The Limits of a Sovereign God:Understanding Job 1—2
A few days ago, my wife and I happened to catch a local news story on TV about a church we once attended. As a thunderstorm had passed through the Philadelphia region where we live, a building owned by this church suffered a lightning strike through a top portion of it. No one was hurt, but the damage was hardly insignificant. An elder of the church who was interviewed by the TV reporter wondered aloud why the Lord had the lightening bolt strike the building, when He could just as easily have had it strike a nearby tree. The possibility in theory that the lightning could have had a different source than God didn’t seem to have occurred to this elder. In effect the elder was saying, ‘Lightning from God has fallen from heaven.’ I noted with some irony that the church had undergone a major split over Reformed doctrine just a year or two earlier, and, since the Reformed view was hardly discredited at that time, it seemed odd to me that any elder of the church would still feel the need to wonder about lightening bolt strikes.
It is indeed difficult for most Christians to think of God as giving over any of His control. They say that for God to allow someone to supersede His will at any point would mean that God ceased being God. God must not simply rule over the acts of men, but rule the acts of men. Such Christians also wonder how God could maintain His glory if He yielded His will to another creature. Thus God must direct all things after the counsel of His own will in order to prevent chaos from entering man’s individual experience and corporate history. However, as we examine the first two chapters in the Old Testament book of Job, we will see that this view of God is not really supported by the Bible. In fact, though God knows everything about the future, He is not so causally behind everything as many Christians think.
In approaching the poetry of Job, it is important to understand that Job is a historical book. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of “Noah, Job, and Daniel” as three outstandingly righteous people (Ezek. 14:14, 20). Also, the apostle James tells Christians to “remember the patience of Job” (Ja. 5:11). To those Christians—and there are some—who think that Job was not a historical person, we can only reply that we find it doubtful to suppose that the best example of patience from which Christians are to draw encouragement is a fictional character who never really existed or endured anything at all.
The book of Job is believed by most scholars to be the oldest book of the Bible. One reason for this assumption is because Job lived to a great age. While we don’t know the patriarch’s exact age, we are told that he lived 140 years after his trial. This means a lifespan that places him chronologically between the Flood of Noah and the time of Abraham. This also means that the book of Job predates Moses and the Pentateuch. Assuming Job is the first book of the Bible, I think it is entirely possible that God wanted to deal first with the oldest problem of theology for our sakes—the problem of evil. Indeed, until a Christian can get past this difficult issue it is hard to understand how he can trust God more fully and grow effectively in the Christian life.
The position we have been advancing in this book is that God is a free will Person, and that He has made other free will persons. We also want to press forward the idea that all free will persons whom God has made, both angelic and human, have retained their free will. In fact, humans have retained it despite the Satanic activity which has affected human history, and also despite the unlawful acquiring by Adam of the knowledge of good and evil (a knowledge we inherit in seed through the male, Adamic line). In short, we believe the book of Job will show that God does not choose the choices of other persons.
Satan and his underlings have used their free will to considerable advantage over men. We will consider in a later chapter the plausible roll that the Enemy [Satan and/or other fallen angels (demons)] played in furthering the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. We will also look at the de facto roll that the demonic underworld once played in King Ahab’s ruin (1 Ki. 22). It seems prudent, therefore, to pause for a few moments to consider how free will, specifically the Devil’s use of free will, has operated against God in the past. This is the great conflict of the ages. Humans may occupy the pages of their history, but Satan is said to be the god of this world, and his influence has compelled men negatively. At length, the lesson we hope to show in this chapter is that God does not operate His free will at the expense of annihilating the free will He has given other persons (as though that were possible without annihilating the person himself). By free will we mean the ability to choose between good and evil, not that alleged ‘other’ kind of merely ‘choosing’ between one evil and another evil (which is not a choice at all).17 Further, by free will we do not mean that one necessarily obtains the fruition of one’s will, but merely that one intends to obtain it. In short, by free will we mean bare intention.
