Commentary on the Book of Job part eighty six

                                         Job 31:1-40

In Job 31:1-3, Job began to rise somewhat above his confusion when he called to remembrance all that God had done for him. Job remembered that God had caused him to be a loving and moral person. In verse two, Job asked two questions of God. What does God give the believer? And what does the believer inherit from God? God provided Job with His answer to the first question in the rest of the chapter by reminding Job that He had caused him to become a believer who happened to be good and loving and moral. God did not provide Job with an answer to the second question perhaps because God did not want to reveal in the Old Testament that a believer in the Redeemer receives heaven as his inheritance. Perhaps God desired to reserve that revelation for the New Testament.

In verse three, God gave Job a prophecy about that which He will do with the wicked who happen to be the same as the evil dead in Revelation 20:11-15. Those who deliberately give themselves to practice evil become dead within themselves. They reflect this fact in their belief in nihilism. Proverbs 8:36. They almost always believe that physical death annuls their souls and spirits which is exactly that which the forces of evil want them to believe.

But even the evil dead still possess a living soul and spirit that God created and put into them. Genesis 1:27. God can never lose anything He has ever created. Ecclesiastes 3:14; Luke 20:38. Every sinner still retains the living image of God within their beings even though they all have become stained by the influence of evil that the Devil has injected into the being of every human. Isaiah 64:6. Nowhere does the Bible declare that God will cast sinners into the lake of fire, only the unclean, evil dead. Revelation 20:11-15; Revelation 22:11-12. But God will cleanse all sinners in order to rescue their living souls and spirits from spiritual death, some by His grace and all others by the use of His consuming fire. John 5:24; John 1:29; I Corinthians 3:11-15; Matthew 3:11-12; John 5:28-29.

God knows exactly how to cleanse and preserve the souls and spirits and bodies of every sinner, protect them from eternal spiritual death, and restore them all to reconciliation with Him. Colossians 1:15-23; Revelation 21:5. God accomplished this monumental task through the death, burial, and resurrection of His Son. John 12:47; Hebrews 2:8-9; I Timothy 4:10. God reserves His highest form of salvation for those who repent and believe in Christ while still alive in the flesh. John 5:24. But God will also provide a lesser form of salvation for the souls, spirits, and bodies of all humans who died in their sins, whom He had to consign to one of the regions of the dead. God will use His consuming fire to cleanse His living images within them and raise them all from the dead for Him to recreate to live on His recreated earth. I Corinthians 3:11-15; Revelation 20:5.