Why Was Job Tested By God, According To The Bible?
Perhaps one of the most asked questions in theology is: Why did Job have to suffer in the Bible? After all, the book of Job begins by stating that he was a just and upright man and followed all of the precepts of God (via Bible Project). Essentially, Job goes from having it all, to losing it all, overnight. At the beginning of the book of Job, we see that God and Satan have a dialogue whereby God commends Job for his faithfulness. Satan then tells God that if all of Job’s possessions were taken away from him, Job would turn his back on God.
It is important to understand that in Job, God does give permission for Satan to attack Job, but puts parameters on what Satan can do — Satan cannot take Job’s life. After Job suffers all of the calamities that fall upon him, he and his friends begin to wonder, what did Job do to earn such treatment from God? This is referred to as the “retribution principle.” While Job’s friends think that Job must have done something to earn this treatment. Job himself is emphatic in that, to the best of his knowledge, he has done nothing wrong.
The real lesson for Job is not about punishment, necessarily, but rather in remaining faithful to God, regardless of his condition.
The real lesson of Job's suffering
One lesson from the book of Job is that by staying faithful to God, any human suffering can be used to His advantage and by His advantage for our good (via Christianity). While Job did lament and complain to God, God had a productive dialog with Job and we see that in the end, all that Job had lost in the beginning of his story was returned doubly. In the New Testament, there is the story of Jesus healing a blind man. Some religious scholars at the time assumed that either one or both of this man’s parents had committed some terrible sin, which resulted in their son being born blind. Jesus said that nobody sinned, but rather God had ordained this man to be blind, so that his being made to see would happen to show the power of God.
Another reason for Job’s suffering is to be the vehicle by which he was actually blessed. By going through the awful calamities that Job went through, his faith in God was strengthened. For Job, this strengthening of faith would not have occurred had he not gone through what he suffered.
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