God declares that Job has been right in what he has spoken and the friends have been wrong. This is very black and white.
It is comforting to know what when believers utter some foolish sentiments God does not disown them, but continues to treat them as his own dear children, and knows how to bring them to a better understanding. If we backslide, we should come to the Lord again with this encouragement: that his patience is greater than we can understand, and that if we are wholehearted in our repentance he can make good what we have lost.
Job is going to be a channel of blessing to the friends. Some who we pray for do not respond at first. We may witness to them for years and nothing happens. For now they are counted as enemies of the gospel, but in time our witness may be used by God to bring them to faith. You might think Job had blotted his copybook and could never have an effective witness, but God turned the situation round in a remarkable way.
‘My servant Job’ – I will accept him. God is saying, ‘You must approach me as Job has taught you to do. Sit at his feet.’ Here is the total vindication that every believer can expect from his God. An unbelieving world and a false church hate this more than anything else: to know that God rejects them and approves of his little flock. Here the comforters are put in the painful position of having to come to Job as their intercessor and the gateway to their forgiveness. Truly God vindicated his people and lifts them up from their abasement to the position of highest privilege. He will claim them as his favourites while the world that despised them will be cast down.
Many will be saved through our intercession also. In this way God exalts Job over them, and makes clear his verdict on all they have said. We should not interpret the book in a way that overturns this verdict. We should not make them out to be true believers who had gone a little off track. Vindication must come from the Lord, and when it comes it will be far more convincing, far more devastating to the enemies of God’s people than anything believers could produce. Job is justified by these words, and who can condemn those whom God justifies?
How could God characterise Job’s words in this way, when Job had spoken so many hasty things, and when the God himself had rebuked him? Only because Job was a regenerate man and had the truth in his heart. He had held onto his faith and never denied the Lord. He had always spoken as one who accepted the holiness of God and who believed in a God whose standard of righteousness could not be adjusted to meet human sinfulness. He had struggled with how such a God could behave towards Job as he had, but he could not abandon hope that an explanation was to be found, whereas the comforters had adjusted their theology from the start to create a God who accommodates himself to human weakness. Their theology faced no particular struggle because it had from the start abandoned the strict constraints of Job’s evangelical theology. They had also come up with an explanation for Job’s situation which sacrificed Job’s genuine spiritual experience and renewed character. Because they were prepared to write off a true child of God, it was not hard for them to find another explanation for all that happened to him, and therefore they side-stepped all the real dilemmas of the case which a true child of God would have to confront.