When the Wicked Prosper
Posted by Isaac Butterworth | Filed under Envy, Five Questions, Gospel
When I read Scripture, I apply five questions to what I read. I described the process in my post on June 27, which was entitled, “Is God Worthy of Our Trust?” Here are the five questions:
- What comes against us?
- What rises in us? What is our reaction?
- What is the “God-substitute” exposed in our reaction?
- How does God reveal himself? How does the gospel address us?
- How do we respond with living faith, expressed in active love?
Another way to put those questions is to ask: (1) What is the situation? (2) What temptations does the situation provoke, or what sins do we commit in reaction to the situation? (3) What does that reveal about the condition of the human heart? (4) How does the gospel address the heart’s condition? And (5) how might we respond with living faith, expressed in active love?
Let’s take a look at Job, chapters 21 and 22 and pose these questions to what we read there. Just so that you will know, all citations of Scripture in this post are from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
WHAT IS THE SITUATION?
Job’s suffering is the backdrop to these chapters. Remember: he has lost his children, his business, and his health. Wave upon wave of affliction has come upon him, and he is being sorely tested.
WHAT TEMPTATIONS OR SINS ARISE?
Job makes the mistake we all make. He assumes that his circumstances warrant his unfaithfulness (that is, his failure to trust God, which is the foundation of every sin). In chapter 21, the evidence of this is his envy of the wicked. “Why do the wicked live on,” he asks, “reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” (v. 7). The rest of the chapter describes Job’s perspective on those who do evil. Their children remain healthy and happy. Their homes are secure. Their business does well. They are carefree and confident and see no need for God. All they have – and it is considerable – is a product of their own achievement.
WHAT IS REVEALED ABOUT THE HEART’S CONDITION?
Desire and fear seem to me to be the two primary motivators of the heart.
Desire
We desire security, affiliation, and control (or power), none of which, in itself, is wrong. It is when we do not find these desires met in God that we fall into idolatry. We worship at the altar of Securitas (the Roman goddess of security), Eros (the Greek god of love), or Cratos (the Greek god of power).
Fear
We fear being between the hammer and the anvil. We fear being alone. We fear being unable to control our lives. Again, these fears can be healthy, but when we are threatened in any area of life, we must remember that God is our sure defense, that he is always with us, and that his providence is at work in our lives. We must not be driven by our fears; rather, we must fear God and trust him.
Security
Job’s envy of the wicked highlights these desires and fears. Job’s sense of security is at risk, but as for those who give no thought to God, “their houses are safe from fear” (Job 21:9).
Affiliation
Job’s has lost his own children, and his friends and even his wife are unsympathetic toward him. He feels altogether alone. But the wicked? “Their children are established in their presence, and their offspring before their eyes…. They send out their little ones like a flock, and their children dance around. They sing to the tambourine and the lyre, and rejoice to the sound of the pipe” (vv. 8, 11-12).
Achievement (Control or Power)
Again, all Job’s achievements (expressions of his power to control his environment) are destroyed. But when he looks at those who have not been mindful of God, “they spend their days in prosperity” (v. 13a). Job asks, “Is not their prosperity indeed their own achievement?” (v. 16a).
Job is blameless – not sinless, but certainly his heart has been set on God – but now he is wondering whether there is any payoff to it. The wicked scoff: “What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? And what profit do we get if we pray to him?” (v.15). Job may be starting to think, “Perhaps they’re right! There is no profit in it.”
HOW DOES THE GOSPEL ADDRESS THE HEART’S CONDITION?
How does the gospel address the heart that is wandering off into envy? The answer may be in Eliphaz’s reply to Job in chapter 22. First of all, Eliphaz says, we need to do a reality check. Our righteousness, such as it is, does not obligate God to us. In Job 22:2-4, he asks a series of questions that clarify the difference between our paltry goodness and the perfection that God requires: “Can a mortal be of use to God? Can even the wisest be of service to him? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless? Is it for your piety that he reproves you, and enters into judgment with you?”
Eliphaz’s words anticipate those God speaks through Isaiah: “All our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth” (Isaiah 64:6). Indeed, asks Eliphaz, “Is not your wickedness great?” (Job 22:5). This is true for all sinners, even “righteous” ones. When we compare ourselves favorably with others, whose sins seem to us to be worse than ours, we need to remember that all sins – even the respectable ones – separate us from God.
It is God who has reached across the divide between us and clothed us in the only righteousness that has standing before him: the righteousness of Christ. And it only the heart renewed by the Holy Spirit that reaches out and claims Christ’s righteousness by faith.
The heart renewed by the Holy Spirit finds God to be its heart’s desire. In Job 22:24-26, Eliphaz addresses only one of the three desires of the heart that I have mentioned – namely, security in the form of wealth – but I believe his remarks would apply to the other two: affiliation (belonging) and control (achievement). He says, “If you treat gold like dust…, and if the Almighty is your gold and your precious silver, then you will delight yourself in the Almighty, and lift up your face to God.”
This is the work of sanctification in the believer’s heart. Little by little, the Spirit shows us the emptiness of wealth and the inadequacy of the other objects of our desire if we depend upon them for our ultimate well being. Only God can truly satisfy. He is to be the source of our delight.
HOW MIGHT WE RESPOND IN FAITH AND LOVE?
There is irony in the Spirit’s work upon us. We come to the place where the prosperity of the wicked no longer derails us. Eliphaz wisely says of those who have no place for God in their lives: “They said to God, ‘Leave us alone,’ and ‘What can the Almighty do to us?’ Yet he filled their houses with good things…. The righteous see it and are glad” (Job 22:17-19). This isn’t all that Eliphaz says, but we will get to that momentarily. We must start with a holy attitude toward the prosperity of others, even that of the wicked. We are not to envy them but to rejoice for them, to be “glad,” not because they deserve what they have but because their comfort is part of God’s providence. We are to grow to the point where we do not question God’s providence and generosity toward others but, rather, rejoice in it.
Besides – and this brings us to the rest of Eliphaz’s statement on the matter – the wicked will, in God’s time, face judgment. “The innocent laugh them to scorn” (v. 19). I take this to mean that, even as we are to rejoice in God’s generosity to the unrighteous, so we are to concur with his sovereignty with regard to their destiny.
This is not to say that we can be the judge of that. We do not know all those whose names “are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27). Therefore, we are called to offer the gospel to everyone, hoping that, by the consistency of our lives, God “will deliver even those who are guilty; they will escape [judgment] because of the cleanness of [our] hands” (Job 22:30). May our words, our actions, even our attitudes, be such that we do not block others from hearing and responding to the proclamation of the gospel.
Photo Credit: “Does it Matter That it is Not Raining?” by Patrick Doheny
