”. 

 
If we want our church to grow and people to stop leaving, we need to covenant to follow these guidelines.  God the father is glorified when we are one and when we love each other.  Will we decide today to positively make any steps necessary to appropriate these attributes into our lives?

 

Two Messages From Job

[audio]

JOB 1-45

Preached 7/16/2017

 

I INTRODUCTION: Repentance and Sovereignty

Common misconceptions about Sin and Salvation

• BB Article (I’ll believe if you prove God agrees with me) – the danger of apologetics
• I am a good person, not like others that need salvation
• An imperfect picture of God – lack of knowledge or power 

From the beginning, the message has always been the same.  Of course as Christians, we have straightforward teaching like Paul’s argument in Romans 1-3, starting with an indictment of the human race before God, systematically taking down “the really bad sinner”, “the really good sinner”, and “the religious sinner” and ending with a crescendo in chapter three with the emphatic section starting with “For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,” which concludes with Romans 3:23’s “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – and if that wasn’t enough, in 6:23 he says that “the wages of sin is death”.  There are some who try to make this a Pauline issue, saying that Paul added his own theology to Christianity, ruining the pure message of love from Jesus.  But the apostle John (“whom Jesus loved”) was the one who wrote in his first epistle:

I John 1:8-10 ESV   ⁸ If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ¹⁰ If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

John was the one who wrote down Jesus’ words in John 3:16, but who also quoted in verse 18 that all needed to be born again because they were already condemned.  Peter wrote in 1 Peter 4:18 that even the righteous “are scarcely saved” (the word meaning “just barely”).  John the Baptist had one message: Repent!  This message was for the common people, the religious leaders (brood of vipers) and even political people (like Herod).

Finally, Jesus Himself spoke of unpopular topics like hell more than any other.  His message was consistent. Back in the Sermon on the Mount series we showed how Jesus masterfully laid out the universal need for salvation in a three chapter masterpiece of a sermon

 

Ch	Self-Told Lies Demolished	The Truth from Jesus
5:1-16	I am a nice person (at least to my friends - but I get even against jerks and lament their existence)	True Happiness is from a kingdom different from what you and the world think
5:17-19	Those are old-fashioned puritanical rules - we are more enlightened now!	God's Standards have not and will not change.Jesus upheld the law, fulfilling, not abolishing it.
5:20-48	I keep the ten commandments, I do more good than bad. God owes me!	The point of the law was not to help you save yourself.  The three purposes of human religion
6:1-18	People think that I am great	God is our only judge - our "audience of One".  Don't do your deeds to be seen by men.
6:19-34	I am the master of my destiny - self reliance is the key to happiness	True happiness only comes from a close, trusting relationship with a good God.
7:1-6	That guy is much worse than I am!	You don't get to heaven by comparison with worse people (and you are worse than you think)
7:7-12	Eh - I am fine. I have need of nothing.	We need our heavenly Father and he is good and worthy of our trust
7:13-20	But everybody does it!	Narrow vs wide gate, difficult vs easy.  The world is going to hell - don't follow them there!
7:21-29	Sure I am going to heaven! I feel I am at least.(Review all the above reasons)	Don't be a false believer - listen to Jesus' wise, loving warnings!

The entire message of the gospel rests on two facts:

1.       God has every right to judge sin, and is blameless and just and good when doing so, and

2.       All of humanity is lost in sin and deserves Gods’ righteous judgment.

Without these two foundations, the gospel is not just weakened.  Without these facts the gospel doesn’t make any sense – it has no reason to exist and it is not “Good News”.  And yet we fight against them – they both are very offensive to human pride, self reliance, and self-glorification.  We like to think that we are better than we are, and we hate the idea of someone with a higher standard of right and wrong looking down and judging us.  So we sacrifice the idea of a holy, sovereign God and create some higher being in our own image – like the “mush God” – a god for all occasions who affirms us to be wonderful.  And our sin gets explained away as “mistakes” or as things that are someone else’s fault – sicknesses, reactions to bad parents, etc.

But sacrificing the biblical truth about God and about the human race actually has more collateral damage than we can imagine.  Without these keys to truth we still need to explain everything that happens in the universe but now our explanations are often hollow and unhelpful.