Now observe that despite the uncommon integrity in Job none of his friends would concede that he was a righteous man, nor would Satan concede that fact. For his own part Job never mentions Satan in any of his conversations, and he seems unaware of the role the Devil played in bringing about his ruin. Naturally, Job experienced the kind of fear, terror, and anxiety that any of us would experience under the same circumstances (were we to enter such trials, having such faith). Chief among Job’s problems was his lingering question as to why God seemed so indifferent to his suffering. In many ways Job’s exasperation seems quite understandable to us. For at least one renowned poet in Modern Western culture it seemed a little too understandable. New England’s Robert Frost saw his own life in the story of Job. The list of tragedies that attended Frost’s life was considerable: two of his six children died in infancy, his youngest and favorite daughter, Marjorie, died from complications after giving childbirth, his wife died unexpectedly (Frost would outlive her by nearly 25 years), his son Carol committed suicide a few years after his mother’s death, and another daughter suffered mental anguish (as did his sister Jeannie who was eventually institutionalized).xxxii Frost came to write a play called A Masque of Reason based loosely on the biblical book of Job. In the play, God puts Job through all sorts of trouble for no other reason than to settle a callous bet between Himself and a cantankerous Devil. Frost’s statement remains the general objection echoed everywhere by those who believe that God cannot be good, since there is evil in the world. Frost’s complaint embodies the first type of objection any critically thinking unbeliever asks: ‘If there’s a God, why is there evil?’ This is why Evangelicals need to understand the lesson of Job, so that they can answer their fellow man on this very point.
The book of Job opens with the sons of God giving an account of their activity before their Creator. The phrase “sons of God” means all angelic beings (including fallen ones):
6Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. 7The Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10“Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11“But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12Then the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the Lord.
Notice Satan’s reply when God asks him to consider Job’s integrity—”Does Job fear God for nothing?” Thus in one fell swoop Satan accuses Job and God. Satan accuses God of bribing Job for his worship, and Job is accused of being the type of person who accepts such a bribe, i.e., someone who only worships God for what he can get out of Him. The Devil’s reply is a fascinating one and reveals much about his own view of God. His disagreement with God over the assessment of Job implies that Satan doesn’t believe that God knows or speaks the truth. This may strike many of us odd when we first consider it. Many of us have grown up thinking that Satan hates God because he knows Him to be good. But notice that Satan actually thinks he is correct in the question of Job’s motive and God’s motive, i.e., he is truthful where God is lying. Thus, it appears that Satan actually believes that God is evil and therefore must be fought. It follows that Satan would think that all of God’s motives are suspect, and that therefore God’s protection of Job was merely a bribe. Thus it is always catch-22 for God. If God is gracious to a man, Satan assumes God is bribing him for his worship; conversely, if God brings chastisement or judgment upon a man (the former upon the believer, the latter upon the unbeliever), Satan assumes God is angry because his bribe is being resisted. Satan’s responses in all cases are constant accusations that demonstrate the kind of consistency in argument that we discussed earlier in chapter two.
This accusative posture is the method of the Devil. Naturally, then, Satan claims that the reason Job didn’t curse God after the loss of his children and possessions was because Job was not personally molested. All evidence throughout the Scripture suggests that Satan, since the time of his rebellion, has always believed the worst about God and His children. Furthermore, if Satan has no grounds to attack a believer by pointing to his behavior, he will accuse him in his motive (as he did with Job). This is a very effective strategy by the Devil, since purity of motive appears impossible to prove without subjecting the one in question to extreme circumstances. Indeed, how can any of us regularly prove purity of motive? For example, one can sing a solo in church because of wanting to worship God or because of wanting to be seen and applauded. Parents can have children because of wanting to care for them or because they hope their children will take care of them when they are old. Motive is very slippery, and one can have mixed motives in these matters. The Devil does not appear to be double-minded, however. By being single-mindedly set against God, Satan is all the more effective because he never gives his opposition—God and the believer—the benefit of the doubt. He always assumes the worst about God and us, and this assumption informs his protest. Even Satan’s original rebellion in heaven almost certainly followed this line of argument; for we see his method at work in the way he crafted his accusations in Genesis 3 and Job 1—2. Prior to Genesis 3 he appears to have coerced a third of the angelic host to join his rebellion against God (see Rev. 12:4). Thus based on Genesis 3 and Job 1—2 we can imagine that his original conversation with the angels might have gone like this: “Has God really given you positions of honor? Yea, are they given you for nothing? Does he not bid you to worship him and to accept his rule? For he knows if you stopped worshiping him his rule would be over, and you yourselves would rule in that moment. Reject his ‘love’ now, and you will discover his anger; for his ‘graciousness’ is only a ruse to buy your loyalty. Why do you continue to accept his rule without testing his character? For his true character cannot be known until you stop worshiping him.”
