The Gospel in Job

The gospel can be found everywhere in the old testament and not only in the new testament. As I was reading the book of Job the other day - one of the best literature pieces in the bible, and some are of the opinion one of the oldest books in the Bible, I came across the good news of Jesus - the Gospel!

Job was a righteous man and was abundantly blessed, and Job and his friends believed that righteousness = blessings. The more righteous you are, the more you will be blessed. So when disaster struck Job, his first reaction was - I am a righteous man, why is this happening to me?

His friends argued that he must have done something wrong for God to punish him like this, while Job continued to defend himself. The majority of the book of Job is about this - Job defending his righteousness while not understanding why the bad stuff is happening, while his friends trying to show his unrighteousness. Both of them are assuming that righteousness = blessings and unrighteousness = curses. Does God play by those rules? In the old testament He indeed did as we are shown in Deuteronomy 28 and 29 - Your actions or obedience will determine your blessings or your curses. But this was for a specific purpose - to familiarise humanity very well with our own inability to earn through our own righteousness…

But here God takes a different approach to show Job that his own righteousness has nothing to do with why God is blessing or cursing him.

At the end of Job, God squashes Job’s pride with His majesty and Job’s self-righteousness is shown for what it is. Job answers : 

“I know that You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You. You asked, ‘Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please, and let me speak; You said, ‘I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’ “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You. Therefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.” Job 42 : 2-6 

At this point Job realised that God does whatever he wants and that God is not bound by man’s righteousness or lack of it. God is God and he gives because he is Good and not because man is good. 

This is the gospel in essence. The gospel magnifies the goodness of God in spite of and not because of man’s goodness. God’s heart has always been from the very beginning to bring us out from the yoke of slavery (our own righteousness) and put us under the light and easy yoke of Christ’s own righteousness!

May you and I let go of our own righteousness, stop defending it or fighting for it, or try to measure God's approval of us by it, may we rather embrace the righteousness of Jesus Christ!