First, let’s think about what happens when we get rid of sin:

1. Without an understanding of universal sin, we end up with no compelling solution to the “why do people act badly” question, and we spend lots of time and effort treating symptoms with the wrong medicine.  For instance:

 

1. It must be about Money:  Marxist theory proposes that the unequal distribution of wealth is what causes problems in society.  Even many churches have abandoned the Bible and adopted Karl Marx’s philosophy, leading to things like “liberation theology”, which has seen many so called churches around the world openly advocating communist revolutions or, in this country, embracing punitive taxation and redistribution of money, often quoting Jesus to justify their policies.  It is a sad fact that countries that have implemented Marxism fully have generally worked hard to crush churches and eradicate the gospel because it disagrees with their views.  In the end, this doctrine led to the direct deaths of over 100 million people in some of these countries just in the last century, but in the end human nature did not change.

2. Another evil that comes from a lack of understanding of universal sin is spiritual pride – the whole idea that I can justify myself by looking down on others, and that I am immune from conviction myself.  I once heard someone in this church say (during a sermon) “that’s why I hate going to church – they are always ‘talking down’ to you”.  The preacher was not saying anything that he did not apply to himself in equal measure, so how was this ‘talking down”?  The only way that this could be true is if the person taking offense thought themselves to be ‘above it all’ and ‘better than’ others.  They would certainly have denied this – I’m sure with great conviction – but offense is a reaction to a perceived injustice.

3. Finally another result of the denial of sin is acceptance of evil, and the labeling of evil as good.   God said to Isaiah “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (5:20)  He considers it a very bad thing indeed.  What happens in a society that calls evil good and good evil?  The foundations are torn away and those who do good are persecuted as things go from bad to worse.  History tells us that those societies eventually collapse, though there is usually a lot of death and grief before that happens, usually on a huge scale. 

2. Without an understanding of universal sin, people will not respond to the gospel.  Human invented religions show this, as they generally all show the same three characteristics in the end:

1. “Religion” is the system by which we distinguish between “us” and “them”, where “us” is the “good” people and “they” are the “bad” people.
2. “Religion” is the set of special rules, that if we follow them God is made our debtor.  In other words, we “earn” our way to heaven, which then God is obligated to give us as our reward for following them, and
3. “Religion” is the framework that we can use to feel good about ourselves and whatever we choose to do in life. 

Remember that Jesus spoke of the “religious” man in his parable of the Pharisee and the Publican praying.  The “religious” man, Jesus said, did not go away justified before God, because he spent the entire time telling God how good he was, instead of throwing himself on God’s mercy, begging forgiveness for his sins.

Now think about what happens when we get rid of the sovereignty of God.  If God is not in charge of the universe, there is no universal hope, and no ultimate hope for meaning in the universe.  Yet we choose this because it makes certain hard questions about life seem easier.  This last week a radio host that I enjoy listening to had an internet talk show where he took calls from the audience.  One of the things I like about him is that he has a clear moral framework from the Bible as he is a devout Jew and is in fact currently writing a large and scholarly commentary on the Torah.  He often takes questions about religion and morality and he is very friendly with Christians and others.  This week he was asked the age-old question “if God is good, how can there be evil in the world?”  This is not an easy question, and theologians have struggled with that question since the fall. His answer was very clear: God did not know that that would be a result of giving people free will – he quoted the OT verse that spoke of God’s regretting having made man and took that to mean that God was surprised by all of the evil that humans did.  This is by no means a unique point of view, but people prefer it to a God that could have prevented all of the evil that we see and did not.  That He might have a plan that is good but won’t explain it to us is absolutely unacceptable to us.  One famous philosopher put his frustration at this question this way: “If there is a god, then he is a devil”.  But in the end, we are left with an imperfect, doddering God that can only try but in the end is just not very good at what he is doing and we have no assurance about the future.

Note that there is even debate among evangelical, bible-believing Christians on this point, which deals with the issue of whether God predestines people for salvation (as described in many verses, including Romans 8, Ephesians 1, Acts 13:48 and other verses.  There is a long tradition on both sides of this issue, with many good Christians on each side, but it ultimately comes down to the same issue as we have just described – if God is in control, how can He really be good?

In the end, we demand answers from God, but sometimes we go ahead and answer for Him (to help Him out) if He doesn’t answer us clearly.