Again, this debate about motive is the Devil’s specialty because he can accuse God and His servants whenever he wants. I think the Bible makes it fairly clear that Satan believes his own lies, and that he regards God and His followers as inauthentic. Perhaps this explains why the Enemy presumed to believe the worst about Jesus, and why the demonic world was astonished when they learned that Christ had risen from the dead. In fact, the Bible tells us that had the demonic world known about Jesus’ resurrection they would not have crucified Him. What does this say, except that the Enemy must have assumed that Jesus was too selfish to willingly undergo death, especially death by crucifixion?18
So we were mistaken if, after the first set of Job’s trials, we expected Satan to bow his head and sheepishly admit, “Well, You were right, after all, God! I really didn’t think Job would respond the way he did, but I see that I’m wrong!” For Satan will do and say anything he can to maintain his fictions. Thus, when Satan was proven wrong after the first round of Job’s trial, he adopted a deeper irrationality to support his original accusation against Job, saying, “Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” This Satanic accusation against man was the Devil’s assessment of all humanity. And though Satan’s statement may have been generally true, he was applying it universally without exception; and Job, of course, would prove to be the exception.
The Greek word for devil, diabolo (Strong’s #1228), means slanderer or traducer. Traducer means ‘to lead across,’ and this description of Satan is implied in Genesis 3, in Eve’s reply to God that she was beguiled by the serpent, i.e., led astray by deception to cross a prudent boundary. This is what the Devil does with the majority of men, leading them across God’s prudent boundary like a kind of pied-piper toward a land for which the children of men have a desire to go, but never so much as when they hear the sounds of the pied-piper’s flute. From Job we learn that Satan even incited God to do something He wouldn’t have done otherwise. Of course, I don’t mean that Satan has ever led God into sin or forced God to do something wrong. Rather, Satan incited God to act according to His permissive ‘will’ rather than His direct will. As a result, God removed His hedge of protection from around Job. It is clear from a plain reading of the text that God would not have removed the hedge if Satan had not incited Him to do so—(as God said to Satan: “though you have incited me to ruin him without cause”).23 Someone might say, “But this was all part of God’s plan to teach Job more patience.” Well, certainly it is true that Job learned more patience because of his trial, but the question remains: Did God actually indicate that these circumstances of Job’s suffering at this time and in this manner was His plan for Job? No, much to the contrary. God removed the hedge because He was incited to do so. God’s motive and his servant’s reputation had been questioned before the entire angelic host, and God decided not to let this particular accusation pass unchallenged. Thus, the particular trials that Job suffered in chapters 1—2 were not part of God’s design for pruning character. Indeed, it would not be like God to direct hammer blow upon hammer blow on the anvil of Job’s life to get a point across in the quickest and severest possible manner. God does not collar the believer up against the wall in order to get the most spiritual growth out of him in the shortest period of time. He is more merciful than that, a fact proved by God’s restoration of Job by the end of the book (cp. Ja. 5:11). Had God thought that Job needed to be chastened to learn more patience, He would have done it at a more gradual and gracious pace than that recorded in chapters 1—2. But God did allow Job to suffer in order to vindicate His servant and Himself before all the heavenly host. Thus, when God says to Satan the second time, “Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and hateth evil?” He used to describe Job at the beginning, as if to say to the Devil that every word spoken and assessment made by Elohim shall stand. Observe, then, that Job in his suffering did not experience these awful things by God’s design.
