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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadRalph Wardlaw Lectures on Proverbs - Proverbs 3:11 - 3:12
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Pro_3:11-12.
"My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth."
"Ye have forgotten," says the inspired writer to the Hebrews, "the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth," Heb_12:5-6. We have thus the highest authority for regarding the address in this passage, as divine-as the address of God to his own children.
Is the address, then, to all men? No.-There is a sense indeed, and a very natural one, in which we are God's children, as being the creatures of his hand. We are his children by creation. He gives us being; and by him our being is constantly sustained, and its wants all supplied.-In tracing the genealogy of Jesus, Luke terminates it with "Adam, who was the son of God." All the rest in the enumeration, had their birth by successive parentages; but Adam had no father but God. And in this sense, as having all alike our being from God, it may truly be said, in the terms of the prophet-" Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God begotten us?"
But there was a higher sense in which Adam, when created, was a child of God: I mean, by character. In the phraseology of Scripture, one is called the son of another, who bears remarkable resemblance to him in this respect. And indeed we are not unaccustomed to the figure ourselves. We are wont to say of a youth who bears, in various features of his character, a striking likeness to his father, that he is quite his fattens son. It is in this sense that our Lord says to the Jews, in reply to their indignant allegation-"Abraham is our father"-"if ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham." This is a very important sense of the designation. And in this sense, Adam ceased to be a child of God, when he fell into sin. He lost the divine image-the moral likeness of his Maker. He was made after that image, but sin effaced it. And in this sense, all his race have ceased to sustain the spiritual relation. As sinners, they are not the children of God, but "children of the Wicked One," the great enemy of God, by whose temptation the seduction and apostasy were effected.
And the grand design of God by the scheme of mediation, is to bring men back to this holy and happy relation,-to restore apostate men to the honour and the blessedness of sonship to God. In this reconciliation-this transference from their relation to Satan to the family of God-there are two things essentially implied-they must be pardoned, and they must be purified. A state of sonship is a state of favour; and this necessarily includes forgiveness. No unforgiven sinner is a child of God. He is not in a state of reconciliation and acceptance; and not, therefore, one of his children; paternity involving and being the very imago of love. This is effected by the atonement-by the work of Christ in expiating human guilt by the sacrifice of himself. Sinners who believe in that atonement, as the ground of pardon, are forgiven. God's "anger is turned away" from them. He "receives them graciously," "loves them freely;" and gives them "a name and a place in his house," even that of "sons and of daughters."
The other requisite to this relation is resemblance. They must be renewed and purified. No sinner continuing under the power any more than in the guilt of his sins, can be a child of God. When God created man, he made him "after his likeness." When God adopts a sinner-he re-instamps this image on his soul: and this new assimilation constitutes him a son. The Scripture expresses the sum of human depravity by the phrase, "the carnal mind is enmity against God." When a sinner becomes a child of God-there is a transition from enmity to love. God loves the renewed sinner; the renewed sinner loves God. This mutual love, paternal and filial, enters into the very essence of the relation. This saving change is effected by the agency of the Holy Spirit:-and it is effected by means of the gospel. The pardon is on the ground of the atonement. The renewal is by means of the atonement-the truth, that reveals the love of God in the provision of the ground of pardon, subduing the alienated heart to surrender itself to God. The very doctrine of pardon is the means of regeneration. There is forgiveness with God, that he may be feared.
Believers, then, are God's children: such is invariably the statement of his word.*1 And this is the gift of God's grace, and the work of God's Spirit.*2 And this, brethren, is no mere empty title-not a title of which the only accompaniment is the honour of it. It is a real relation, with which stand associated the most unspeakably precious privileges-privileges in time and eternity.
*1 See Joh_1:11-13. Gal_3:26.
*2 See 1Jn_3:1. Rom_8:14-17. Gal_4:4-7.
One of these privileges is brought before us in the text. It is one of no trivial value. The world in which we five is a place of trial. Many and various are the sufferings to which men in general, and the people of God among the rest, are subjected. The text speaks of the aspect which all these trials and sufferings bear, to those who have been brought into this new relation. The aspect is widely different from that which the same dispensations bear to the men of the world, the children of "the Wicked One." It is very plain, that the same description of events may be viewed in different lights, and may be designed by Him who sends them for different purposes, according to the character of the parties affected by them. To the one they may be judicial, to the other gracious; to the one a fruit and a part of the curse, to the other, though not in themselves yet in their end, a blessing-the curse being extracted from them, and the paternal love of God turning them all to purposes of salutary correction. There is a beautiful amplification of the sentiment in the words of the Apostle, "And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom ho receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave t-hem reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby," Heb_12:5-11.
