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.