The amazing thing is that God didn’t address any of Job’s questions about why He allowed him to suffer so horribly. He asked him another seventy, none of which he could answer, and Job’s reaction was to say, “Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer you? I will lay my hand upon my mouth” (Job 40:4). Then he added, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees you. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:4-5).
When we take a sinner through the Ten Commandments, he is given a “Job” experience. Before this happens, he is deceived into thinking that he is morally virtuous, and so thinks nothing of standing in judgment over his Creator, particularly when he sees suffering. The accusing sinner’s inference in asking “Why does God allow suffering?” is that He is morally obligated to humanity, and His inaction in the face of suffering is reprehensible. The sinner sees God as the criminal, puts Him in the dock, and judges Him as guilty. Case closed.
But the moral Law opens the case again, and it gives him his own personal encounter with God. It shows him that he is the vile one, and so he lays his hand upon his sinful mouth and says with Job, “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear: but now my eye sees you. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” The reason the Law was given was “to stop every mouth, and leave the whole world guilty before God” (Romans 3:19). The accusing self-righteous sinner suddenly sees that he has a multitude of sins and that God is perfect and holy. It gives him moral perspective. The Law puts the sinner in the dock and God on the throne. But more importantly, when it comes to evangelism, it prepares the sinner’s heart for the mercy of the cross.
