NOTES for Job 13:9

All reasonable people in every age understood that in one way or another they would have to answer for their words. If not before people, then certainly before God. Unreasonable people understood this too, but usually when it was already too late. But those who consider themselves God's defenders usually think least about their responsibility. Those who defend, for example, His right to judge the sinner. Often such people even outrun God: every misfortune, every failure of a person they explain by sins committed by that person, even if they know nothing concrete about them. And if they do know, the admonitions usually have no end.

It would seem that formally, at least, the accusers are right: the sin is evident, which means the sinner's failures and misfortunes may well be the consequences of his sin. If not for one "but": the right to accuse a sinner presupposes readiness to bear responsibility for one's own sins. Meanwhile it often turns out that accusers, consciously or not, accuse another first of all in order to distract the attention of God and people from their own sins.

Of course, God is not a human being, but perhaps He will take the accuser's position into account? After all, the accuser supported Him with all his strength. True, this accuser did not first trouble himself to ask God whether He needed such support. And if he had asked, he would have learned that He does not need it. Not even because He sees and knows everything perfectly without human help, and in a way no human being can see or know another soul, but because He does not set accusation as His goal at all. He already knows perfectly well that all people are sinful. But He wants not to punish them for sin, but to deliver them from this sin and save them.

Yes, of course, deliverance from sin may prove painful for the sinner. But such pain cannot be considered punishment: it is only the pain of a necessary but painful medical procedure. If anyone punishes a person for sin, it is only the person himself, first by sinning and then by reaping the consequences of his own sin, which the sinner often does not want to renounce no matter what. Human accusations usually do not help in this case.

They usually do not help at all because accusers are not trying to help: they are sure that God wants to punish the sinner, not save him. Yet such accusations of another's sin, with a desire that the sinner receive as severe a punishment as possible, are themselves sin. If only because none of us is anyone's judge. An evaluation of another person's deed is possible and permissible for us; an evaluation of the person and his sinfulness is not. Nor is the determination of the measure of punishment for sin that a person deserves. It is better to leave this to God. And He will know how to save everyone who can be saved.