Thus, according to the Bible, God took all of Job’s possessions, including Job’s children, and put them into Satan’s power. God did this without directing Satan toward any specific end. God is not the causal agent for any of the disasters brought against Job, even though God speaks in an idiomatic way as though He were responsible for Job’s ruin by having removed His divine protection. Again, from the text itself we understand that it is Satan, not God, who brings about all these horrific disasters upon Job. This is clear from Job 1:12, “And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand.” This is further clarified in Job 2, when we are specifically told that Satan left the presence of the Lord to smite Job with boils over his entire body. Here it is implied that Satan had an ongoing desire to destroy Job, hence his earlier complaint to God—”You have put a hedge about him.” This serves to show the difference between Satan’s free will (intention) and the effects of his free will. Satan was never denied his autonomy in intending to ruin Job but merely denied the obtaining of this particular object of his will for some time.
It is interesting to see that Job’s three friends assigned all of Job’s troubles to the direct work of God. Like the servant who cried, “Fire from God has fallen from heaven and devoured all the sheep,” Job’s friends found it natural to assign all weather events to God. Satan worked in conjunction with this mindset, trying to persuade Job that some of his trials were completely God’s doing. Thus when Satan destroyed Job’s most treasured possession—his children—the Devil was careful to do it with a great wind, so that it might point to God. Had the Sabeans, for example, killed Job’s children, Job might have rationalized the event as having been caused by the sinfulness of man; but the wind?—the question begged itself: Couldn’t God have controlled the wind? Job himself seems to believe that God is behind all of these disasters. “The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” The servant of the Lord does not always say what is true. ?19 Again, a plain reading of the story shows that it was Satan who destroyed Job’s children and possessions, not God. [Furthermore, Job seems to have entertained the possibility of his friends’ arguments (when he says of God, “Though he slay me…”)]. One other possible interpretation of the phrase, “The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away” is that Job is referring to God’s hedge of protection being given and then taken away (such that in the interim Job had merely applied himself according to sound domestic and financial principles, which led him to success). But the balance of Job’s bewilderment seems to point to a conviction that his suffering was caused by God, especially since he seems unaware of Satan’s causative role. Furthermore, even though Job was familiar with the Adamic Fall (Job mentions Adam hiding his transgression in his bosom), there is nothing in the Fall narrative which would have led Job to believe that Satan could control the weather upon receiving God’s reluctant permission.20 Thus Job is in the crucible of trial, and he inquires into the problem of evil. To add insult to injury Job’s three friends assume a priori that Job cannot be a man of integrity because of all the things he has suffered. “Who ever perished, being innocent,” asks his oldest friend, Eliphaz, “or where were the righteous cut off?” (Job 4:7). Eliphaz’ argument is based on a false presupposition. Even if someone pointed out to Eliphaz that, hypothetically, righteous men of past generations also had suffered to significant degree, Eliphaz would have had a fool-proof, tautological answer—”Ah, Friend, but if the man had suffered, he could not have been righteous!”21
Our survey of Job 1—2 has been a cursory one, but a few things have been suggested. It is hard to read the narrative of Job and see how one could conclude, along with the Calvinist, that God is ruling the Devil’s accusations against His own self, ruling the responses of Job, ruling the acts of the Sabeans, and so forth. One can only hold this position by doing violence to the plain meaning of the text. God’s statement, for example, that He is putting all of Job’s possessions into Satan’s power, i.e., to do with them as Satan wills, loses all meaning if God is really ruling what Satan does.22 Nor can we write off the word ‘incited’ as a mere idiom of speech in God’s aggravated statement to Satan, i.e., “you have incited me to ruin him without cause.”23 Again, it is the context of the narrative that determines that “incited” be taken literally, while God’s statement about His role in ‘ruining’ be taken as idiomatic. God was incited and allowed Himself to be led by His permissive ‘will’ to put Job’s possessions into Satan’s power. It is disappointing that so many commentators of the Bible generally describe God in such sovereign terms that one would think God could never be incited or change His feeling of expression. If Job 1—2 is any proof, however, God certainly does experience an intensity of feeling, and this despite his foreknowledge of what the future will be. For God is a person, and though He is sinless, He has feelings like any other person. Despite the fact that God foreknew Satan would incite Him, He naturally felt more upset at the Devil during the actual moment of His conversation with him, e.g., in the same way that we ourselves would feel more upset in an actual moment of confrontation with someone, though we might have anticipated a meeting with that person for days.
