When everything else is taken away

Imagine losing everything you possess. Your house. Your vehicle. Your savings. Your possessions. Your position. Your reputation. What would remain? That question takes us closer to the purpose of this book. Because eventually, every earthly possession will be left behind, whether we lose it in this life or at the end of it.

Job: when everything was taken

Job is the Bible’s most searching answer to the question. In a single day he lost his livestock, his servants and his ten children (Job 1:13-19). Then he lost his health. His wife, in her own grief, told him to curse God and die. Job answered her:

Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity? In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Everything he owned was gone, and something was left. His friends doubted him and he could not understand what had happened. Yet in the middle of his suffering he said some of the most remarkable words in the Old Testament:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God.

The house, the herds and the health were gone. His trust in God remained. Earlier he had said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15). We enter this world with nothing. And we leave it with nothing material. The grave does not need a suitcase. But Job shows us that there is something that is not removed when everything else is.

Habakkuk and Paul: joy when nothing is left

Habakkuk describes the loss of a whole way of life: no figs, no grapes, no olives, no crops, no flock in the fold and no herd in the stall. And then:

Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

Paul, writing from prison, tells the Philippians that he had learned something that circumstances could neither give nor take away:

Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

Contentment is a character quality, not a bank balance. It was formed in Paul over years, and it was still there when the circumstances had been stripped away.

The inward man

Paul gives us the principle behind these examples:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

The outward man perishes. The inward man is renewed. The visible is temporary and the invisible is eternal. That is the answer to the question of this chapter.

What survives

Not your bank account. Not your car. Not your house. Not your clothing. Not your certificates. Not your trophies. Not your position. Not your social status. What matters is what God has formed in you: the trust that was not shaken, the love that did not fail, the humility that was learned, the faith that was kept. This is why character matters. Character is not an accessory to Christianity. It is part of what God is preparing us for as we look toward eternity.