Revelation 3:19

LOVE’S CHASTENING

‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be Zealous, therefore, and repent.’

Revelation 3:19

Let us think of sickness and suffering in what is undoubtedly one of its most important aspects, as chastisement for sin. However it comes upon us, and whether it comes as the direct result of sin or not, it is always well for poor, erring human beings to remember this aspect of it, and to try to make a real use of it in this capacity.

I. Pain is a great gift of God to a world in dire need.—We know something of the necessary part it plays in saving us from physical danger. It very soon teaches the child not to put its fingers into the fire. Reflect for a moment that if it were not for this a mother might return after a few minutes’ absence from the room to find her infant contentedly watching its hands and arms being rapidly burnt away. But pain so surely teaches the child to regard danger as hateful that it is necessary to cultivate carefully the quality of courage in order that prudence may be balanced and not become cowardice. And in much the same way pain helps us to hate sin. This may not seem the highest way of looking at the matter, but it is a true one, and we must remember that in our imperfection we need appealing to by other motives as well as the highest. Pain does help us to look upon the sin which brings it as an enemy, and that is certainly a step in the right direction, even if it is only an early and elementary step.

II. And, just as care is required in our view of the pain which threatens us, so too there is danger of missing the benefit of that which has actually come upon us.—We may take it in such a way that it drives us from God rather than draws us to Him. You remember the words in the Book of the Revelation (Revelation 16:11): ‘And they blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they repented not.’ The more truly penitent we are, the less anxious shall we be to escape our punishment. We shall welcome the opportunity of bearing it in such a manner as to prove our repentance both to ourselves and to God. Most of us have known what it is to long for some such opportunity when we have done some grievous wrong either to God or to man. And it greatly helps us in this right view if we remember that, as a human parent often punishes much against natural inclination, so our Heavenly Father does not chasten us for His pleasure or from lack of love, but for ‘our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness.’ The remembrance of the wrong we do to God, in obliging Him to punish us when His desire is to shower only blessings and happiness upon us, should certainly assist us to see our punishment in such a light as will bind us more closely to Him.

III. Remember, then, just as it was not the death of Christ, but His obedience, which pleased God (as St. Bernard said, Ep. cxc., Contra Abælardum), so He only chastens us in order to correct in us what He sees to be wrong, and to improve in us those things in which He sees us to be weak. Just think well over these words: ‘He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities’ (Micah 7:19). It is by subduing and not overlooking our iniquities that He shows His compassion.

—Rev. R. L. Bellamy.