Was Job Sinless?

…that man was blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.
Job 1:1

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23

There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks after God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.
Romans 3:10-13

My Sunday School class is reading through and discussing the book of Job. This past Sunday, when we came to chapter 9 verse 23, our teacher asked for our thoughts on “He (God) mocks the despair of the innocent.” I responded that what comes to mind is that no one is innocent. One can only be declared righteous by God and that is based on one’s faith in the substitutionary death of Christ. Another person in class whose opinion I respect replied, “But it says in chapter one that Job was blameless. In fact, God says so Himself (Job 1:1, 8).” I resisted the urge to respond, but now I think I should have because whether or not Job was sinless has extremely significant implications.

What immediately came to mind were the verses in Romans 3 quoted above. Paul maintains that all have sinned and that no one is righteous. In fact, in verses 10 through 13 Paul is quoting David in Psalms 14 and 53, so on the face of it, it is not simply Job verses Paul but Job verses David and Paul, and if I were a betting person, I would put my money on David and Paul over Job any day. If scripture doesn’t contradict scripture (which I believe it cannot), then Job can’t be blameless in the sense that he was sinless because if Job was sinless, then man is capable of attaining moral perfection on his own, and there is no need for God’s grace—no need for Christ. I figured that it all hinged on the Hebrew word for blameless, but of course I didn’t have a concordance and Hebrew dictionary with me. (I’m thinking of carrying them with me from now on.)

I suffered through worship and lunch at my in-laws itching to get home to my computer and books to determine what blameless really means. The Hebrew word for blameless used in Job 1:1 and 1:8 is “tam.” It is actually translated in the King James Version as “perfect.” Strong’s defines it as follows:
1) perfect, complete
a) complete, perfect
1) one who lacks nothing in physical strength, beauty, etc.
b) sound, wholesome
1) an ordinary, quiet sort of person
c) complete, morally innocent, having integrity
1) one who is morally and ethically pure

So when the writer used “tam” to describe Job, it is likely he meant that Job was a person of integrity. However, I knew that Katy Sammons’s opinion on the matter wouldn’t carry much weight, so I continued researching.

Matthew Henry explains “perfect” as: “not sinless, as he himself owns (ch. ix. 20): If I say I am perfect, I shall be proved perverse. But, having a respect to all God’s commandments, aiming at perfection, he was really as good as he seemed to be, and did not dissemble in his profession of piety; his heart was sound and his eye single. Sincerity is gospel perfection. I know no religion without it.”

The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary says: “Perfect—not absolute or faultless perfection (compare Job 9:20, Ec 7:20), but integrity, sincerity, and consistency on the whole, in all relations of life (Ge 6:9, 17:1; Pr 10:9; Mt 5:48). It was the fear of God that kept Job from evil (Pr 8:13).”

The New Geneva Study Bible (R.C. Sproul, General Editor) includes this comment: “blameless and upright. This ordinary language does not mean that Job was sinless.”

How did we get to chapter nine without addressing what “blameless” really means? Based on my knowledge of scripture and understanding of doctrine, I suppose I simply assumed that blameless could not possibly mean sinless and that everyone else thought the same way I did. The lesson I gain from this is that there can be no assumptions. I must be diligent to “accurately handle the word” (2 Timothy 2:15).