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Job 33:27-28  And they will go to others and say, ‘I have sinned, I have perverted what is right, but I did not get what I deserved.  God has delivered me from going down to the pit, and I shall live to enjoy the light of life.’

Like the other three ‘Job’s comforters’, a lot of what young, arrogant, self-righteous Elihu says to his suffering friend is quite right in some crcumstances, but the four of them were all addressing a circumstance that was very different from what they assumed!  It is frequently true that suffering is the result of sin – but not always!

Elihu and his three mates knew nothing of the way Satan, the Accuser, was challenging God and saying that Job was only trusting in God because God was blessing him with prosperity.  In Job’s case, however, God was successfully using the inflicted suffering to prove Satan wrong!  All that aside, we can learn from the fact that if Job was suffering for his sin – which he wasn’t – then Elihu has a good lesson for all of us, including himself!

It is the lesson that the Apostle John was seeking to get across in his First Letter: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:8-9)  Sometimes our greatest sin is our failure to recognise that we are sinners in need of a Saviour.  The sad part about this is that our failure to admit we are sinners results in our missing out on the wonderful salvation God is offering us through his grace shown in the substitutionary death of Jesus, the Saviour, on the cross to bear the punishment of our sin for us, and so satisfy God’s righteous judgement against us!

It is a good opportunity for us all to ask ourselves the question: “Am I among those who have truthfully and honestly said, ‘I have sinned, I have perverted what is right, but I did not get what I deserved.  God has delivered me from going down to the pit, and I shall live to enjoy the light of life.’”  What a powerful testimony Elihu would have had if he had seen himself among the ‘sinners’ he is talking about instead of just giving this helpful advice to poor Job, who in fact was not making the same mistake as his ‘so wise’ young ‘friend’.  Do we go out of our way, by our everyday speech and attitude, to make sure others know that we are ‘sinners saved by grace’ and not people who are earning a place in heaven, ‘enjoying the light of life’, by our own holiness, as Elihu seemed to be doing instead of heeding his own advice to his ‘friend’?

– Bruce Christian