A Time to Comfort

2 Corinthians & Job 4 | August 15 – 21, 2023

It is encouraging to me how the Holy Spirit works through Scripture in my life in surprising ways. Often, what I hear from the Word in the morning will be particularly applicable at some point in the day. This happened to me today, and, “coincidentally” I was tasked with writing something on 2 Corinthians for this blog.

So, I was reading both Job and 2 Corinthians 1 this week. And I saw an intriguing tie between them. When Job’s friend, Eliphaz, begins to speak (perhaps his greatest mistake), he recounts how Job has formerly been a blessing to others with his wisdom. He says,

“Behold, you have instructed many,

and you have strengthened the weak hands.

Your words have upheld him who was stumbling,

and you have made firm the feeble knees.” (Job 4:3-4)

I wish Eliphaz had stopped there, because these are tremendously encouraging words, and something that I imagine would be useful to Job in that moment. But, unfortunately, he goes on:

“But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;

it touches you, and you are dismayed.

Is not your fear of God your confidence,

and the integrity of your ways your hope?” (Job 4:5–6).

What he says is still true, but is misapplied at this moment. It is true that no matter how spiritually mature we become, trials can still be for us a time of temptation towards impatience and dismay and fear of the wrong things. And I think Job was experiencing that. But I think Eliphaz would have been wise to take his own advice in the first segment and apply it by withholding what he said in the second segment.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 is a text that often comes to mind when friends are suffering.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

From what Eliphaz tells Job at the beginning, it is clear that Job has already been one who brought strength and comfort to others from that comfort that he had received from God. But now he had entered another deeper phase of affliction. What he needed was for Eliphaz to bring comfort to him.

Eliphaz had some godly wisdom to offer, but a key piece to that is having discretion on how and when to offer it as well.

May we bring comfort as God has comforted us!