When Righteousness Goes Wrong Text: Job 32:1-5
Introduction: The Fourth Man Enters the Fire
The book of Job is a furnace. It is a crucible designed by God to test and purify a man, but it is also a courtroom where some of the most profound questions of justice, suffering, and righteousness are debated. For thirty-one chapters, we have been witnesses to a grand stalemate. On one side, we have Job, a man stripped of everything but his integrity, sitting on an ash heap, scraping his sores with a piece of pottery. On the other side, we have his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. They are counselors of cold comfort, theologians of a tidy universe where every effect has a neat and discernible cause. Their argument is simple: God is just, you are suffering, therefore you must have sinned grievously. Confess, and all will be well.
But Job, to his credit, refuses to play their game. He knows he is not the secret monster they imagine him to be. The problem is that in defending his own righteousness against their flawed accusations, he has begun to veer into the ditch on the other side of the road. He has started to defend his righteousness against God. The debate has devolved into a frustrating loop of human reasoning. The friends argue from a wooden, mechanical view of God's justice, and Job argues from his own wounded sense of integrity. Both sides are talking past each other, and more importantly, both are missing the central point. They are all trying to figure God out, to put Him in a box of their own understanding, and the result is a theological dead end.
It is at this point of utter exhaustion, when the arguments have run out and the three friends fall silent, that a new character steps onto the stage. A young man named Elihu, who has been listening quietly this whole time, finally speaks. And he enters the debate, not with more of the same tired arguments, but with anger. This is not the petty, peevish anger of a man whose ego has been bruised. This is the hot, righteous anger of a man who has heard both the majesty of God and the integrity of a godly man slandered. He is angry at the friends for their foolish counsel, and he is angry at Job for his self-justification. Elihu's arrival is the pivot point of the entire book. He is the forerunner, preparing the way for God Himself to speak out of the whirlwind.
In these first five verses of chapter 32, we see the setup. The old guard has failed, their wisdom has proven bankrupt, and a new voice, fueled by a holy zeal, is about to cut through the fog of human opinion. This is a lesson for us. When our theological systems become more important than the God they are meant to describe, when our defense of our own righteousness becomes more important than the righteousness of God, we have reached a dangerous impasse. And sometimes, what is needed is the sharp, clarifying voice of a fourth man to enter the fire.
The Text
Then these three men ceased answering Job because he was righteous in his own eyes.
But the anger of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned; against Job his anger burned because he was proving himself righteous before God.
And his anger burned against his three friends because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job.
Now Elihu had waited with his words for Job because they were years older than he.
Then Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of the three men, so his anger burned.
(Job 32:1-5 LSB)
The Righteousness of Self (v. 1)
We begin with the reason for the breakdown in communication.
"Then these three men ceased answering Job because he was righteous in his own eyes." (Job 32:1)
The three friends give up. They throw in the towel. Why? Because Job was "righteous in his own eyes." Now, we must be careful here. Job was, in fact, a righteous man. God Himself testified to it twice in the opening chapter, calling him "blameless and upright" (Job 1:8, 2:3). Job's defense of his integrity against the slanderous accusations of his friends was, in large part, correct. They were wrong to assume a one-to-one correlation between his suffering and some secret, heinous sin.
But something has shifted. In the heat of the debate, Job's defense of his God-given righteousness has curdled into a defense of his own righteousness. He has begun to sound like he is putting God on trial. Listen to his words from earlier: "I am in the right, and God has taken away my right" (Job 27:2). This is the language of a man who has made himself the standard of justice. When a man becomes "righteous in his own eyes," he has made his own perception the ultimate court of appeal. This is the very essence of the fall. It is the creature telling the Creator that he knows better.
This is a profound danger for all believers, particularly for those who take their sanctification seriously. It is one thing to stand on the righteousness that God has given you in Christ. It is another thing entirely to begin to admire that righteousness as though it were your own production. Self-righteousness is not just open rebellion, like the prodigal son in the far country. It is also the subtle, camouflaged rebellion of the elder brother, standing in the field, refusing to come to the party because his own record of service has been offended. Both are forms of unrighteousness, and the latter is often more insidious. The friends saw this in Job, but for the wrong reasons. They could not refute him, but they could see that he had become his own point of reference. And at that point, debate is useless.
The Righteousness of Anger (v. 2-3)
Into this silence steps Elihu, and he is burning with anger.
"But the anger of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the family of Ram, burned; against Job his anger burned because he was proving himself righteous before God. And his anger burned against his three friends because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job." (Job 32:2-3 LSB)
The Bible makes a clear distinction between righteous and unrighteous anger. The anger of man, James tells us, "does not produce the righteousness of God" (James 1:20). But we are also commanded, "Be angry, and do not sin" (Eph. 4:26). The Lord Jesus Himself looked upon the Pharisees "with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts" (Mark 3:5). Godly anger is not a loss of control; it is a controlled, focused response to a genuine offense against God's righteousness, not our own egos.