We shall consider-
I. The Admonition. It consists of two parts. The one is an admonition against insensibility; the other against despondency. And both admonitions are founded in the view of the trials of life, as divine visitations or chastisements-paternal corrections. Every one of them is a stroke of the Father's rod:-and the twofold admonition warns us against the two extremes into which we are ever prone to fall.
1. When may we be said to despise the chastening of the Lord? In the following cases. 1: When it is not felt;-when there is a want of natural sensibility to the particular stroke of the rod. This is but rare. Men in general are quite sufficiently alive to the value of temporal things. But the value is comparative. There are cherished and favorite possessions, and others less highly thought of, less fondly held. The Lord, it may be, deals gently. He spares the "gourd." He does not take what is most highly set by. And, instead of humbly owning the kindness,-being lowly and submissive, and seeking a blessing on the gentle stroke that the heavier one may be withheld,-the preservation and safety of the greater produces insensibility to the privation of the less: and the correction is thus disregarded, and proves inefficient.-ii. When it is not duly felt as from God; when God's hand, in the correction, is not duly considered, acknowledged, and submitted to. How much soever an event may be felt in itself; how much soever the feelings of nature may be wounded to the quick, and the heart ready to break under the sad calamity, be what it may,-unless it is felt as coming from God, it is "despised." Every thing depends on this. A child may smart under the rod, or his punishment may vex and distress him greatly, but he may not feel it as from his father. It is not the sense of his displeasure that grieves him. And so with the child of God. If while smarting under his suffering he fails to own his heavenly Father's hand; if it is considered as a mere chance that has befallen him,-as something that forms a part of the common lot of men, the fortune of others as well as his,-it is "despised." That which should be most seen and most regarded, and give most concern, is overlooked or little thought of.-iii. When, although God is seen in it, and his hand is felt, it is not felt humbly and submissively; not bowed to but resisted;-when, in the expressive phrase of the wise man elsewhere, "the heart fretteth against the Lord;" or when the chastisement has the effect that restraint and coercion have, in the expressive figure of the prophet, on the "bullock unaccustomed to the yoke," rendering him stubborn, wayward, refractory. This is the reverse of the admonition of James-" Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God." It is the very opposite of all that correction is intended to effect. Job exemplified the proper state of mind under correction. Ho felt God's hand; ho owned it; he bowed to it: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."-"Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" Job_1:21; Job_2:10. The spirit of Jonah was a mournful exemplification of the opposite, when he fretted impatiently and selfishly at the loss of his gourd, and said, in the heat of a discontented and rebellious heart-" I do well to be angry." Never surely could there be more unseemly and sinful irreverence. It was "doing despite" to the correcting hand of the Lord-treating contemptuously the procedure of Him whose chastisement should have laid him low. All unsubmissiveness is contempt.-iv. When the design or end of correction is not duly laid to heart; is not seriously thought of and sought after. We never treat a fellow-creature with due consideration, when we show no concern about the objects he has in view; and especially when we ourselves are the subjects of his solicitude and his schemes. A child shows no respect for his parents, when, on being corrected by them for a fault, instead of seeking to shun the fault in future, he repeats it. This is practical contempt. So when the Lord tells his children the design of his corrections, and they show no anxiety after the attainment of that design, they "despise" his "chastening." The design may be more general, or more particular. The general design of all affliction is-"to take away sin." He who receives correction, but discovers no solicitude about being made by it a "partaker of God's holiness," "despises" it. The particular design may be involved in the nature of the correction. If there is worldly ambition-a commencing or growing prevalence of the "lust of the eyes and the pride of life"-it may be particularly aimed at by the infliction of sweeping losses in earthly substance; the frustration of sanguine hopes, and of painfully concerted schemes of gain and of worldly advancement. If there is the idolatry of the natural affections-any fondly cherished object of these drawing the heart away from God, and absorbing its interest, its solicitude, and its love-that may be rebuked and repressed by the smiting of the husband, or the wife, or the favorite and idolized child. Now if in either case, instead of the heart being weaned from the world and the excesses of its earthly affections-neither is its ambition cured in the one, nor its idolatry in the other; if it continues set, in all its desires, on the objects of which it has been deprived, so that it cannot let go its hold of them, but hankers after them, wastes itself in regrets and lamentations, unreconciled to the divine will, and forgetting the purpose of the privations, in sighing over the privations themselves,-we are then "despising the chastening;" for we are not seeking in earnest the accomplishment in us of the divine intention. We are not of one mind with God. We are treating despitefully his judgment,-for while he considers the end of affliction as well worth the sacrifice involved in the affliction itself-as more really valuable than the objects of earthly attachment and sources of earthly enjoyment which, for the sake of it, he takes away,-we judge otherwise; and mourn over our losses, and would have the objects of our attachment and the sources of our enjoyment back again,-instead of being humbly thankful for our intended benefit, and seeking with anxiety to obtain it.
