Salt in the Wound

If your children have sinned against him, he has delivered them into the hand of their transgression. If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation. And though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great.
Job 8:4-7
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Salt in the Wound
Bildad, who has come to offer comfort to his friend, gives instead some of the most cruel and painful words one could imagine.  He tells Job his children died because they were wicked sinners and only the godless suffer in such ways.  Job’s heart was undoubtedly already torn apart by the death of his children, and now Bildad pours salt into the wound.  And then he urges Job to seek God, as if Job had not been doing so already.  For like many today, Bildad believes that the righteous never suffer, only the unrighteous.  This is an old trick of the devil which has convinced people who are suffering it must all be their fault.  That if only they had a stronger faith, believed harder, did more good deeds, then all their troubles would be over.  But we know this not to be the case. The righteous do in fact suffer and the unrighteous prosper (if only for a while). This is the difference between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. Look no further than to the cross to know and understand the innocent and righteous do suffer. And as Christ’s suffering was for you, so your suffering is for you as well, to draw you closer to God, to have you seek refuge at the foot of the cross. Find comfort in the fact that God offers relief in His Son, and has given you the faith, as a child of God, to believe in His mercy. “[A]nd 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” (Romans 8:17).