Again it is a failure of faith, for faith would believe all the consoling words that God speaks, and take eternity into account as well as this life. We are to offset the sufferings of this present life against the eternal glories to come. We cannot see those glories by sight, but we can grasp them by faith, and the present should not eclipse the promised future. He wishes he had died at birth and forfeited the gift of life. There is self-pity mixed in with these expressions, and deep ingratitude. He would not have spoken like this before his trials began, but they have now taught him, he thinks, that the good is overwhelmed by the bad and therefore he would rather lose all. How different was the mind of Christ, who suffered more than any man, ‘a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.’ The Lord held on to his pathway without wavering. He looked at his experience in exactly the reverse way to Job. The evil days were compensated by the great reward that was to come and joy that was set before him. His suffering was profitable and brought gain that could not be obtained in any other way. Christ’s sufferings are of course unique, but our suffering and our subjection in humility to what God ordains for us ‘has great recompence of reward.’ This is true even when we do not understand what is happening to us. The believer is called to live by offsetting the present against the future. Hope is an essential part of the Christian life. Hope holds us back from drawing an immediate judgment about the worth of life, which the unbeliever will plunge into when troubles surround him.