D. Scott Meadows
Job was an exemplary, godly man (Job 1.1), but even he needed more reverence and humility. So God sent trial and counsel. Elihu (Job 32-37) was the last and best human counselor of four, the only one not rebuked by God.
Exposition
In Job 35.5-8 (q.v.), Elihu impresses Job with the height of “the heavens,” and even “the clouds,” which, though mere creatures, are far above him (v. 5). How much more the Most High!
All four questions (vv. 6-7) are rhetorical and demand a negative answer.
They may be restated as assertions about Job’s relationship with God:
1) You do nothing against Him if you sin (6a).
2) Even if your transgressions were multiplied, you do absolutely nothing to Him (6b). No matter what you do, you cannot possibly injure or hurt God in any way at all. In World War II, antiaircraft guns were completely useless against B-29’s because they flew so high.
3) You give God absolutely nothing by your being righteous (7a). He is neither better nor worse off.
4) God cannot possibly receive anything He did not already have from you (7b). All creatures proceed from the Creator and are sustained by Him.
Elihu summarizes these thoughts and draws conclusions in verse 8. One’s sins may harm humans but not God. Likewise one’s righteousness may benefit humans but not God. Your self-interest is one of the most important reasons to avoid sin and do right. Pity or concern for God’s well-being is not a legitimate motive. He doesn’t need us.
Startling doctrines, these! We may not be accustomed to thinking of God in these terms, yet the Spirit prompted Elihu as a prophet to utter them, and they have confirmation by the rest of Scripture.
Elihu emphasized God’s transcendence (He is above all), aseity (He exists in and through Himself), impassibility (He cannot suffer), and self-sufficiency (He cannot be enriched). This is a true and very high view of God and an appropriately low view of man in relation to Him, both conducive to reverence and humility.
Application
If exemplary Job needed this counsel, how much more do we! Scripture requires practical application to our thinking and living.
First, worship this great God. All true Christians have a measure of genuine reverence and humility, because they have a true and living faith in God, but our reverence and humility will grow with our better knowledge of God as He really is. We ought to embrace and meditate on God’s unique transcendence, aseity, impassibility, and self-sufficiency. To know Him is to be in profound awe of Him. God is “wonderful” in the old sense—astonishing. Our worship suffers from low thoughts of God! As we increase in His knowledge, we can expect a corresponding increase in our praises.
Second, wonder at the Incarnation. It is only in Jesus Christ that God becomes human and experiences human joys and sorrows. His sufferings associated with the cross are aptly referred to as His “Passion,” because the Deity is “without passions” (1689 LBCF II.1). I just read a Christian author who wrote, “God has himself suffered in two ways. He has suffered as the man Jesus and he has suffered as a Father giving his Son to die” (source omitted). This is the error of patripassionism (lit., Father-suffering).
The church has long anathematized patripassionism because it blurs the distinct personage of the Father and of the Son. It takes Jesus’ suffering and death—via His incarnation—and attributes that same kind of suffering to the Father (John Ferrer, CAJ 9:2, Fall 2011).
Divine impassibility requires the Incarnation for a sympathetic (lit., feeling together with) Savior. Hebrews 4.15-16 glories in Christ’s ability to be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (AV), “to sympathize with our weaknesses” (ESV). Yet this human Jesus is truly and fully our God and Savior, the One we worship and adore. Real Christians respond in worship when considering the orthodox Symbol of Chalcedon (451).1
Third, walk with Christ and be saved. Biblical benedictions (pronouncements of blessing) and maledictions (curses) are all directed at our self-interest. Heaven and hell are intended as practical motivators for our embrace of Christ the Savior and following Christ the Lord—the true response of saving faith to the gospel. The call of wisdom illustrates this principle (e.g., Prov 8.32-36; cf. Matt 16.24-27). Our spiritual and moral choices will not affect the blessed God, but ourselves. Therefore, choose life that you may live (Deut 30.19). Ω
Notes:
1. We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [coessential] with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the Manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning [have declared] concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.