At this point someone will object, “But if God gives Satan power to do something which He doesn’t really want the Devil to do, then Satan is ruling a part of the universe in which God is not absolutely and totally sovereign.” Exactly! In fact, that’s an example of what free will in the universe looks like when God allows its physical effects. But even regardless of physical effects, men and angels exercise their own will (intention). Therefore God cannot be accused in their sin, and thus He is removed as a factor from the problem of evil. This does not mean that God ceases to be God, as some claim. God ultimately brings all angels and men into judgment for their intentions and actions. But we must allow God to describe Himself, not some theological system that differs from the Bible. As a friend of mine has pointed out, when Christians allow the latter, they end up going to church and worshiping theology (i.e., so called) rather than the God of the Bible. The point here is that Job teaches us that God is not sovereign in everything, but rather sovereign over everything. To be sovereign in everything would mean God foreordains ‘whatsoever comes to pass.’ To be sovereign over everything means God will ultimately judge how others have been sovereign in their own sphere of decisions.
God’s sovereignty, as properly (biblically) understood, means that God rules over men and angels and sometimes limits the effects of their free will. This means that God is sovereign in the same sense that a human king is sovereign, only on a much grander scale. A king does not make the choices of people; rather, people make their own choices but are subject to the king’s punishment if they do evil (or conversely, subject to the king’s blessing if they are righteous). Unfortunately, many in Evangelicalism have taken the word ’sovereign’ and changed its meaning so that God makes the events of history. Again, this is not how the Bible defines the concept of divine sovereignty in the first two chapters of Job, that is, once they are understood in their proper context. Thus, true biblical sovereignty could be defined as the following:
1. God foreknows everything, but does not make all the events of history.
2. God may limit the effects of a person’s free will upon another person or thing, but He never limits any person’s intention (free will).
3. God limits the degree and duration of every trial facing the Christian, so that the believer need not be tried above his endurance.
4. God, because of what He prepares for the believer’s future, knows that the suffering of the Christian in this world is not worthy to be compared to the glory which He shall reveal in the believer in the hereafter.
5. God will condemn the sin of every fallen man and fallen angel at a future and final judgment. No one can avoid or resist these judgments.
Redefining God’s sovereignty so that it lines up with the Bible’s teaching is critical. Evangelicals cannot present their faith fully and accurately unless they accept a correct definition of God’s sovereignty. Job 1—2 clarifies this definition. Sadly, alarmingly even, it appears that many Evangelicals have drawn no such proper lessons from the book of Job regarding either the unqualified fact of free will (intention) or the difference between free will and whether God shall allow its effects.
