Scripture Reading: Job 3
In chapter three Job cursed the day of his birth. He was a good man and he was trying to keep his perfection, uprightness, and integrity, but due to his vexation he could not contain himself, and he did not know what to do. No doubt, he expected to have a time to deal with God, but this was not something that he dared to initiate. Not wanting to lose his perfection, he released his vexation by cursing his birthday.
Job broke the silence of seven days and seven nights and initiated the debate by cursing the day of his birth because of his suffering of the very great pain (2:13; 3:1-3).
Job was disturbed, perplexed, and entangled to the uttermost by his suffering of the disasters that befell his possessions and his children and the plague on his body, in spite of his perfection, uprightness, and integrity. When Job cursed his birthday, he surely was not perfect and upright. In doing this he did not hold his integrity. Rather, by cursing the day of his birth, he became bankrupt in integrity. For Job to curse his birthday meant that he cursed his mother.
Job preferred darkness and abhorred light (vv. 4-10). Concerning the day of his birth, he said, "Let that day be darkness;/Let God not seek it from above,/Nor let light shine upon it." I find it hard to believe that Job really preferred darkness and abhorred light.
Job indicated that he preferred death instead of life (vv. 11-23). It is difficult to believe that Job actually preferred death instead of life. If death had been his preference, why did he not put an end to himself and thereby solve his problem? Perhaps Job did not do this because he wanted to keep his integrity.
Job said that his sighing came as his food and that his groaning poured out like water in his suffering (v. 24). What he dreaded came upon him (v. 25), and he had no ease, no quiet, and no rest, yet trouble came (v. 26).
Job's experience of God's consuming and stripping in the Old Testament was far behind that of Paul in the New Testament. God's consuming is to exhaust us, and God's stripping is to take away our riches from us. First, God stripped Job of his possessions, and then God consumed him. Job's suffering of the plague on his body was a consuming. Day by day and hour by hour, Job was being consumed. In the New Testament God's consuming and stripping become pleasant things. Since the day he was converted, Paul was a person under God's consuming and God's stripping (2 Cor. 4:16).
Paul was born destined to be crucified, and he was reborn crucified that it would be no longer he who lived but Christ who lived in him (Gal. 2:20a). When we were regenerated, we, like Paul, were reborn crucified for the purpose that from that time it would be no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us.
In his experience of God's consuming and stripping, Paul was not constricted under the pressures on every side and did not perish despite his being cast down (2 Cor. 4:8-9). There were pressures on every side, yet Paul was not constricted. Every day he was cast down, but he did not perish. Paul did not curse the day of his birth, and he did not say that he preferred to die rather than to live. On the contrary, after much consideration Paul said that he still preferred to live, not to die, because to him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21-25). Paul's living Christ was for him to magnify Christ. His desire was to magnify Christ whether through life or through death (v. 20). He did not care for life or death; he cared only for magnifying Christ.
When Paul was suffering distresses for the sake of Christ (2 Cor. 12:10), he was well pleased, he was happy, and he was even rejoicing in the Lord for his experiences (Col. 1:24). Paul's reaction to his sufferings was very different from Job's. Job did not rejoice but was all the time vexed.
Paul pursued to be conformed to Christ's death in the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10). He took Christ's death as a mold for his life. To Paul it was a great pleasure to be molded in the death of Christ.
Paul said that he was always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus and was always being delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the life of Jesus might be manifested in his mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4:10-11). Every day in his Christian life Paul was put to death. The only way for him to manifest Christ's life was to experience Christ's death.
In his experience of God's consuming and stripping, Paul did not lose heart. Though his outer man was being consumed, yet his inner man was being renewed day by day. He said that his momentary lightness of affliction worked out for him an eternal weight of glory (2 Cor. 4:16-17).
Paul was one who expected to be consumed every day. He was such a man because he wanted to be renewed. Renewing can be consummated only by consuming. If you are not consumed, you cannot be renewed. This kind of renewing by consuming adds to the weight of glory that you will share in the coming ages. We will all share the Lord's glory, but the weight of glory will differ among the believers. Through God's consuming, the glory that we will share will become an eternal weight.
Job considered his suffering of affliction something very heavy, but Paul considered his affliction momentary and light. Instead of caring about our affliction, we need to care for the increase of the weight of glory. How much weight of glory we will have depends on how much we suffer in our present affliction for the Lord's sake. Paul did not care how much he suffered. He knew that the more he suffered, the more weight of glory he would share in eternity.
Paul magnified Christ by living Him, whether through life or through death, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ (Phil. 1:19-21a). This is the Christian life. When God created man, this is the kind of life He wanted man to live.
God's intention with Job was to consume this "perfect and upright" person and to strip his attainments, his achievements, in the highest standard of ethics in perfection and uprightness (Job 1:1).
God's intention was also to tear down the natural Job in his perfection and uprightness that He might build up a renewed Job in God's nature and attributes.
God's intention was not to have a Job in the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but a Job in the line of the tree of life (Gen. 2:9).
Eventually, God's intention was to make Job a man of God (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:17), filled with Christ, the embodiment of God, to be the fullness of God for the expression of God in Christ, not a man of the high standard of ethics in Job's natural perfection, natural uprightness, and natural integrity, which Job attempted to maintain and hold (Job 2:3, 9a). Such a person, constituted with God according to His economy, would never be entangled by any troubles and problems so that he would curse his birth and prefer to die rather than to live.
After God created Adam, He placed him in front of two trees — the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God then charged Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if he ate of that tree, he would die (Gen. 2:9, 16-17). God wanted Adam to eat of the tree of life. If Adam had eaten of the tree of life, this tree would have entered into him and then would have grown within him. However, Adam ate instead of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This tree was thus sown into Adam and grew within him, and it has been growing in all of Adam's descendants. At Job's time the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was only two thousand years old, but now it is six thousand years old. Today the entire human race is a race constituted according to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In every human society, regardless of the kind of ethics it has, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is growing. As long as this tree is growing among the human race, there will be no peace.
Before we were regenerated, we were in the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When we were regenerated, Christ planted Himself into us as the tree of life. However, in our practical, daily living, are we in the line of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil or in the line of the tree of life? In our married life, for example, we may be in the line of the tree of knowledge, and by the way we talk with our spouse we may not only grow this tree but also water it and fertilize it. What, then, should we do? We need to remember Paul's word in Galatians 2:20 — "It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" — and turn from the tree of knowledge to the tree of life. If we do this, we will live Christ and grow Christ as the tree of life.