With that introduction, let’s get to the book!

 

II “The Book of Repentance”

Background: The book of Job is colorful but enigmatic.  It comes from great antiquity, and is considered by many people to be the oldest book in the Bible.  We don’t know the author, and though it appears to be a true story about real people, it is written as poetry. It is from the time of patriarchs, and it is even possible that Job was a contemporary of Abraham (Ironside – before knowledge of God had faded) 

The theme of the book

• The traditional view: why do the righteous suffer?
• My encounter with H.I. Ironside in Except Ye Repent chapter 2 “The Book of Repentance” (general) 

The Book of Job has six distinct parts:

1. Dispute in heaven and the integrity of Job  (1 - 2:10)
2. Job’s three friends and their arguments  (2:11 – 25)
3. Job’s defiant defense (26 – 31)
4. A young man (Elihu) speaks for God (32 – 37)
5. God makes a challenges Job  (38 – 41) 
6. Job’s repentance and restoration (42)

The story initially goes back and forth between heaven and Earth, giving a rare “behind the scenes” view of events.  We are first introduced to the main character of the book, Job:

Job 1:1 ESV   There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

In a world filled with darkness and evil, Job is described as having excellent moral characteristics.  The introduction continues, describing a man with a large family (7 sons and 3 daughters) and great wealth, including many servants.  God had evidently blessed him greatly in life, so much so that he was literally “the greatest of all the people of the east”!

Not only was his family a close one, Job was constantly concerned with their spiritual state, working as a priest for his family:

Job 1:5 And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually.

So it appears that Job was making God first in his life, was concerned about sin, was blameless and upright, and concerned for others.  Later in the book we learn that he was a respected member of the community with a strong reputation as one who dispensed justice and cared for the poor, the orphans, the sick and the widows of his community.

But things were not to stay idyllic in Uz for this great and noble man.  Up in heaven we see a drama unfold when Satan (who is called elsewhere “the accuser of the brethren” comes before God.  Evidently he is trying to bring a bad report about things on Earth, and the conversation goes like this:

Job 1:7 The LORD said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it”.

But before he can present any accusations, God throws a question to Satan:

Job 1:8 And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?".

Now if there was any doubt about Job’s righteousness, God has settled that for us by his own testimony.  He himself declares Job to be blameless and upright and good, so we can say without doubt that this was a really good guy.  Since God had pointed him out, we could say that he was the best person on Earth!

But Satan did not believe it for a minute.  He immediately counters that Job was only good because of God’s goodness to him.  It was merely a quid-pro-quo:

Job 1:5, 9-11  ⁹ Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? ¹⁰ Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. ¹¹ But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face."

What follows is, for us, one of the most inexplicable things in the entire Bible.  God removes his protection from Job and gives Satan permission to prove his accusation!

Job 1:12  And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand." So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Not needing to be told twice, Satan immediately returns to Earth and ruins Job’s happy life, killing all of his children and ruining him by taking away everything that he owns.  The story is heart-breaking as he gets news of natural disasters and attacks one after the other until he is left standing, poor and destitute, with only the clothes on his back and his wife at his side.  But God is vindicated by Job’s reaction:

Job 1:20-22   ²⁰ Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. ²¹ And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." ²² In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

Note that Job was hurt and in mourning, but not only did he still bless God, he maintained that God had every right to do what He had done, thanking God for having blessed him so much previously, even if He had now taken back his gifts.  But Satan was not done (and God was not either):

Job 2:1-5  ¹ Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. ² And the LORD said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the LORD and said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." ³ And the LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason." ⁴ Then Satan answered the LORD and said, "Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. ⁵ But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face."

God had already been vindicated, but Satan basically said “No fair! That’s not enough.  He’s still healthy! ‘If you have your health, you have everything’!”  So God once again gives permission to Satan to attack Job:

Job 2:6-8  ⁶ And the LORD said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life." ⁷ So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. ⁸ And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.

At this point, even Job’s long suffering wife throws in the towel, but Job will have none of it: 

Job 2:9-10  ⁹ Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die." ¹⁰ But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Now the story moves on to the main section.  Three good friends of Job, presumably also rich community leaders in their own right, come to comfort Job as soon as their hear about his calamities.  They felt sorry for him and wept with him and mourned with him.  They kept vigil with their suffering friend, sitting on the ground with him for an entire week without speaking, because “they saw that his suffering was very great”.