17 It is important here to mention why Calvinists believe that post-Adamic man can only choose in the direction of sin. Jonathan Edwards, the well-known 18th century Calvinist, believed that a man always willed his choice in the direction of his greatest desire. Since man (in the Calvinistic view) is born a sinner, he will always choose to act according to his strongest desire. Thus a man cannot choose other than to sin. Furthermore, it should be noted that Edwards’s argument does not seem to demand a particular prerequisite moral condition (i.e., Fallen vs. Unfallen) for man to choose according to his strongest desire. But how (we ask), upon the former point (i.e., the claim that man can only choose according to his strongest desire), can Edwards explain Jesus’ statement to the Father in Gethsemane, “Not my desire, but thine be done?” (Gr. thelo, i.e., desire, (which, depending upon context, either means bare desire,or a will congruent with desire,or a will incongruent with desire). Christ (i.e., the Son) is clearly stating that His strongest desire is to avoid crucifixion, while the Father’s strongest desire is that He undergo crucifixion. Edwards’s response presumably would be that Christ ultimately had a greater desire to please His Father than He had desire to avoid the cross. But this argument renders Christ’s statement about His strongest desire meaningless. Moreover, if Christ so desired to obey the Father as to make insignificant the experience of crucifixion, why then does the writer of Hebrews state that Christ endured the cross? Christ should have desired the cross if He desired the Father’s will. Again, however, Christ said “Not my will” (Gr. thelo, contextually here, desire). Thus Christ bent His will in a direction opposite of His desire and did not follow His strongest desire. Properly speaking, then, Christ willed the Father’s desire; He did not desire the Father’s desire. That is, He chose it. On this basis we may conclude Edwards’s argument false (i.e., that a man always chooses according to his strongest desire). Indeed, how else is the Christian to also understand Christ’s statement that the one who wishes to follow Christ must deny himself? That is, how can one follow Christ while denying himself? The conflict in Christ to will something other than His strongest desire is, in fact, the whole basis for Christ’s agony in Gethsemane.
Therefore when R.C. Sproul and other Reformed thinkers attempt to draw a distinction between ‘regeneration’ and man’s strongest desire-a desire in which man ‘chooses’ to follow the divinely regenerated desire if/when God implants it in him-it should be noted that, according to Reformed theology’s own criteria of defining man’s will and desire, there is no distinction being made between the two. Any Reformed attempt at distinguishing between man’s will and man’s desire is thus meaningless, since these terms are put forward (unwittingly) by Calvinists as synonyms, except in these terms’ relation to time, which in salvific contexts, is irrationally defined. In other words, their assumption is that one can define the (properly and biblically understood) instant (indivisible point) of one’s belief as a process of stages (which by biblical definition is irrational), involving early and latter stages of time, a process divided into its early stage of ‘divine desire given’ (that which Calvinists call “regeneration”) and its latter stage of ‘man, having received the new desire, rushing to Christ.’ In this manner Calvinists make it appear as though their theology can involve both the “will of God” and “man’s belief” because of the psychological associations which all people invariably have about God and man as distinct persons of wills. A pretty trick. Thus (to return this observation back to the main point) Sproul, like Calvinist author Jerry Bridges, who (unwittingly or not) attempts to make distinctions between God’s “sovereign” will and God’s “revealed” will in order to posit ‘God’s will’ and ‘man’s will’ (and therefore God and man) as distinct from each other and yet the same as each other, defines ‘God’s changing of man’s desire’ and ‘man rushing in accord with his new desire’ as the same thing (i.e., “belief,” insofar as the Calvinist ‘understands’ that such belief is caused unilaterally by the sole Determiner of acts in the Cosmos), and yet distinct things (”regeneration” and “belief,” so that the particulars of the Cosmos are not swallowed up in the One). Incidentally, man’s ‘choice’ in following God’s implanted and irresistible desire would not, under Calvinism, be a choice at all, but merely the flip side of saying that depraved man can ‘choose,’ but can only choose evil. Thus the words “choose” and “choice” take on a different meaning than that which God intends and which is often (if not always) the commonly accepted or understood meaning of those words as used by average people in everyday life. Observing this phenomenon of arbitrary change is crucial for the true apologist. For the way to spot false theology is to see whether words (predicates, direct objects, etc.) ever change meaning merely depending on the grammatical subject. This is true whether the subject is God, man, or something else. This is a key thing to be observed.