2. The second of the two extremes against which we are admonished is-"being weary of his correction;" or, as the apostle has it, "fainting when we are rebuked of him." We are chargeable with this-I. When we cherish a spirit similar to that just noticed-dwelling on, and brooding over, the trial itself; indulging fond memory in hanging and weeping over the recollection of it,-the spirit sinking to faintness, or wearying itself to exhaustion, by incessant bemoaning. This is wrong; and it arises, like the last mentioned, from forgetting, in the trial itself, the end for which it has been sent. It is remarkable how precisely opposite to "fainting" and "wearying" is the use which the apostle exhorts the Hebrews to make of their trials-"Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed," Heb_12:12-13.-ii. This "wearying" and "fainting" may arise from unbelief of the divine promises on two points-as to the design of the trial, and as to strength or grace duly to bear and to improve it. There is nothing so bracing to the spirit, which might otherwise be ready to give way to feebleness and fainting, as the firm conviction of the two important Bible truths-first, that "all things are of God;" and second, that "all things work together for good to them that love God." If the mind loses sight, or loses hold, of such assurances, the spirit will droop and languish. And so too is it, when the suffering saint forgets God's "precious promises" (As 2Co_12:9; Isa_40:28-30) to the afflicted, and neglects to plead them at the throne of grace." iii "Painting" and "wearying" may take place in two ways. The heart may be overwhelmed by sudden trials-suddenness and heaviness united, giving an effect so stunning and overpowering, that the spirit sinks into a temporary stupefaction, its energies giving way-as the nervous and circulatory systems in the bodily frame are apt to be affected by any very sudden mental shock-going sometimes, with momentary intervals of revival, from one faint to another, each interval only giving time for the mind to receive a fresh impression of the stunning calamity, ere it has leisure for invigorating reflection. Or, it may become wearied out and exhausted by the long continuance of the same trial, or by the rapid succession of different strokes of the rod-another and another coming, ere the wound of the former has had time to heal. There are cases of both kinds to be met with, which have a strong claim on the sympathy of fellow-Christians. But how long soever the chastening hand of the Lord may be allowed to lie on the subject of his correction, and how numerous and frequent soever may be the successive strokes, there ought to be no "fainting" and no "wearying." One thing alone-the assurance that "It is the Lord"-should be enough to prevent both the one and the other. This naturally leads to-
II. The CONSIDERATION ENFORCING THE ADMONITION-"For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth."
There is in the words a beautiful and most touching appeal to the very strongest and tenderest of nature's affections. There is in this much of divine condescension and kindness. Had the infinite God addressed us in terms of divine loftiness, such as befitted only Godhead, expressing what belonged to himself exclusively, and to which there was nothing in our own nature and our own experience to which it bore even a distant analogy-we could not have understood, and therefore we could not have felt it. We might have marvelled at the incomprehensible grandeur of the communication-of which possibly we might, by the straining of our faculties, grasp as much as to make us wish for the mind of an angel, that we might comprehend more. But it would have awed us by its sublimity, more than it could have melted and cheered us by its kindness. But when "the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity," deigns to speak to us "after the manner of men;" to enter into our own hearts, and draw his figures and illustrations thence,-exhibiting himself under relations which we bear to one another,-assuring us of the affections on the one part of that relation, as borne and exercised by himself towards us, and claiming from us in return those which appropriately pertain to the other,-we understand this; we feel this; we have a commentary on its meaning, written on our hearts with the very finger of God. He addresses us in terms of which we have the interpreter within. When we try to form to ourselves the conception of a Being without passions, without emotions, without variableness,-an ocean-depth, whose surface no storm can ruffle, whose unfathomed abysses nothing can agitate,-we are lost in veneration and awe. We can form no conception of what the state of such a mind can be towards any other existing being. "It is high; we cannot attain unto it." But when that infinite Being breaks the dread silence; and his voice comes upon our ear in accents like these-" As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him;"-"I will be a Father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty;"-our bosoms thrill with new and unutterable delight; the smile of ecstasy plays upon our lips; and the starting tear of grateful joy gushes to our eye; and through that tear we look up with the reverential but confiding love and gladness of children. And when, amidst the trials of the world, He reminds us of his paternal relation to us, and assures us that they are of his appointment,-the dictate of his fatherly affection and wisdom; when through the clouds that shroud our sky his eye beams upon us, and his voice, not in thunder but in the whisper of peace, comes upon our ear-" My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth,"-what a comfort in our deepest distresses-what a light of joy in our gloomiest day!
