Job 31:13 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Job 31:13

Comments

Job was fair to his staff. His understanding of the essential equality of all men and women before God made him recognise that all of the social structures of this life are only temporary, and that all human beings will ultimately be evaluated by God on an entirely different basis. He will entirely ignore any differences among men that arise from incidentals such as education or lack of it, riches or poverty, power or weakness, freedom or slavery. Such things are nothing to God other than the theatre in which his purposes play out. What truly counts with him are moral standards: righteousness, humility, justice, kindness, love, honesty; these things have abiding value. Job therefore paid the closest attention to the appeals of his male and female servants for justice, since he himself was answerable to a higher Judge. How could he take the part of a partial, self-interested judge, and then ask for justice from the Lord? Justice was something higher than both he and his servant, over them both, and Job needed it and must submit to it as much as his servant. For God is not intimidated by the great ones of the earth and obliged to show partiality towards them. It was the Lord who made Job. Is he now in awe of his own workmanship that he should favour him over others who have a greater call on justice? Yet man is so easily taken in by the devil’s lie, when he tells us that he who is elevated in society can look at himself and say, ‘I am elevated because I am special. Because I am special then justice should be tipped in my favour.’ The Christian rather takes the side of justice against his own interests, knowing himself to be a sinner in need of correction both from above, and at times from below.

Application

The believer, who is still living in the world, does not regard his fellow human beings as the unbeliever does. Although he must not entirely ignore its temporary categories and distinctions, he belongs to the world to come where men will be evaluated on an entirely different basis. For him the categories of master and slave do not represent any intrinsic worth in people. He remembers that, in the words of Paul, his ‘Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him’ (Ephesians 6:9). The master who takes advantage of his position to abuse others and who mistakenly believes that he is made to be a master because of some innate superiority, has fallen into the snare of pride. The Christian fears God and regards all men, even those whom providence has made his servants, as made in the image of God and potentially his superiors in the world to come. He therefore behaves towards them like an actor whose play will soon be over and who will return to an entirely different relationship with his peers. To see things this way is not to be a revolutionary and to go round breaking up the structures of society, but it m3eans that we see all things in the light of God’s eternal kingdom which has abiding reality.

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Job 31:13 Commentary and Bible Study