Was God Unfair to Job?
God is never unfair because He is the ultimate authority on what “fair” is. Sometimes our human definitions of “fair” do not match God’s definition.
We can look at God putting aside Job’s hedge of protection and allowing Satan to do all kinds of evil to him as unfair, but it wasn’t. It would have been unfair for God to never allow Satan to do anything to Job during his entire life. Satan has the right to be on the earth and try to afflict people. As New Covenant believers, we can put a stop to anything the devil tries to do to us personally, but Job was not a New Covenant believer.
You may think, “But even under the Old Covenant, God was still the Lord Who Heals You, forgiving sins and healing diseases. So that still wasn’t fair to Job.” But Job lived before the Old Covenant was ratified! He did NOT have a legal right to healing in his day. God had never made a covenant to heal anyone who wanted it in the age when Job lived, so Job did not have the right to have Satan stopped in his tracks. As you can see, even the Old Covenant was an improvement over what Job had!
In case you’re wondering how we can be so sure that Job lived before the Law of Moses, Job 42:8 proves it. Under the Law, you brought your sacrifice to be offered up by the priests. God commanded Job’s “comforters” to offer up their own sacrifices.
The next follow-up would be, “It was unfair for God to exclude anyone from benefits and blessings just because someone was born too soon.” But if you take that position, you also have to conclude that it was unfair for God to let Moses and Elijah live when they did when they had no possibility of being born again, baptized with the Holy Spirit or able to pray in tongues.
Things get better and better with God, and someday will we will be in an even better situation on a new earth where Satan cannot tempt or afflict anyone because he will be trapped in eternal punishment in the lake of fire. Is it unfair for God to let us live now when things could be much better – and WILL be much better? Obviously, God doesn’t think so. Nor does God consider it unfair that His former covenant (the Law) was made only with the Jews. If you were a Gentile, you were excluded unless you converted (which was an option), but there were plenty of people all over the globe who had no access whatsoever to the Law’s benefits. In His plan, God singled out Israel for special blessing. Even when Jesus walked the earth, He told His disciples to only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not to the Gentiles.
Matthew 10:5-6:
These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:
But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
This changed after the New Covenant was inaugurated; we are now commanded to go to everyone in the world with the good news (Mark 16:15-18). Jews and Gentiles share the same benefits and blessings now. So-called Messianic Jews have no more blessings than saved Gentiles. (See Galatians 3:28 and Ephesians 2:11-18.)
Christians may come up with reasons why they think God is unfair, but it’s His universe to run and He’s chosen to do it the way that He has. Paul spent quite a bit of space in Romans 9 dealing with the matter of people trying to lecture God. For example:
Romans 9:20:
Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Lecturing God didn’t work for Job either. Regardless of what you might think of how He has chosen to run things, He is God and we aren’t.
I am sure that in heaven, no one will shake angry fists at God and call Him unfair for any reason. All questions about fairness will be answered to everyone’s satisfaction, even yours!