[OBW]

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

Yes, that is precisely what I am saying. Jesus is such a man. The church as the One New Man mentioned in Ephesians will also be such a man. Jesus is Lord. Therefore God has made Him the judge of the wicked. Jesus has eyes of flesh. Likewise, the Church as the One New Man will also be given authority and thrones. From the book of Genesis to the book of Revelation, God building this new man has been a major theme.

And there has been no effort to establish how this response to the four (five?) who were sitting around bemoaning Job's condition and suggesting that they knew what God was doing with it all has to do with the "one new man." The challenges are, on their face, not about Jesus or the one new man. They are putting these men, including Job, in their place as mortals who are clearly not the ones who have such an arm of strength or voice of power.

Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah

On what basis? Are you serious? If you truly are asking for the Basis on how I could say that God created man in His image and after His likeness, and on what Basis that I am saying that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, or that the church is the New Creation, or that Jesus is the Last Adam, or that the Church is the One New Man, or that Jesus is Lord. Then I suggest you start a new thread.

I absolutely did not ask how you can say that man is created in the image of God. I said nothing about Jesus being or not being the image of the invisible God.

And if there is anything in what I said that suggested this, I would like to hear it. Otherwise, you have created a strawman. Job is not about Jesus. It is not about man being made in the image of God. But that fact does not suggest that those are not true statements. It simply is not talking about them.

And this is what I find continually lacking in these kinds of arguments. The mere fact that you can discuss the attributes of Jesus in these terms does not make this book about it. And the fact that the ultimate "power" of the church may compare, at least in a sort of parallel, does not cause this book to be talking about that.

I can buy a comparison of the mighty God with mortal man, then return to comment on the fact that another man, Jesus, will actually be both that mighty God and man. Or that in a sense the church will grow toward having the strength of God. But even this last one is not true in the sense in which this challenge to Job and his friends is laid down. Show me, in terms that man will see, that the church wields the kind of power that God speaks of here.

And, like the disagreement concerning scriptural statements (not existing) about Jesse teaching David any particular thing, this book does not actually say any of what you are saying. And simply saying it is there and going on like I'm some kind of fool to not see it makes your argument so entirely foolish. I know you wont like this, but this kind of argument is very Lee-esque. Find a theme that can be brought to the current passage through a common word and then insist that things not said in the current passages are simply true about them anyway.

You see, Sarah and Hagar, even when the account is recorded in Genesis, comment on the promise that God made to Abraham. From the beginning it was true that "man leaves his mother . . . and the two become one flesh." Yet Abraham first tired to simply substitute a servant for the never-expected-to-be son from his own flesh — the joined flesh of himself and his wife. Then he tried to substitute a son born from his side union with another servant. Again not from that joined flesh. The promise was not to Abraham and his concubine. It was to Abraham. So Sarah and Hagar were not written-up based on some overlay as miraculously describing the covenant (the promise) and something else. It really was that.

But in Job, God is putting Job and his friends in their place. He is not providing imagery about what Jesus will be. Or what the church metaphorically might be. God is not challenging Job to rise up and have the "arm of strength" that God does. He is declaring that he never has and never will have it. He is making it clear that all of our ruminations about why bad things happen to good people are just flights of fancy from people who have no clue what is really going on.

This is the kind of word that set Job to silence. To realize that no matter how it came to be, that he was not able to demand a different outcome or to lay blame. Or to insist that the fact that it happened lowered the status of God. But instead you answer the question about why or how evil and God can coexist with nonsense about God suggesting that we should actually have an arm of strength.

Question. If we really should have it — even if only as the church — should we be able to wield it in such a fashion that we simply order that evil cease and desist? If not, then how is this a response to zeek about God v evil. If so, then why haven't we done it?