The Truth About Job: Sorry For Others' sins, Not His Own

Job was a Pharisee of sorts, worrying about the sins of others, yet presuming that He himself was in good standing with God.

He never stopped offering sacrifices for his sons:

"And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually." (Job 1:5)

So preoccupied was he with the sins of his children, that Job offered sacrifices for them "continually", lit. every day.

Job is concerned about the status of his children's heart, yet sacrifices alone cannot make them right:

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)

The Bible teaches that even in offering sacrifices, there is still a remembrance of sins:

"For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.

"For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins.

"But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year.

"For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins." (Hebrews 10: 1-4)

In animal sacrifices, according to the writer of Hebrews, the person offering the sacrifice cannot remove from himself the consciousness of sin! That would include Job, a man whose sin consciousness came to the forefront throughout his long-winded diatribe across many chapters.

He was sorry for the sins of others, yet not for his own. He recognized a wicked nature within his children, yet not himself.

Job's actions may have been upright, but before God, he was not righteous.

It would take the promise of the Messiah, Jesus Christ dying on a Cross, to set mankind free from his wicked heart and sinful conscience:

"33But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.

"And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31: 33-34)