Commentary on the Book of Job part eighty five

                                        Job 30:1-31

God had to test His Love in order to overcome doubt about it in His creations caused by Lucifer's rebellion. If God did not test His Love, then evil would remain forever within His creations causing permanent suffering. God could not ban evil by a summary command because that would leave His Love untested. Satan thought that by injecting evil into living humans, he would be able to hold them in hell forever and cause a failure of God's Love. An Almighty Love cannot fail to save everything that it loves.

God allowed temporary suffering for sin and evil in man's life so that, regardless of whether each human failed or passed the tests of his faith, God could still exert His Almighty Love to suffer man's sin and evil in his place in order to save his life from permanent separation from Him. In this way, God would pass the test of His own Love. When a person passed a test of his faith, then God would be pleased with him and spare him the suffering that that sin would cause, but it would not save him forever. Every person sins and fails a test of his faith and suffers for it, but that does not cause God to lose His Love for him manifested in His suffering his permanent death and the sin and evil that would cause that eternal separation from Him in his place. John 12:47; Hebrews 2:9.

God also knew exactly how to use the faith that He had put into His living image in every person to cause every person to freely choose to return to love for Him as their Savior, some by His grace and all others within the regions of the dead by a great worship service as recorded in Revelation 5:11-14. Revelation 4:11 reveals that God created everything for His own pleasure. That statement can only mean His eternal pleasure. God could not possibly enjoy any eternal pleasure should His living image that He created and put into man suffer forever in an eternal hell. God must save all of humanity, but at different levels of salvation.

Job suffered confusion about why God had made him suffer in Job 30:25-31. Job could not understand that God had a good reason for his suffering. God had to prove that Job's temporary suffering for his sin and evil could never cause a permanent separation from Him because God's Love would suffer that permanent separation for Job and for all mankind. Job could not understand that God had already rescued Job forever when Job confessed his faith in His coming Redeemer in Job 19:25.