Holiness and Chastisement.
'He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of _His
holiness_. Follow after _sanctification_, without which no man
shall see the Lord.'--Heb. xii. 10, 14.
There is perhaps no part of God's word which sheds such Divine light
upon suffering as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does this because it
teaches us what suffering was to the Son of God. It perfected His
humanity. It so fitted Him for His work as the Compassionate High
Priest. It proved that He, who had fulfilled God's will in suffering
obedience, was indeed worthy to be its executor in glory, and to sit
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. 'It became God, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Author of their salvation
_perfect_ through _sufferings_.' 'Though He was a Son, yet _learned_ He
_obedience_ by the things which He _suffered_, and having been made
_perfect_, became the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey
Him.' As He said Himself of His suffering, 'I sanctify myself,' so we
see here that His sufferings were indeed to Him the pathway to
perfection and holiness.
What Christ was and won was all for us. The power which suffering was
proved to have in Him to work out perfection, the power which He
imparted to it in sanctifying Himself through suffering, is the power of
the new life that comes from Him to us. In the light of His example we
can see, in the faith of His power we too can prove, that suffering is
to God's child the token of the Father's love, and the channel of His
richest blessing. To such faith the apparent mystery of suffering is
seen to be nothing but a Divine need--the light affliction that works
out--yea, _works out_ and actually effects the exceeding weight of
glory. We agree not only to what is written, 'It _became_ Him to make
the Author of salvation perfect through suffering,' but understand
somewhat how Divinely becoming and meet it is that we too should be
sanctified by suffering.
'He chasteneth us for our profit, that we should be made partakers of
His holiness.' Of all the precious words Holy Scripture has for the
sorrowful, there is hardly one that leads us more directly and more
deeply into the fulness of blessing that suffering is meant to bring. It
is _His Holiness_, God's own Holiness, we are to be made partakers of.
The Epistle had spoken very clearly of our sanctification from its
Divine side, as wrought out for us, and to be wrought in us, by Jesus
Himself. 'He which sanctifieth and they which are sanctified are all of
one.' 'We have been sanctified by the one offering of Christ.' In our
text we have the other side, the progressive work by which we are
personally to accept and voluntarily to appropriate this Divine
Holiness. In view of all there is in us that is at variance with God's
will, and that must be discovered and broken down, before we understand
what it is to give up our will and delight in God's; in view of the
personal fellowship of suffering which alone can lead to the full
appreciation of what Jesus bore and did for us; in view, too, of the
full personal entrance into and satisfaction with the love of God as our
sufficient portion; chastisement and suffering are indispensable
elements in God's work of making holy. In these three aspects we shall
see how what the Son needed is what we need, how what was of such
unspeakable value to the Son will to us be no less rich in blessing.
_Chastisement leads to the acceptance of God's will._ We have seen how
God's will is our sanctification; how it is in the will of God Christ
has sanctified us; yea more, how He found the power to sanctify us in
sanctifying Himself by the entire surrender of His will to God. His 'I
delight to do Thy will' derived its worth from His continual 'Not my
will.' And wherever God comes with chastisement or suffering, the very
first object He has in view is, to ask and to work in us union with His
own blessed will, that through it we may have union with Himself and
His love. He comes in some one single point in which His will crosses
our most cherished affection or desire, and asks the surrender of what
we will to what He wills. When this is done willingly and lovingly, He
leads the soul on to see how the claim for the sacrifice in the
individual matter is the assertion of a principle--that in everything
His will is to be our one desire. Happy the soul to whom affliction is
not a series of single acts of conflict and submission to single acts of
His will, but an entrance into the school where we prove and approve all
the good and perfect and acceptable will of God.
It has sometimes appeared, even to God's children, as if affliction were
not a blessing: it so rouses the evil nature, and calls forth all the
opposition of the heart against God's will, that it has brought the loss
of the peace and the piety that once appeared to reign. Even in such
cases it is working out God's purpose. 'That He might humble thee, to
prove thee, to know what was in thine heart,' is still His object in
leading into the wilderness. To an extent we are not aware of, our
religion is often selfish and superficial: when we accept the teaching
of chastisement in discovering the self-will and love of the world which
still prevails, we have learnt one of its first and most needful
lessons.
