The Book of Job might seem like an odd place to turn in order to make a Biblical appeal for Pentecostal spirituality.  But, as our One-Year Bibles have demonstrated once again, the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures carry on such a consistent dialogue that it seems we can expect almost any two passages chosen at random to interact with and inform each other in wonder-inspiring ways.  This really should not come as a surprise to Christians, since we believe that throughout all 66 books of the Bible it is a single Voice who speaks.  (But then again, we Christians are also surprised when God answers prayer...)

In our reading on August 25, in one column we found Job expressing a longing for a hope beyond death – a hope that would give him the comfort needed to endure his time of unimaginable agony.  Across the page in 1 Corinthians 15, there was Paul, insisting on the absolute necessity of the historicity of the resurrection if the Christian faith is to have any relevance at all. "If there is no resurrection... then your faith is useless and you are still dead in your sins" (1 Cor 15:15a ,17b).  Job intuited this anti-Gospel perfectly some 2,000 years before Paul.

In fact, in the ongoing conversation between the First and Second Testaments, the Book of Job gives articulation to many of the major tensions introduced in Biblical faith to which Christianity supplies the resolutions.  Not only does Job conclude that it is necessary, for the sake of righteousness, for there to be some moment of reckoning in the afterlife (for how can God be just if innocent victims who died in their misery are never compensated and the rich oppressors who prospered on the backs of their victims are never held accountable?)  Job also voices a longing for a mediator between God and man – someone to plead man's cause before the invisible and unapproachable One.  The Book of 1 Timothy answers back: "For there is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile both God and humanity: the man Jesus Christ" (2:5).  Romans 8 gives the echo: "the Spirit Himself intercedes for us in accordance with the will of God" (8:27), and again: "Jesus... is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us" (8:34).  Bible scholars refer to this conversation running through the Scriptures (all the more impressive for its unity on account of its having been carried on over a span of two thousand years and in cooperation with roughly 40 human authors) as 'intertextuality.'  I say it's just what you ought to expect to find when you examine a book that claims to have a divine Author: God's fingerprints.

But the component of Job's predicament that most anticipates the answer God will give at the dawn of the Christian Era stands as the interpretive key to the entire book of Job, if not to the whole of our existence in this world.  What Job needs more than answers to his questions, what will benefit Job more than the promise of afterlife, or of any guarantee that the righteous and the wicked alike will receive justice, what would still leave Job longing for explanation, even in the event that his friends had managed to maintain a spirit of tenderness and compassion toward him... The event in the book of Job that eclipses all his questions, all his complaints, and even causes his pain to vanish from the scene altogether – is the arrival of God's presence.

More than spiritual gifts – more than miracles, signs, and wonders – it is the privilege of being able to experience the presence of God that forms the heart of Pentecostal spirituality.  Naturally, a fully developed theology of the Spirit's presence carries within it the expectation that the gifts will follow, but it is the God-with-us aspect of Pentecostalism that distinguishes it from other Christian movements. "May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too wonderful for you to comprehend," Paul writes in Ephesians 3:19.  (Your translation might put 'know' in place of the word 'experience'; I would just point out that the word 'know' is also used to describe the physical intimacy between a man and woman in marriage.  Hold that in your mind while you consider what you usually mean when you use the word 'know', and you will understand why 'experience' is probably the better word.)

From the earliest days of the movement, the pronouncement that Pentecostalism is 'an experience looking for a theology' has been directed toward Pentecostals in a tone of withering criticism.  Job's story ought to inspire a little bit of humility in those who would make such a condescending assessment.  Job is an experience looking for a theology.  And it is no mere theology that God gives Job in order to relieve his agony, it is an experience- an experience of God's presence.

