Week 1 - Job 1-2 - Round 3

Satan in the Book of Job is constrained.  We mistakenly read freedom into Satan's response to God:

The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”  

Job 1:7

But Satan was expelled from expelled from Heaven (Revelation 12:7-17).  Consider him rather a caged animal.

Round 1

A present is good, right?  When there are two siblings, but only one toy, there is trouble.  Giving a present to one but not the other brings tears and the inevitable “That’s not fair!”  

As explained by R. C. Sproul in Tabletalk, this is how Augustine and later by Aquinas defined evil.  Evil does not exist without good.  The definition of evil always depends on the presence of good.

In this way, evil can be the result of God without God being the origin of evil.  And, Job clearly understood this in the first round of temptation.  When God withdrew His good, He was not evil.  To which he could still respond:

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

Job 1:21b

Round 2

In the second round, Satan proposes one temptation, and is constrained to deliver one of lesser degree.

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life.

Job 2:4

Instead of tempting him with his very life.  Satan was only permitted to inflict illness.  God withdrew His favor of continued health.  The temptation culminates when Job's wife encourages him to abandon his piety in response to God abandoning him:

“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” 

Job 2:10b

Round 3

For Job, there was no round 3.  But for Jesus, there was three rounds.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Matthew 4:8-9

The third temptation of Christ offered Jesus earthly authority.  But the path that laid before Christ led to the cross.  To go to the cross, to fulfil the redemptive plan, He would have to submit to man’s authority.  

Satan presented to him that ultimate temptation.  Worship the god of this age and save yourself, or serve the true God and lose your life.

Jesus successfully rebuked him.

Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God

    and him only shall you serve.’”

Matthew 4:10