Job 31:9 Commentary and Bible Study

Another ghastly sin which fills him with horror is giving way to sexual lust and uncleanness, and crossing that boundary which involves abandoning faithfulness to his own wife. If he has permitted himself to indulge such lusts and not cut them off the very moment they came into his heart; if he has not only savoured them, imagined them, but acted on them and allowed eyes, feet, and hands to coordinate together to achieve them, then he has done a thing which deserves the fire of hell. He considers where this might lead. He does not even play on the fringe of temptation. Paul says, ‘Let it not once be named among you.’ It might lead him to lurk outside his neighbour’s door in the hope of meeting his neighbour’s wife to entice to join him in sin. Job considers this terrible scene only in order to shock himself away from going near such temptation. The short-lived pleasure that sin brings is followed by an eternity of punishment which will go on long after the momentary pleasures which led a man to transgress have been forgotten. Were Job to do such a thing, he would require himself to face the justice of God in having his own wife taken away from him, submit to and serve another, and become the object of other’s sexual gratification. Such a thing would of course be terrible beyond description, but even worse in a way would be his own abandonment of integrity. Job recognises that such an outcome would be the operation of the justice of God, who always chooses a punishment that fits the crime, and teaches the transgressor in the process the evil of his transgression. Job would then have given way to wickedness which he had so long resisted. The believer contemplates such things with extreme horror because from the moment of conversion a new standard dominates his life. He cannot return to the old life and every temptation that tries to take him back in that direction is a poison to him. He takes the strongest possible stance against this hypothetical version of himself and assigns it to hell. Sometimes in our dreams we can do terrible things and taste the fearful nature of sin before we realise that we are dreaming. Job knows that such a step would be his destruction and would quickly negate any good that he had done in his life. The Bible teaches the perseverance of the saints but it never teaches that we can sin with impunity and the believer must always be prepared to say that if he turns back to sin and abandons the way of righteousness, he can only expect to perish.