I think discipline in the sense found in Hebrews 12.5 (John Owen says: 'The word is variously rendered,” doctrine,” “institution,” “correction,” “chastisement,” “discipline.”') is broader than "punishment." Thomas Case says: "I shall take chastisements here in the utmost latitude, for all kinds and degrees of sufferings, whether from God, or man, or Satan; whether sufferings for sin, or sufferings for righteousness' sake."
Clearly, we cannot always know the "why" behind our suffering. If one cannot discern the reason behind the suffering one may at least bear in mind that it comes from God and therefore constitutes a "hard providence" as opposed to "hard luck." Thomas Case, Treatise on Afflictions: Quote: |
God hath consecrated thy sufferings by his teachings: afflictions have taken orders, as it were, and stand no longer in the rank of ordinary providences, but serve now in the order of gospel-ordinances, officiating in the holy garment of Divine promises, and to the same uses.
| But, if a Christian is suffering, the situation always calls for self-examination, ie., "whether there be any wicked way in me" (Ps. 139.24). Otherwise, if we failed to examine ourselves as to any discernable reason for our suffering, we would be guilty of "despising the chastening of the Lord."
John Owen: Quote: |
Directly to despise and contemn, or reject, the chastisements of the Lord, is a sin that perhaps none of his sons or children do fall into. But not to esteem of them as we ought, not to improve them unto their proper end, not to comply with the will of God in them, is interpretatively to despise them. Wherefore the evil cautioned against is, 1st. Want of a due regard unto divine admonitions and instructions in all our troubles and afflictions. And that ariseth either from, (1st.) Inadvertency; we look on them, it may be, as common accidents of life, wherein God hath no especial hand or design: or, (2dly.) Stout-heartedness; it may be they are but in smaller things, as we esteem them, such as we may bear with the resolution of men, without any especial application unto the will of God in them. 2dly. The want of the exercise of the wisdom of faith, to discern what is of God in them; as, (1st.) Love unto our persons; (2ndly.) His displeasure against our sins; (3dly.) The end. which he aims at, which is our instruction and sanctification. 3dly. The want of a sedulous application of our souls unto his call and mind in them; (1st.) In a holy submission unto his will; (2dly.) In a due reformation of all things wherewith he is displeased; (3dly.) In the exercise of faith for supportment under them, etc. Where there is a want of these things, we are said interpretatively to “despise the chastening of the Lord;” because we defeat the end and lose the benefit of them no less than if we did despise them.
| One should apply 1 Peter 4.15-16 to their situation:
[15] But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters.
[16] Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.
Thomas Case, Treatise on Afflictions, pp. 122-130, gives counsel on discerning or rightly understanding the nature of our afflictions that we might improve upon them: Quote:
4. Hence we may learn how to judge of our afflictions, and of our deliverances from them and it may serve instead of a use of examination: by this, I say, we may know, when our sufferings come in wrath, and when in love. You need not, as the scripture speaks in another case, say, Who shall ascend up into heaven, to look into God's book of life and death? or who shall descend into the deep of God's secret counsels, to make report hereof unto us? But what saith the scripture? "The word is nigh thee:" [Rom 10:8] the word of resolution, to this inquiry, it is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is to say, if thou canst evidence this to thine own soul, that instruction hath accompanied correction, that God hath taught thee as well as chastened thee, thou art a blessed man, thou shalt be saved: thou hast the word of him who is the author of blessedness, and blessedness itself, "Blessed is the man whom the Lord chasteneth, and teacheth him out of his law."
And therefore peruse, I beseech you, that model of Divine instructions or lessons, presented to you in the doctrinal part of this discourse, either at large, in those twenty particulars; or in the abridgement, the three great heads, to which they were reduced. And then, withal, set before your eyes those six properties of Divine covenant teaching, and compare your hearts and those lessons together. Ask your own souls, Hath God taught you those lessons, or any of them? 1. Inwardly. 2. Convincingly. 3. Experimentally. 4. Powerfully. 5. Sweetly. 6. Abidingly, (for even a hypocritical Ahab can humble himself for a time, walk in sackcloth, and go softly; a bulrush can hold down its head for a day.) And if the Spirit of God can bear witness to thy spirit, that thou art thus taught, happy art thou; bless the Lord, for the Lord hath blessed thee; thou mayest sing David's song, "I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel; my reins also instruct me in the night season," Ps 16:7. And again, "I know, O Lord, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me," Ps 119:75. If I have been less afflicted, I had been less blessed.