For example, Sproul claims that God changes the man’s strongest desire so that the man will desire Christ. This is a clever way of changing meaning. For in effect this makes the words “God” and “man” change back and forth, first to synonyms, then returning to non-synonyms. Again, the ‘his’ of the man in the man’s desire has been completely extinguished. It may be called “man’s desire” or “his desire” by Sproul, but in fact the man’s desire has been negated in order that God might replace it with His desire. Indeed, had not man’s desire been negated it would have remained as it was. Thus man (rather, ‘man’) cannot be distinguished from a computer or any other kind of inert material which God could animate, according to the definition the Calvinist provides us. And so the attempted distinction between the created person and the Creator, as following the alleged distinction between the ‘creature’s will’ and the ‘Creator’s will,’ turns out to be irrationally defined.
This Calvinistic doublethink regarding man’s nature has entered Evangelical lingo, affecting even the way many Evangelicals speak of Christ—even, we might contend, to the unwitting denial of Christ’s Incarnation. For observe the misguided explanation that Christ, regarding sin, was “tempted in His flesh but not in His deity.” What does such a statement imply? For to put it this way is to suggest that Christ in Gethsemane could have been disobedient to the Father in the flesh, while, at the same time, not have been disobedient in His deity, i.e., to sin with one part of Himself without sinning with another part of Himself. [In passing, we grant here the underlying condition necessary for this argument—that Christ could sin had He chosen to (i.e. as He expressed that possibility of His choice in Gethsemane)]. But this idea of Christ sinning with only one part of Himself makes no sense, for would not Christ also sin in His deity if He sinned in His flesh? An objector might answer us thus: “Christ could have (failed), but would never have.” But here we contend that such an explanation is merely a doublethink, for if Christ would never have, i.e., theoretically have done otherwise under any possible circumstance(s), then He also could not have. What should rather be stated is that Christ could have sinned, but would not (i.e., chose not to). I say “would not” rather than “would never have” because the latter phrase (at least to me) seems to imply the theoretical impossibility of Christ ever sinning (as though Christ could choose, but could only choose right—i.e., the flip side of man in his alleged Depravity), rather than state an inability of Christ to sin because of His willingness to remain obedient. Thus for some to say that “Christ was tempted in His flesh but not in His deity” is to employ a doublethink that makes Christ able yet unable to be tempted, and thus separates Christ’s flesh from His deity in an irrational way, which is really to deny the Incarnation. When genuine Christians make such statements, they obviously do so ignorantly.
18 Calvinist John Piper, in an article called, ‘Is God for Us or for Himself?’ concludes at the end of his article:
God is the one Being in the entire universe for whom self-centeredness, or the pursuit of his own glory, is the ultimately loving act. For him, self-exaltation is the highest virtue.
Although in his article Piper also mentions God glorifying Himself in the redemptive process, his remarks miss the fact of God’s selflessness seen in the Godhead’s individual Persons. For the Son would in fact do only that which the Father showed Him to do, and the Father was committed to support only that which the Son requested in return (even if to the point of willing to rescue Christ in Gethsemane and to the breaking of Scripture). Thus for Piper to speak of God as “one Being” who seeks His own glory is false, unless a strong qualification is asserted to show that the term, ‘one Being’ is understood as the separate Persons of the Godhead willing to allow the other Two Persons of the Godhead their own decision at the expense of Himself. For this is the actual position of Scripture. Note that Jesus said, “The Spirit speaketh not of Himself but of me.” Where in Piper’s article is such a distinction pointed out? For Piper speaks of “God’s intention in sending his son,” instead of “The Father’s intention in sending His son,” which would have stated the matter correctly; for Christ Himself said He came not on His own but because the Father sent Him. Piper thus misses the point, i.e., that the motive of the Father is to glorify the person of the Son, and that the motive of the Son is to glorify the person of the Father, and that as Each does so, the person of the Spirit (who supports the work of the Son as designed by the Father) is also glorified. That is different than stating that God’s motive is to glorify God, and that God is one Being. In the end, then, Piper’s view of the Persons of the Godhead is divine musketeerish—all for one, and one for all—in which one’s motive is not merely for the benefit of others but also for himself. While it is true that glory ultimately redounded to the Father for having sent His Son, this realization did not inform the Father’s motive, as the Bible makes clear. The Father has never been selfish in that sense, i.e., in the sense that Piper means. Piper uses the term ’self-centeredness,’ but there is a 180° difference between God centering and orienting the world properly according to Himself as the Creator and Final Judge of the creature man, and what Piper is describing, which in fact would be divine selfishness.