Ironside introduces the friends like this:  “Each proved true to his own clearly defined character.  Eliphaz of Teman was distinctly the man of experience.  An observant student of natural law, he again and again declares, “I have seen.”  Bildad of Shuah was the typical traditionalist.  As the fathers, he says; they are wiser than we.  They shall teach thee.  Zophar of Naamah was the cold, hard legalist who considered that God weighed out calamity in exact proportion to man’s sin, and dispensed mercies only according to human desert.”

Given their proclivities, we could guess what was going through their minds during their seven days of silence.  Why had God stricken their friend with such evil?  They had to know what the reason was, and their minds must have been trying to figure it out.  We all want to have all the answers, and their answers become very clear in the next 24 chapters.  What other explanation was there but that their seemingly righteous friend was hiding great secret evil in his life?  God must always reward good service in this life with riches and health, right?  Everyone knows God only lets bad things happen to bad people.  And we can imagine that Job knew their thoughts, and that that was what finally caused him to speak out, cursing his own birth and proclaiming his innocence.

We all know the rest (if we have read Job), how through chapter 25 we see a debate back and forth where a friend accuses Job of sin and Job defends his innocence.  Ironside takes up the story again: “Sturdily, honestly, sometimes ironically, Job answered them, denying their accusations, assuring them of his confidence in God, though admitting his sore perplexity.  He even went so far as to declare that, if their philosophies were right, then God was unjust in His dealings with him.  At last they were silenced when by his final speech he met all their accusations and vigorously maintained his own righteousness.  In three chapters (29-31) he used the pronouns “I”, “me”, “my”, and “mine” 189 times.”

Now a newcomer is introduced, a younger man named Elihu.  He had listened to this debate with increasing frustration as Job’s friends were unable to get anywhere by their traditional arguments and Job had continually justified himself.  But he had not spoken out of respect for his elders.  Now he unleashes a “masterly address”, exalting the wisdom of God, (as Ironside writes) “who is not obliged to reveal beforehand His reasons for chastening.  And he pointed out that the bewildered soul is wise when he asks of God – waiting for Him to instruct, rather than attempting to understand His ways through human reasoning.”

[At this point I am reminded of a story from the gospels.  In John chapter 9 Jesus and his disciples were leaving the temple and they see a man blind from birth.  This particular kind of situation was a sticky theological issue for the rabbis and teachers of that day.  Since blindness was due to sin, how can a newborn baby be punished for sin (as they saw it)?  Was the baby punished because something his parents did, or did he actually sin in the womb?  This kind of question is the kind that gives philosophers headaches.  The need to have an answer for everything causes us to invent entire new religions.  In Eastern religions they have come up with the concept of Karma, in which they might propose that the man was born blind because of sin in a previous life. This kind of philosophy has its own kinds of repercussions, like the caste system in India.  If you receive evil in this life it is because you are paying off a Karmic debt.  So lifting someone from a low caste to a higher position in life can be seen as hurting that person by dooming them to another suffering life.  In that case, the Christian view is much more likely to lead to charitable ministries than one that believes that suffering in this life is all earned.]

But in our John 9 passage Jesus would have no part of such a debate, declaring instead:

John 9:3  “… It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

This answer is ultimately unsatisfying to someone who wants to understand all of God’s purposes, and it offends because God is seen by us as a “meanie” who doesn’t run the universe the way that we would.  But Jesus’ answer is very consistent with God’s answer in Job.  Elihu’s speech is ended in chapter 38 by wind and thunder as God Himself comes and gives Job his answer.  But he does not answer any of Job’s questions.  Instead, He poses a series of unanswerable questions to Job to demonstrate Job’s lack of qualifications to question his motives at all. 

Ironside writes: “As a sense of the divine wisdom and majesty comes over the patriarch’s afflicted soul, he exclaims: “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer Thee?  I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.  Once I have spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further”.  But God was not yet through.  He speaks again, bringing before Job’s soul a sense of His greatness and power, of His glory and omniscience.  As Job contemplates it all he gets a new conception of the holiness and the righteousness of God.  His own littleness is accentuated.  That God should look at all upon sinful men now amazes him.  “The end of the Lord” is reached at last, and he cries out: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.  Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”.