Even as we come to the close of 1 Corinthians and begin reading Paul's second letter to the church at Corinth, we find a continuing, Spirit-facilitated conversation between Job and Paul.  Job's friends failed him because their perfectly orthodox wisdom about God's righteousness, of the fate of the wicked, and of the promise of restoration that awaits those who repent was completely inadequate to provide Job any comfort in the midst of his anguish.   In 2 Corinthians, we find Paul claiming that it is those who have themselves been comforted by God in their distress who are capable of giving comfort to others in theirs.  It is those who have experienced the love of God who are able to do more than quote Scripture in their attempts to bring hope to the devastated.  Specifically, it is those who have shared in the experience of Jesus Himself – those like Paul who, for the sake of love, "expected to die", and, as a result, "learned to rely on God, who raises the dead" (2 Cor 1:9), who have been qualified to "speak the truth in love" (Eph 4:15).  Once you have seen the logic of this it is impossible to unsee.  Jesus, the Word of God who is Love, is the Truth incarnated in a spoken Word of Love.  The person who follows Jesus in the way of the cross and resurrection learns the language of Love along the way, which is also the language of Truth.  And it is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, who actualizes all of this–whose presence in the believer takes up the pain of our existence in this world, unites it with the death of Jesus, and leaves in its place the life, the hope, and the comfort that are active in the believer through the the power of the resurrection.

Life is an experience looking for a theology, and Job's life is the essence of all that demands an explanation from God.  The spirituality that draws its resources from the events of Pentecost recognizes that in our darkest moments no explanation is adequate, no theology is sufficient, nothing less than the presence of God will do.  It is not as if experience is the point, however.  The point is that humans, after years of self-imposed exile from God's presence, finally have the opportunity to be reconciled to God – to return to the kind of intimacy that we were created to have with Him.  If our hearts flutter, our spirits buzz, and our minds are set awhirl by the experience of meeting the person who might be 'the one', or who you sense deep down is the soul mate for whom you have been waiting your whole life, and with whom you will spend the rest of your life, how much more should the experience of meeting God engage the whole breadth of human emotional capacity and exceed the limits of even the most descriptive language?

To refer again to some verses I've referenced in previous posts: our love for Jesus give us a glorious and inexpressible joy (1 Pet 1:8); the experience of the Spirit is a taste of the heavenly gift, of the goodness of the Word of God, and of the power of the Age to Come (Heb 6:4-5); God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us, producing a hope that will never disappoint (Rom 5:5); God's peace surpasses understanding (Phil 4:7); the reason that Jesus came was that you and I might have life – life overflowing, life abundant (John 10:10).  I could continue to pile up references in the Bible that together paint a picture of a level of human flourishing that is virtually unknown in this world.  Yes – these are benefits that all Christians gain access to on the basis of Jesus' crucifixion.  But, according to Paul at least, the redemption Jesus won for us on the cross was so that "the blessing promised to Abraham might come to all nations through Jesus Christ" (Gal 3:14).  Paul goes on to describe the content of this blessing as the gift of the Holy Spirit–a blessing that Peter, on the day of Pentecost, declared was not for 1st Century Jews only, but for their children and even the nations, "for all who are called by the Lord our God" (Acts 2:39).  

Biblical faith always begins with experience.  Creation (the ultimate gift of grace), restoration, Exodus, Sinai, miraculous deliverance from enemies, fire flashing out from the newly erected wilderness Tabernacle, the glorious cloud of the Lord's presence filling the Solomon's Temple, suspension of the laws of nature, the dead brought back to life, supernatural multiplication of bread and oil – all these happen before the New Testament even begins. It would be quite surprising to think, especially after the miracle-filled ministry of Jesus and the continuation of that ministry in the lives of His apostles, that suddenly, for the first time ever in the story of God's gracious dealings with His people, all manifestations of God's wonder-working power were to cease.  In the trajectory of salvation-history, such a development would be a backwards one indeed, and dramatically so in light of the glorious culmination of history that the New Testament insists we are moving rapidly toward. 

The fellowship of churches to which I belong, the Assemblies of God, has for its motto Zechariah 4:6: "'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord."  If the Spirit were to speak through a Zechariah to the Church of today, I wonder if He might say, "'Not by commitment to orthodox doctrine, not by a perfectly contextualized liturgy, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord."

So with Paul the Apostle, "I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every namethat is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come" (Eph 1:18-23).