Mystery, Humility, and Imitatio Christi

In his speeches to Job, Zophar provides the third of three portraits of pastoral malpractice. While Zophar does not materially depart from the other friends’ application of a mechanical deed-consequence relationship or retribution principle, he does seem to gesture towards a positive solution. As one commentator has summarized Zophar’s speech in Job 11, “Zophar strives to impress Job with the awesomeness of God’s wisdom. God’s ways are too profound for a mere human being to understand fully.”[1] We may agree heartily with Zophar’s emphasis on the mystery of God, but his deployment of this idea misses the mark with respect to Job’s situation.

John Hartley highlights the failure when he writes, “Zophar unwittingly aligns himself with the Satan’s position found in the prologue by encouraging Job to seek God for personal gain. Unfortunately Zophar is blind to the implications of his reasoning. His failure shows that spiritual counsel must be offered in compassionate love, taking into account the peculiarities of the specific situation in order for it to bear the peaceable fruits of righteousness.”[2] Because Zophar has connected a mechanical deed-consequence relationship with the mystery of God, he arrives at the conclusion that Job’s suffering is the result of secret sin. While his motivation is different, his remedy aligns with Satan in that the gifts rather than the Giver are emphasized. Ironically, while God is mysterious and incomprehensible, suffering is not for Zophar, and so it becomes transactional in Zophar’s economy. Ultimately, this reveals how Zophar overconfidently applies his theology of mystery to Job’s situation. What Hartley calls a lack of “compassionate love,” I call a lack of humility to recognize that context matters.

This has bearing on how we understand the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we imagine Zophar sitting with Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, witnessing the intense inner turmoil in Jesus occasioned by the increasingly burdensome weight of wrath on account of our sin, we might expect Zophar to counsel our Lord to repent of his secret sin that is obviously occasioning such turmoil. This would be laughable if it were not so serious, but it highlights for us how the implications of Zophar’s reasoning may lead to less than useful outcomes. Suffering has its own mystery such that we do well to humbly approach it in ourselves or others.

A specific application of this notion that suffering has its own element of mystery comes up in the arena of the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi). That followers of Christ suffer in imitation of Christ is amply attested in the Scriptures. Paul writes, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:16-17 ESV; cf. 2 Cor 1:5; Phil 1:29; 3:10; 2 Thess 1:5; 1 Tim 1:8; 2 Tim 2:3). Peter writes, “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Pet 2:20-21 ESV; cf. 1 Pet 4:13, 16).

While the fact that followers of Christ suffer is well attested, there is still the matter of how they suffer. The imitation of Christ in his suffering is not mimicry,[3] for that would not account for “the peculiarities of the specific situation” of Jesus’ life and mission as compared with our own. The humility that we exercise in our imitation of Christ is the humility that we do not know the intricacies of our suffering, for there is still great mystery in the suffering of the followers of Christ. Nevertheless, the imitation of Christ does proceed in a direction away from personal gain if it is going to avoid the health and wealth gospel. Moreover, the imitation of Christ rests in the belief that he is for us and not against us, even when we strain to grasp the meaning and purpose of suffering in our own lives. After all, this corresponds with the character of Christ himself, who though in his humanity wrestled with the significance of his suffering nevertheless submitted to the will of the Father. We may be content, therefore, with mystery as we imitate Christ in the humility of our state as followers.

[1] John E. Hartley, The Book of Job, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 204.

[2] Hartley, The Book of Job, 204.

[3] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 1:338.