Elihu's anger is of this righteous sort, and it is aimed in two directions. First, his anger burned against Job. Why? "Because he was proving himself righteous before God." The Hebrew is more direct: "justifying himself rather than God." Job had set up a false dichotomy: either he was righteous or God was. And since he was convinced of his own integrity, he was, by implication, charging God with injustice. This is a profound theological error. It violates the Creator/creature distinction at the most fundamental level. God's righteousness is the standard by which all other righteousness is measured. To justify yourself at God's expense is the ultimate act of presumption. Elihu is angry because God's name and character are being maligned.
Second, his anger burned against the three friends. Why? "Because they had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job." Their failure was twofold. Intellectually, they were incompetent. They could not refute Job's arguments. Their theology was a blunt instrument, and Job easily parried their blows. But their moral failure was worse. Despite their inability to prove their case, they had already passed sentence. They had condemned a righteous man. They were functioning as false witnesses and unhelpful prosecutors, not as wise counselors. They were more interested in winning the argument than in speaking the truth. Elihu is angry because they have misrepresented God's justice and have afflicted an already suffering man with their foolishness.
The Wisdom of Youthful Restraint (v. 4-5)
Elihu's anger is not impulsive. It has been simmering, held in check by a commendable respect for his elders.
"Now Elihu had waited with his words for Job because they were years older than he. Then Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of the three men, so his anger burned." (Job 32:4-5 LSB)
Here we see another mark of righteous anger: it is not quick to speak. Elihu is a young man, and in that culture, age was equated with wisdom. He showed proper deference. He listened. He waited for his elders to speak. He did not barge in, demanding to be heard. This is in keeping with the scriptural command to "be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (James 1:19). He honored the created order, the structure of authority represented by the age of the other men (cf. Lev. 19:32).
But there comes a point when deference to age must give way to deference to the truth. When the older men had demonstrated their bankruptcy, when their wisdom was shown to be folly, when they fell silent with "no answer in the mouth," then Elihu's obligation shifted. His silence would have been a form of complicity. His anger finally "burned" and overflowed into speech because the situation demanded it. Truth had fallen in the street, and it was his duty to pick it up.
This is a delicate balance. We live in a culture that worships youth and despises the wisdom of the past. But the opposite error is to idolize age and tradition to the point where we refuse to challenge error simply because it is old error. Elihu provides the model. He shows respect, he waits, he listens. But when it is clear that the emperor has no clothes, he is willing to be the one to say so. His youth does not disqualify him from speaking the truth, and their age does not grant them a monopoly on it. As he will say later, "it is the spirit in a person, the breath of the Almighty, that gives them understanding" (Job 32:8).
Conclusion: Preparing for the Whirlwind
The entrance of Elihu is a disruption of the status quo. He breaks the stalemate. He rebukes both sides of the human argument, not to propose a third human argument, but to clear the ground for a divine revelation. He is angry at Job's self-righteousness, which puts man at the center. He is angry at the friends' mechanical theology, which puts a system at the center. Elihu is preparing to put God back in the center.
This is a picture of how God often works in our lives when we get stuck in our own arguments, our own justifications, our own pain. We can be like Job, so consumed with our own integrity and our own suffering that we begin to think God owes us an explanation. We can be like the friends, so committed to our theological neatness that we end up slandering God and hurting His people. We get stuck in these ruts of pride and folly, going around and around.
And then God sends an Elihu. It might be a sermon, a book, a rebuke from a younger believer, or the sharp conviction of the Holy Spirit. It is a voice that cuts through our nonsense with a righteous anger, an anger that is zealous for the glory of God. It is a voice that tells us to stop justifying ourselves and to start justifying God. It tells us to stop defending our tidy systems and to start bowing before the mystery of His sovereignty.
Elihu's speeches are not the final word. The final word comes from God Himself. But Elihu's role is essential. He is the one who says, "Everybody stop. You are all asking the wrong questions. You are all looking in the wrong direction." He turns Job's face, and the faces of the friends, and our faces, toward the coming storm. He prepares us to hear the voice from the whirlwind.
The ultimate answer to Job's predicament is not a better argument, but a bigger vision of God. The answer is not an explanation that satisfies our reason, but a revelation that overwhelms our pride. And this is always the gospel answer. The solution to our sin and suffering is not found in justifying ourselves, but in the stunning reality that God justified us, not at His own expense, but at the expense of His Son. On the cross, Jesus was treated as unrighteous so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). He was the one who could truly say God had forsaken Him, so that we, in our suffering, would never have to. Elihu's anger points us to the necessity of a better word, and that word is finally and fully spoken in Jesus Christ.