Job suffered, but did Satan win?

On Sunday mornings, we’ve been engaged in a great study of Job, and as we near the conclusion of the text, I was struck by a thought. Much of the class has been centered on the will of God, and how the Lord “allowed” Satan to do harm to Job. Critics of the Bible use that as a means to attack the Almighty, by trying to impose their understanding of morality onto Him, arguing that by allowing evil to be done, the Lord is, in effect, culpable of evil. That may or may not be true of people, but the Lord is the exception: He is the ultimate, sovereign Being over the universe. Everything that happens MUST either happen because He directly caused or it because He indirectly allowed it, otherwise He would not be God. Ideally, we would never be in an environment where the Devil could do such evil to us, but that was our choice, not God’s. More on that tomorrow.

As it relates to Job, consider this question: Did Satan win?

Let’s explore that idea in a way that helps us change the way we think about the book. Did Satan win? He wanted to harm Job and he did, but did he succeed in his ultimate goal? No. It’s true that Job suffered. It’s true that Satan wanted him to, but only as a means to an end. In the end, Job remained faithful. Satan’s goal was for Job’s suffering to break his faithful spirit, and for the patriarch to renounce God. That didn’t happen. In that case—from that perspective—despite all that He suffered, and despite all that God allowed Him to endure, Satan lost.

Now consider this critical idea: Job is not the central “character” of the book. God is. 

The book of Job essentially begins with Satan challenging God as a provider for His people, arguing that He only has loyal followers because He bribes them with good things and refuses to let Satan hurt them. In response, God allowed Satan to hurt Job, to prove to the Devil that the patriarch would not be so superficial and fickle as to abandon the Lord when his days became dark. With that, the trial began, and though Job suffered immensely, and though he and his companions all mistakenly believed that God was directly hurting Job (his friends assumed Job was being punished for his guilt; Job believed God was punishing him despite his innocence), Job still never renounced the Lord. He suffered, but stayed faithful.

We do a disservice to the book when we frame it as “Job vs Satan.” Likewise, we shouldn’t view our own suffering as “us vs Satan.” In that case, when we suffer, we might be tempted to think Satan has won. No. Satan is only victorious when we turn on God. HE is what this is all about, not us. It’s easy to be self-centered, and to think “God wouldn’t/shouldn’t let me suffer!” as though God is doing wrong when Satan hurts us. What God allows is not the same as what God does: That’s our limited morality trying to be imposed on the eternal God. Don’t be so entitled. You’re not special. You live in a fallen, Satan-dominated world, just like the rest of us. You can suffer. So can I. So did Job.

What matters is not whether or not we suffer, but that we remain loyal to the Lord. He is the central character of our lives. We must be God-centered people, not self-centered. If we are, then Satan can never win.

~Matthew