But now on the other side, when there is no interpreter to accompany affliction, to expound unto man the meaning of the Almighty in his chastisements; when there is not a Divine sentence in the lips of correction; when the rod is dumb, or the creature deaf, and cannot hear the rod, and who hath appointed it; it is much to be feared, the stroke is not the stroke of God's children. O my brethren, it is sad when men come out of affliction the same they went in; when affliction leaves them as it found them; as ignorant, as unhumbled, as insensible of sin as sinfulness towards their suffering brethren, as worldly, as proud, as impatient, as unsavoury, as much strangers to Christ and their own hearts, as regardless of eternity: in a word, as fit for sin as they were before. This, I say, is exceedingly sad. And yet it is much sadder, when it may be said of a man, as once it was said of Ahaz; "In the time of his distress he did trespass yet more against the Lord," 2 Chron 28:22. It was an aggravation of wickedness, concerning which we may say, as our Saviour of the alabaster box poured on his head—Wherever the scripture shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this which this man did be published; "This is that king Ahaz." Surely it is a standing and a dreadful monument of reproach and infamy unto him to all generations. Christians, it is sad and dangerous beyond all expression when affliction serveth but as a gauge to give vent to the pride and murmur, the atheism and enmity, which is in men's spirits, against the Lord; when afflictions are but as oil unto the fire to irritate corruption, and make it blaze more fiercely; to continue in wonted sins, against such sensible and real proclamations to desist, is professed rebellion against God: a heavy indictment which the prophet bringeth against Jerusalem; "Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved; thou hast consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock, they have refused to return," Jer 5:3. In such cases it is to be feared, the cup of affliction is a vial of wrath, and the plagues of this life nothing else but some previous drops of that storm of fire and brimstone, wherein impenitent sinners shall be scorched and tormented for ever.
That scripture speaks dreadfully to this purpose, Jer 6:28-30. "They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders; they are all corrupters; the bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain; for the wicked are not plucked away; reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." "They are all grievous revolters," that is, as the prophet Isaiah expounds it, "Ye revolt more and more," Isa 1:5. Hebrew, They increase revolt, walking with slanders; they do not only revolt, but slander those that reprove their revolting; "They hate him that reproveth in the gate," Amos 5:10, they slander the prophets, and their words; nay, God himself doth not escape the lash of their tongues; they say, "The way of the Lord is not equal," Ezek 18:25,29, when they should condemn their own ways, they censure God's, "The way of the Lord is not equal." They are brass and iron. They would pass for silver and gold, a sincere and holy people, while they are a degenerate and hypocritical generation. "They are all corrupters," Jer 6:8. "They have deeply corrupted themselves," Hos 9:9, they have corrupted all their doings, Zeph 3:7, "they have corrupted the covenant of Levi," the worship, the ordinances, the truths of God, Mal 2:8. "The bellows are burned in the fire," that is, the lungs of the prophets, which have preached unto them in the name of the Lord, rising up early, and lifting up their voices like trumpets, to tell Israel their transgressions, and the house of Jacob their sins, and stretching forth their hands unto them all the day long, they are spent. "The lead is consumed," that is, all the melting judgments and chastisement, which, as lead is cast into the furnace to make it the hotter, God added to the ministry of the prophets, to make the word more operative, they will do no good. All this while, "the founder melteth in vain," whether God the master-founder, or the prophets, God's cofounders, or fellow-workmen, as the apostle calls them; they all melt in vain, 2 Cor 6:1, all their labour is lost; neither word, nor rod, neither judgments nor ordinances, can stir them; they refuse to receive correction, they will not be taught. Men will give God the hearing, but are resolved on their own courses. "The wicked are not plucked away." They are the same that ever they were; the swearer is a swearer still, and the drunkard is a drunkard still, and the unclean person is unclean still; "The vile person will speak villany, and his heart will work iniquity, to practise hypocrisy, and to utter error against the Lord," Isa 32:6, the unjust are unjust still, and the ignorant are ignorant still; nothing will better them, wicked they are, and wicked they will be. What follows? a formidable sentence; "Reprobate silver shall men call them." They would be counted silver, but it is reprobate silver, refuse silver, dross rather than pure metal; and their hypocrisy shall be made known to all men; "Reprobate silver shall men call them;" and happy they, if it were but the censure of mistaking men only; nay, but the Searcher of hearts [cf. Jer 17:10] hath no better thoughts of them; men do but call them so, because God called them so first; "Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the Lord hath rejected them." God hath cast them out as the founder casts out his dross to the dunghill, and they shall never stand among the vessels of honour, in whom the Lord will be glorified. A fearful sentence! the sum whereof is this—That when teaching goeth not along with correction, when men come out of the furnace, and lose nothing of their dross, it is a sad indication of a reprobate spirit, without timely and serious reflection, nigh unto cursing. "O consider this, you that forget God" and his chastisements, "lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver," Ps 50:22.