This lesson has special difficulty when the trial does not come direct
from God, but through men or circumstances. In looking at second
causes, and in seeking for their removal, in the feeling of indignation
or of grief, we often entirely forget to see God's will in everything
His Providence allows. As long as we do so, the chastisement is
fruitless; and perhaps only hardens the more. If, in our study of the
pathway of Holiness, there has been awakened in us the desire to accept
and adore, and stand complete in, _all the will_ of God, let us in the
very first place seek to recognise that will in everything that comes on
us. The sin of him who vexes us is not God's will. But it is God's will
that we should be in that position of difficulty to be tried and tested.
Let our first thought be: this position of difficulty is my Father's
will for me: I accept that will as my place now where He sees it fit to
try me. Such acceptance of the trial is the way to turn it into
blessing. It will lead on to an ever clearer abiding in all the will of
God all the day.
_Chastisement leads to the fellowship of God's Son._ The will of God out
of Christ is a law we cannot fulfil. The will of God in Christ is a life
that fills us. He came in the name of our fallen humanity, and accepted
all God's will as it rested on us, both in the demands of the law, and
in the consequences which sin had brought upon man. He gave Himself
entirely to God's will, whatever it cost Him. And so He paved for us a
way through suffering, not only through it in the sense of past it and
out of it, but by means and in virtue of it, into the love and glory of
the Father. And it is in the power which Christ gives in fellowship
with Himself that we too can love the way of the Cross, as the best and
most blessed way to the Crown. Scripture says that the will of God is
our sanctification, and also that Christ is our Sanctification. It is
only in Christ that we have the power to love and rejoice in the will of
God. In Him we have the power. He became our Sanctification once for all
by delighting to do that will; He becomes our Sanctification in personal
experience, by teaching us to delight to do it. He learned to do it; He
could not become perfect in doing it otherwise than by suffering. In
suffering He draws nigh; He makes our suffering the fellowship of His
suffering; and in it makes Himself, who was perfected through suffering,
our Sanctification.
O ye suffering ones! all ye whom the Father is chastening! come and see
Jesus suffering, giving up His will, being made perfect, sanctifying
Himself. _His suffering is the secret of His Holiness, of His Glory, of
His Life._ Will you not thank God for anything that can admit you into
the nearer fellowship of your blessed Lord? Shall we not accept every
trial, great or small, as the call of His love to be one with Himself in
living only for God's will. This is Holiness, to be one with Jesus as He
does the will of God, to abide in Jesus who was made perfect through
suffering.
_Chastisement leads to the enjoyment of God's love._ Many a father has
been surprised as he made his first experience of how a child, after
being punished in love, began to cling to him more tenderly than
before. Even so, while to those who live at a distance from their
Father, the misery in this world appears to be the one thing that shakes
their faith in God's Love, it is just through suffering that His
children learn to know the Reality of that Love. The chastening is so
distinctly a father's prerogative; it leads so directly to the
confession of its needfulness and its lovingness; it wakens so
powerfully the longing for pardon and comfort and deliverance, that it
does indeed become, strange though this may seem, one of the surest
guides into the deeper experience of the Divine Love. Chastening is the
school in which the blessed lesson is learnt that the will of God is all
Love, and that Holiness is the fire of Love, consuming that it may
purify, destroying the dross only that it may assimilate into its own
perfect purity all that yields itself to the wondrous change.
'We know and have believed the love which God hath in us. God is love:
and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in Him.' Man's
destiny is fellowship with God, the fellowship, the mutual indwelling of
love. It is only by faith that this Love of God can be known. And faith
can only grow by exercise, can only thrive in trial: when visible things
fail, its energy is roused to yield itself to be possessed by the
Invisible, by the Divine. Chastisement is the nurse of faith; one of its
chosen attendants, to lead deeper into the Love of God. This is the new
and living way, the way of the rent flesh in fellowship with Jesus
leading up into the Holiest of all. There it is seen how the Justice
that will not spare the child, and the Love that sustains and sanctifies
it, are both one in the Holiness of God.
0 ye chastened saints! who are so specially being led in the way that
goes through the rent veil of the flesh, you have boldness to enter in.
Draw near; come and dwell in the Holiest of all. Make your abode in the
Holiest of all: there you are made partakers of _His_ Holiness.
Chastisement is bringing your heart into unity with God's Will, God's
Son, God's Love. Abide in God's Will. Abide in God's Son. Abide in God's
Love. Dwell, within the veil, in the Holiest of all.