The forty-two chapters in Job leave us with a crucial question of two parts: what was the purpose of God in His creation of man, and what is the purpose of God in His dealing with His chosen people? The entire Bible is needed to answer this question. In particular, the New Testament is a long answer to the question in Job. This answer is the eternal economy of God according to His good pleasure, which is to dispense Himself in His Divine Trinity — in the Father, in the Son, and in the Spirit — through His incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, with the outpouring of the Spirit, into His chosen and redeemed people, to make all of them the same as He is in life and in nature but not in the Godhead, to make them His duplication that they may express Him (Rom. 8:28-29 and notes). The issue of such a divine dispensing is the church as the Body of Christ, as the new man, and as the organism of the Triune God. This organism will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the enlarged, the increased, incarnation of God consummated in full, that is, the fullness of the Triune God (Eph. 3:19) for Him to express Himself corporately in His divinity mingled with humanity for eternity. This is the divine revelation in the New Testament as the answer to the sufferings of Job and to the great question concerning God’s purpose in His creation of man and in His dealing with His chosen people.

All the physical blessings with which God blessed Job were to show Job God’s lovingkindness and faithfulness in his latter days. This indicates that God is perfect and kind in dealing with those who love Him. Even today, after God deals with us by stripping us and consuming us, and after His purpose is accomplished, God gives us His physical blessings. However, God’s purpose in dealing with His people is not to give physical blessings to them but to give Himself to them as their eternal portion, which ultimately consummates in the New Jerusalem. The all-embracing aggregate, the totality, of the divine blessing given by God to His people is the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit as the consummation of the processed Triune God (Gal. 3:14).

In His reply to Job, God paid no attention to Elihu because his concept had not come up to the level of God’s ultimate standard, though it was not wrong.

Job was right in saying that his sufferings were not a matter of God’s judgment. Job felt that, according to his conscience, he had not done anything that required God to judge him or to punish him. Nevertheless, he was suffering and he wanted to investigate his situation with God. Job’s three friends, however, insisted that Job’s sufferings were a proof that he had done something wrong and was being judged by God. Thus, God came in to condemn the three friends and to vindicate Job to a certain extent.

Nevertheless, Job was devoid of the divine revelation, not knowing that God’s purpose in dealing with His people is that He wants His people to gain Him, to partake of Him, to possess Him, and to enjoy Him, rather than all things, until their enjoyment reaches the fullest extent (Phil. 3:7-14; 2 Cor. 4:16-17), as the divine revelation ultimately unveils in the New Testament, that His people may ultimately become the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:2-27; 22:1-5).

The more we see God, know God, and love God, the more we abhor ourselves and the more we deny ourselves (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23; 14:26).

In the New Testament sense, seeing God equals gaining God. To gain God is to receive God in His element, in His life, and in His nature that we may be constituted with God. All God’s redeemed, regenerated, sanctified, transformed, conformed, and glorified people will see God’s face (Rev. 22:4). Seeing God transforms us (2 Cor. 3:18; cf. 1 John 3:2), because in seeing God we receive His element into us and our old element is discharged. This metabolic process is transformation (Rom. 12:2). To see God is to be transformed into the glorious image of Christ, the God-man, that we may express God in His life and represent Him in His authority.