Discussion Board

1. In the song lyrics section titled His Story, Card describes Job as “a man truly righteous” with “no pious facade.” Since Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned,” what could the wisdom teachers have meant by designating Job as a righteous man? When Scripture states as it does in Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; Romans 3:9-10, “What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one”, and Psalm 14:3, “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” then what is the reader to ascertain from passages such as Job 1:1, “In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.” Job is only one example, we also read about the Patriarch Noah in Genesis 7:1 and Zacharias and Elizabeth in Luke 1:5-6 who were also described as being righteous in the eyes of God. The answer to this seemingly contradiction is that although Job, Noah, Zacharias and Elizabeth were blameless and righteous does not mean that they were without sin. We are clearly told in Scripture that Jesus Christ was the only person to ever have walked the earth who was without sin (1 Peter 2:22). Therefore, to better understand how a person can be righteous, upright and blameless, the three characteristics of Job, Noah, Zacharias and Elizabeth, and still be with sin it is beneficial to examine the Hebrew definition of these words. The Hebrew word for righteous is sedeq or sedeqa which is a noun denoting “conformity with a norm or standard, community loyalty, or proper order.” However, “when these words are attributed to person or things, the nature or acts of these persons or things accord with what may be expected from them….” Therefore, when Job declares his righteousness in 27:5-6 what he is saying that as a godly person he has