In the Christian Life, There is No Escape from Divine Chastisement

The fifth of six posts containing the substance of teaching given by Albert N. Martin at the 1984 Banner Youth Conference, presenting a basic biblical theology of the Christian life.

There is no escape from divine chastisement as an integral factor in the Christian life.

The author of Hebrews underlines this point: ‘You have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as sons, My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved of him … for whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.’ If God, in grace, has adopted you into his family, then he has adopted you into the family of his chastened ones. ‘What son is there whom his father does not chasten? If you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons.’ It is the father of the illegitimate son who is ashamed of his fatherhood. He does not openly own his son. That is the son who is left without chastisement. God has no illegitimate sons. His true sons he chastens because he is committed to make them partakers of his holiness! ‘Our earthly fathers, indeed for a few days, chastened us as seemed good to them, but he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness’ (Heb. 12:5-10).

Never forget that God’s basic purpose in redemption is to make us holy, not happy. ‘Whom he did foreknow he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (Rom. 8:29). There will be plenty of happiness along the way, but this passage tells us that ‘no chastening for the present is joyous.’ I never once spanked one of my children and then allowed him to dance a jig around the kitchen. No chastening for the present seems joyous!

This idea, that if you only have a certain experience you can have a thirty-two-tooth grin twenty-seven hours out of every twenty-four hours, is the curse of the charismatics! But what help is a plastic smile when a chastened child of God comes to you in bitterness of soul? You become a Job’s comforter. You say, ‘O your problem is you do not have the Holy Spirit. If you only spoke in tongues, you would just go to your room and babble for an hour, and you would feel better.’ That is no caricature. I have heard that Job’s-friends’ counsel given to people. By contrast, here is the principle you should write on your heart: Until you are made into the perfect likeness of Jesus Christ you are bound to feel the sting of God’s rod. ‘No chastening for the present seems joyous … whom the Lord loves he chastens’ (Heb. 12:11, 6); ‘as many as I love I rebuke and chasten’ (Rev. 3:19). I tell you, when God is chastening it is not always in terms of physical affliction. We must never view God’s chastening exclusively in terms of physical and financial calamities. They may be chastening; they may not be. To me the worst chastening is the withdrawal of the Lord’s countenance; when you pray and do not sense and know realized communion with God. What more bitter chastening is there for a true Christian than to be unable to engage God in conscious, delightful communion and prayer? I know of no more bitter chastisement than that! That is enough to set any true Christian searching his heart and saying, ‘O God, where have I grieved you that you have turned your face? Hide not your face from me in my distress. Lift up the light of your countenance upon me.’ The Psalms are full of such teaching.

Child of God, face the fact that there is no escape from divine chastisement as an integral factor in the Christian life.