5. A fifth branch of information may be to teach us thus much—That they may be blessed whom the world accounts miserable. The world judgeth merely by outward appearances, and therefore may easily be mistaken. They see the chastisement which is upon the flesh, and thence conclude a man miserable; but they cannot discover that Divine teaching which is upon the spirit, which truly rendereth him incomparably blessed. The men of the world are incompetent judges of the estate and condition of God's children. The godly man's happiness or misery is not to be judged by the world's sense and feeling, but by his own; it lieth inward (save only so far as by the fruits it is discernible) and the world's faculty of judging is only outward, made up of sense and reason; therefore said the apostle, "The spiritual man judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man;" [1 Cor 2:15] that is, he is able to judge of the condition of the men of the world, but the men of the world are not able to judge of his condition, because it is above their faculty. The natural man thinks the spiritual man, under affliction, to be miserable; but the spiritual man knows the natural man, in the midst of his greatest abundance and bravery, to be miserable indeed. Therefore may the saints in their troubles think it, with St. Paul, a very small thing to be judged of man's judgment, 1 Cor 4:3. This is but man's day of judging; so the word signifieth; God's day is coming when things and persons shall be valued by another standard. Christ in his day shall judge not after the sight of the eyes, that is, not as things appear to sense and reason; nor after the hearing of the ears; that is, according to the report of the world; but with righteousness shall he judge; that is, he shall judge of things and persons as they are, and not as they appear. Moreover, this is also another comfort "We have the mind of Christ," 1 Cor 2:16, the judgment of Christ, by virtue whereof we are enabled, in our measure, to judge of things and persons, as Christ himself judgeth.
6. A sixth branch of information—Is chastisement a blessing when accompanied with instruction? See then, and admire the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, who can make his people better by their sufferings. Who knows how to fetch oil out of the scorpion, to extract gold out of clay! to draw the richest wine out of gall and wormwood! that can turn the greatest evil of the body to the greatest good of the soul! the curse itself into a blessing! that can make the withered rod of affliction to bud, yea to bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby! Behold I show you a mystery: sin brought affliction into the world, and God makes affliction to carry sin out of the world. Persecution is but the pruning of Christ's vine, etc. The almond tree is said to be made fruitful by driving nails into it, letting out a noxious gum that hindereth the fruitfulness thereof. God never intendeth more good to his children than when he seems to deal most severely with them. The very heathen have observed it to us: God doth not love his children with a weak womanish affection, but with a strong masculine love, and had rather they suffer hardship than perish: "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth." God will rather fetch blood, than lose a soul; break Ephraim's bones, than suffer him to go on in the frowardness of his heart. Destroy the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. "We are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world," 1 Cor 11:32. His discipline is made up of severity and love; he doth chastise, but he will teach also, that so his children may inherit the blessing; the discipline is sharp, but the end is sweet. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name: bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits."
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Andrew
Last edited by VirginiaHuguenot; 03-06-2007 at 11:27 AM.
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