Let us not fail to observe, in order that we may not lose the benefit of our trials, that they are tokens of disapprobation and displeasure. God hates sin. He hates it in all. And if there be any in whom he regards it with special detestation, it is in his own children. He never "afflicts willingly." He has no pleasure in correcting. But in proportion as his children are the objects of his love, sin in his children is the object of his hatred. It mars their character, and interferes with that complacency with which he contemplates his own image in them.
"We must beware of allowing our minds to be so absorbed in contemplating the divine love in trials, as to overlook the divine displeasure in them. All are for sin. There is no suffering in the universe but what is the fruit of sin-all its righteous desert. His children, even the best of them, have ever abundant reason to acknowledge that he corrects them less than their iniquities deserve. But still he corrects. The correction partakes of the nature of punishment; and punishments are expressions of the righteous displeasure of him by whom they are inflicted. And we should seek with all earnestness, that we may be "of one mind with God" in regard to the faults for which he chastens us. If his chastisements produce this effect;-if they transfuse into our minds a portion of the hatred with which he regards the evil corrected-all is well. And tins cannot be the case if we omit to reflect on the displeasure that is in them; if we smile at the thought of God's unchanging love, so as to fail to mark the frown that darkens his brow. O that frown! How should the thought of it go to our hearts! To have offended our kind and gracious Father! To have deserved his displeasure! To have rendered it necessary for him to assume the rod! If we think thus, and are led by the thought to inquire into the causes of the displeasure, as they exist in our hearts or in our lives,-then may we profit by the stroke; not otherwise.
But still, the displeasure is the displeasure of love. The frown is the frown of love. The correction is the correction of love. And a conviction of this also is necessary to its proving salutary, and to the prevention of the two extremes against which the text warns us. We shall not "despise" it, when we are convinced of its being in love; nor, on the other hand, shall we "faint" and be "weary."
Correction, when required, is represented as an essential part of an affectionate and faithful parent's trust; so that God would relinquish his love, and violate the promises of his faithful covenant, if he did not administer needful chastisement-if he "spared the rod." Thus the apostle represents the case, "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?" Heb_12:6-7. This corresponds with the terms used by Solomon, "even as a father the son in whom he delighteth." The language implies his delighting in him at the very time when necessity is laid upon him to "visit his transgression with the rod, and his iniquity with stripes." The bowels of the fond father yearn over his son-never more tenderly than when thus constrained by affection to put him to pain.
On the part of God, there is love in the gracious end of every trial. What is it? It is expressed under no fewer than three forms in the same chapter of Hebrews, verses 9-12. "Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now, no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." There is the general idea of profit. And this profit is expressed first in the emphatic phrase-" and live." The end is to maintain and promote the spiritual life in the soul, and thus to "keep it unto life eternal." The spiritual life is in imminent danger from the world and the things of the world; and even from the overweening excess of affections that are in themselves not only lawful but right and incumbent-
Our dearest joys and nearest friends,
The partners of our blood-
How they divide our wandering minds
And leave but half for God!
It may be necessary to wound these affections by removing their objects, in order to quicken anew the affections that are due to God, and which the excess of the others was in danger of deadening:-that we may live! It is further expressed in being "made partakers of his holiness." This is much the same thing in other terms. The spiritual life consists essentially in holiness; and the eternal life in which it ends, or rather, which is its maturity, is just the perfection of holiness. He has the life in perfection, who has the holiness in perfection. (Comp. Isa_27:7-9.) There is no end the love of God can pursue-there is nothing whatever the love of God can possibly effect, in behalf of its objects, more precious than making them Partakers Of His Holiness. O! There is nothing which his children should not-and, if they are right-minded, will not cheerfully endure, for the attainment of such a good! What is there that can be taken away, that does not, if this is substituted, make the loss an unspeakable gain?-We have it again in "the peaceable fruits of righteousness." We are all sensible of the truth, that "no affliction for the present seemeth joyous but grievous:"-and it is a comfort that we are not commanded to be in any such state of mind, as that it should seem to us other than we feel it to be:-but oh! what a harvest to reap from the seeds of bitterness and death! if they "yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness!"
And while the end is in love, love times and measures every correction. It comes in its proper season-just when He who is infinitely wise and kind sees it to be needed, and when it will be most salutary. And He corrects in measure-never inflicting one stroke beyond the requisite number; never infusing one drop of bitter beyond what, as the Great Physician, he sees will be salutary.
In addition to all this, God has, in love, given promise of those influences of the Spirit that are necessary to render his discipline efficacious. And he makes the very same appeal to paternal feeling and sensibility that he does in the text, to give us the full assurance of his readiness to grant them, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?" Luk_11:13. What an encouragement! And if, by the influence that comes from our heavenly Father, such are the happy results of the afflictions of life, we may realize the words of Paul, "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us," Rom_5:3-5. Such is the blessed influence on earth; and this ultimately rises still higher; it tells on heaven-"For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory!" 2Co_4:17.