Job 35:6 If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? Or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him?
I have a little dog named Bromley. She is my close companion. I love my dog and my dog loves me, or at least I think that is what is happening. She is happy when I or anyone in the family gets home. Does she really love me? I think so. Someone may rain on my parade and say, “The only reason your dog appears to like you is because you feed and take care of her.” So, you could argue whether my dog loves me unselfishly or not, but does she need me? Yes! Absolutely she does! She needs me more than she could know. We have bred the usefulness right out of dogs. My dog, if she were on her own, would probably starve within a week. She is not a hunter. She is not vicious. She is delicate and has these long white hairs that are purely ornamental. They don’t really keep her warm. They are just for looks. She is a lap dog and she lives on our couch. So, yes, she needs me and even more than she knows.
Do I love my dog? Yes! She is a dog, so as much as I can love an animal, I do. Do I need my dog? No. You could say that for my mental health my dog is necessary, and that is probably true. But, will I starve if I don’t have my dog? No, I won’t. Sometimes we might think this about our relationship to God, that we don’t really need Him. We are not merely animals; we are His creation, the people He has made. But trials have a way of revealing the nature of our relationship with God. In the first place, we are always needy.
There has been a back and forth between Job and a few of his friends, and now Elihu jumps into the discussion. Elihu says to Job, “If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him [God]? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him?” He is saying, “Job, you can’t hurt God with your sin. You can only hurt yourself.” In verse 8 Elihu says, “Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man.” What he seems to be saying is, “Job, God doesn’t care one way or another about you. Your sin can only hurt you. Your virtues can only help you.” He says, “If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand.”
So, trials have a way of revealing the nature of our relationship to God. Job was going through great turmoil in his life and one thing is obvious: Job was needy. We supposedly have a hierarchy of needs. I can’t worry about my social life until I am sure I’m not going to starve. Yet, there are so many invisible needs that we have that we make tired attempts to fill. We think that health, wealth, and pleasure will make us happy, and many times when we get those things, they do not make us happy.
God is our greatest need. God is a greater need than food or shelter, yet if a person is wealthy, healthy, and has friends, it would be very easy for him to think he didn’t need God. Job had said the same things about the wicked. He essentially said, “Sometimes the wicked spend their days in wealth, and they die quickly with no pain. So, they say to God, ‘Depart from us. We don’t want to know your ways. Who is God that we should serve Him, and what would it profit us?’” So many times we need God, but we don’t love Him and we don’t even really know that we need God because we have lesser things taken care of. But, we are always needy.
What about God? Is He always needy? Does God need us? Sometimes we seem to think, “Well, here is a person that is so talented and gifted, if they would just give their life to God, wow, what God could do with them.” That may be true as far as it goes, but don’t ever get the impression that God is desperately in need of you. He is not. God does not need you, but God loves you. That is the amazing thing. Most of us who love another, love that person because we also need them. I love my wife, my children, my parents, and my friends, and there is a sense in which I need every one of them. So, my love for them comes because of my need for them and how those needs have been taken care of. But, when it comes to God, He does not need us, though He loves us nonetheless. He loves us not because He needs us or because we add to Him. He loves us because it is His nature as our Maker.
That means that I need to have patience and perspective. When I don’t understand and I don’t see, I need to have patience that God loves me and the perspective that I need Him.