Thursday, March 20—Day 16

Job & Christ:  The Grace of Endurance
We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
James 5:11 & Hebrews 12: 1-3

The Grace of Perseverance
“God has turned me over to the ungodly and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked. All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me.” -Job

Job’s words are heavy. They sit on us and weigh us down. Job, a blameless and upright man is lowered to the ground where he can do nothing but sit in ashes and scrape the sores on his naked body. His story is hard because it reminds us of our own unexplained suffering. We are forced to sit with him and feel what he feels.

Who can lift Job up? His wife and friends only add to his misery. Water poured over him to wash his wounds or relieve his pain doesn’t help. He can only look out beyond himself because his complaint is with God, but even that seems impossible. He says, “Even if I washed myself with soap... you would plunge me into a slime pit so that even my clothes would detest me” (Job 9:30). However downcast he may be, his perseverance lies in his looking out. It can be found in his demand that God hear his case. He says defiantly, “...I know that my redeemer lives... And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes... How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-26). Only a personal interaction with God will help Job.

The grace of perseverance is found in the fact that although he may sit — unable to repair what has been broken, Job cries out to a God who answers. Charles Williams, in He Came Down From Heaven, concludes from Job’s story that in this way, “Man was intended to argue with God.” He says, “...the main point is that He answered... The pretense that we must not ask God what he thinks He is doing is swept away. The Lord requires that his people demand an explanation from Him.” It is by faith in a personal God who hears and answers our cry that we persevere through life’s suffering, and it is through Christ that the grace of that perseverance can mature us in the process (James 1).

Consequently we have a blessing that Job did not. We cry to a savior who not only hears, but has also suffered, for “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain...”(Isaiah 53:3). And his suffering was such that neither Job nor we will have to experience it; it was endured with the knowledge that God would not answer Him in his moment of need. He showed his perseverance by saying “not my will, but yours be done” in the face of the cross. This is what qualifies Jesus as our Great High Priest, he who enables us to “approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Thus the grace of Christ’s perseverance permits us to beseech God even more boldly than Job.

Prayer
Lord of essential life, help me to die.
To will to die is one with highest life,
The mightiest act that to Will's hand doth lie—
Born of God's essence, and of man's hard strife:
God, give me strength my evil self to kill,
And die into the heaven of thy pure will—
Then shall this body's death be very tolerable.
(George MacDonald: Diary of an Old Soul)

Greg Loumagne, Graduate Student, Institute of Spiritual Formation in Talbot School of Theology