So how are we going to handle this? Should we draw straws to determine who’s going to go and confront God for lying when He said Job was righteous? Any volunteers?
We always need to hear what the Spirit is saying. Just because the Lord uses the same word in different places, it doesn't mean that He means the exact same literal thing by it in every instance.
We need to resolve these apparent contradictions rather than pitting one scripture against another.
Job wasn't sinless, that is obvious, for one thing because he still needed to repent, which he did at the end of the book. I believe he was righteous as far as it was possible to be righteous before the cross, and more righteous than most....apparently the most righteous of anyone living at that time. But at the time the Lord was saying Job was righteous and perfect in all his ways, he was still falling short of the righteousness that is needed for eternal life. Even the word "perfect" there is talking about whole hearted devotion and whole hearted efforts to serve the Lord, again as far as it was possible before the cross - it isn't talking about the "perfection" we are aiming to walk in as born again believers since the cross.....which perfection/wholeness is spiritual, not of our own. Job's perfection would have been of his own. It fell short of eternal life, but was pleasing to the Lord, so much so that at the end of his trial, He met him face to face, granted him repentance, and made him qualified for eternal life along with other faithful saints, after Jesus died and was resurrected (where it says "they without us would not be made perfect"). If Job's perfection were the same perfection as that after the cross, why did it say the old testament saints would only be made perfect along with we who came along after the cross? Ditto regarding righteousness - Job's righteousness is not talking about the same righteousness that we have been given, which is needed for eternal life. I hope that makes sense, I was hoping to be more brief.
Here below the Lord is talking about the righteousness needed for eternal life....nobody has it in their own right, because all have sinned - except Jesus:
Rom 3:9-13
What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Rom 3:23
For
all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Rom 5:12
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men,
for that all have sinned