So how does this affect the supposed main theme of the book of Job?  Certainly the book is about the suffering of the righteous.  There was no more righteous person than Job in his day and yet God allowed Satan to clobber him.  But if the main theme of Job is “why do the righteous suffer?”, it actually fails at its task, because we don’t get an answer.   Think about that.

Instead, what Ironside proposed in his book was that the main theme of Job was repentance.  Why is this a good place to prove the universal need for repentance?  Certainly if any of us wanted to find a story to teach repentance in the Bible, this is not the place where we would go!  Instead Ironside pointed out many more intuitive examples.

King David is the classic example in the Old Testament.  Though he was “highly exalted” and “greatly blessed” by God, he fell into a horrible series of sins, including adultery, lying and murder.  When confronted by Nathan the prophet he was convicted by God in his heart and his statement of repentance in Psalm 51 is dramatic, eloquent, and powerful.  He completely condemns his own behavior and vindicates God’s righteous authority to condemn him, thanking God in that and several other Psalms for his great loving forgiveness.

Or we might think of Manasseh, the son of the righteous king Hezekiah, whose wickedness was so terrible that he led his entire nation into such sin that God declared their irrevocable judgment.  Yet when convicted of his sin he repented and humbled himself before God (probably as a result of his father’s prayers “offered so long before”) and delayed God’s judgment on the nation for a generation.

In the NT we would look at Saul of Tarsus, a man who though blameless before the law was filled with such hatred that he went from town to town arresting and persecuting Christians until God revealed the depths of his sin and he repented – his entire life a song of thankfulness and praise to God for His mercy – though he always considered himself “the chief of sinners”.  Surely Paul is a great example of repentance.

But in the end, each of these examples, though inspiring in their own right, have one problem. In each case we can look at them and say “well, I never did anything that bad!”

 

II A Sovereign God

Very quickly we need to point out the second doctrine that is strongly supported in Job – the sovereignty of God.  When Paul talks about the unbelief of his own people, the Jews, and of his own sadness about this, he declares that it is part of God’s plan, so that the Gentiles can be saved. He goes on that therefore we Gentiles should be careful not to look down on the Jewish people because God is still planning to save them as a people and that our own salvation is due to that same sovereignty.  He then says:

Romans 9:19-24  ESV  ¹⁹ You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" ²⁰ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, "Why have you made me like this?" ²¹ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? ²² What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³ in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory -- ²⁴ even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?

This language is reminiscent of God’s treatment of Job, but Paul is actually using an example used by Isaiah and Jeremiah:

Isaiah 29:15-16  ¹⁵ Ah, you who hide deep from the LORD your counsel, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, "Who sees us? Who knows us?" ¹⁶ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?

 

III Conclusion

On another of his “Fireside Chats” Dennis Prager was asked about the similarities and differences between Jewish and Christian theologies.  He quite rightly and honestly pointed out that Jewish thinking about sin is that God does not so much care about what is inside of as He is about our actions.  We can, in his way of thinking, have bad motives, but if we act righteously we will be considered by God to be good.  He then with great clarity pointed out that Jesus taught the opposite – that God was concerned about the state of our hearts.  (Mr Prager also said that the only real commandment that had to do with feelings was the commandment about coveting).

Certainly I can see how they can get that out of a literal reading of the law of Moses, but the OT is filled with statements about God’s not being happy with “idols in your hearts” and we could argue that the foremost commandment – “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and might” implies more than deeds.

But in the book of Job God clearly establishes that God is completely in control (even Satan only operates by his permission even in his rebellion), that God has not explained all of his righteous reasons for what He does (and we probably would not agree with Him in all of them anyway) and that ALL people are in need of repentance (and by extension, forgiveness).

We not should be surprised that in the earliest written book of the entire Bible God establishes these two great doctrines that are so well established and prepare our hearts to receive the gospel.  In this book we see that even the most righteous and good person on the entire planet, one that God HimselfI personally refer to as blameless, still needs to repent.  In a very real sense, the book of Job in this sense is the Romans 3:23 of the OT.  All have sinned – including you, unless you think that God is up in heaven listing you as the best person on the entire planet Earth.  ;-)