To support his view that God is justifiably selfish (we recognize the actual definition of Piper’s term ’self-centeredness’ as we have given it above, and not as Piper defines it) Piper quotes Ayn Rand about inauthentic people who despise others for superficial reasons (e.g., what Piper cites as style of dress, etc.):
They are what Ayn Rand calls “second-handers.” They don’t live from the joy that comes through achieving what they value for its own sake. Instead, they live second-hand from the praise and compliments of others. We don’t admire second-handers, we admire people who are composed and secure enough that they don’t feel the need to shore up their weaknesses and compensate for their deficiencies by trying to get as many compliments as possible. [http://www.crosswalk.com/11574813/ page4/] (May 8, 2008).
Note that Piper, by analogy, implies that the justification for God’s ’self-centeredness’ is simply because God is composed and secure within Himself. Nowhere here or in Piper’s entire article does Piper state anything about the sacrificial nature of the individual Persons within the Godhead or how such selflessness informs the definition of who God really is.
[As a side note here (and lest some readers be troubled in mind), this activity within the Godhead does not mean (by anyone attempting to extend the principle) that men, at the horizontal level, are likewise to encourage and allow other men whatever decisions they choose, such as criminal acts. For at all times man must first orient himself to God as his Creator and Judge.]
19 Technically speaking, Job may have been expressing this statement idiomatically to say that God had caused his loss (even as God expressed it Himself), but Job seems not to understand that it was Satan who caused his loss. Thus, while Job unwittingly expressed his loss in a way that could be understood to be idiomatically true, it seems very unlikely that he intended his statement to be understood in this way.
20 As readers enter chapter 14, it should be noted that even as Job was presumably familiar with the narrative of the Fall, so too may Moses have been familiar with the book of Job. This familiarity with Job may have extended to other Israelites and helped early Jewish readers of the Pentateuch piece together what may be Mosaic allusions to 1) the Enemy’s activity upon Pharaoh’s heart, and 2) the way the Lord speaks as though He is the causative agent in certain circumstances, when contextually it is evident that He is not.
21 It may also be that none had suffered like Job in Eliphaz’s lifetime because none had been so conscientious as Job, and that therefore Eliphaz had no experience with which to compare his friend’s suffering.
22 Nor in such a case would any transfer of power from God to Satan have been needed.
23 This is the sense in which Job 42:11 must be understood, in which it says that Job’s relatives and friends comforted him “over all the trouble which the Lord had brought unto him.” This statement is a synopsis about God’s allowance for trial, much like the Lord’s synopsistic statement in Exodus 4:21, in which the Lord states that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart, the difference in Exodus being that the Lord uttered the statement about Pharaoh a priori to the events that led to Pharaoh’s hardening-events that we suggest in chapter 14 were successive allowances for the Enemy to augment Pharaoh’s already rebellious heart. These two statements (Job 42:11 and Ex. 4:21) are subject to the detailed accounts of the narratives themselves for their explanations, and, in the case of Exodus, also dependent on the book of Job for its description of Satanic method (again, see chapter 14). In both cases God is understood to be allowing these events, not causing them. Even with so little imagination as we might possess, we can imagine what it would be like for God to have to grant permission to the Enemy for every trial that befalls mankind, such that He would feel responsible for such trials, even though He were merely allowing it and therefore not responsible for it (see also 1 Kings 22). There is yet one further consideration. Especially as Job is a poetic book, there is certainly the possibility that in its summation Job 42:11 is intended as a tongue-in-cheek comment, and that the writer of Job-whether it were Job himself or someone else-would have seen the absurd, ironic element in Job having assessed God wrongly throughout much of his trial.
xxxii [www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/frost/life.htm].