The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 381

ment is a message from God. '\Ve should listen. '\Ve should learn what the Lord our God has to say to us. '\Ve shall find in the chastisement a command; it is for us to obey that command, We shall discover in it a promise; it is for us to embrace it. II. ITs CAUSE. Always sin in some form or other. Sin is the only possible cause. God does not affiict us "willingly" or for his "pleasure," but for our profit. We fall into sin and he whips us out. So when a believer transc,resses he cuts a rod for his own back. Is it God who chastises us? More truly, we ~hastise ourselves. Our sin puts the rod into God's hand. We cry out when we have hurt ourselves if we cry out when we are under the chastisement of God. III. ITS BENEVOLENCE. It is sent in love. It is a good gift, not an evil one. God has not changed in sending it; he is still love. Here the special object of Divine chastisement is beautifully conveyed : "'!'hat we should not be condemned with the world." Many think that their afflictions will destroy them ; the afflictions arc sent that they may not be destroyed. We feel that we shall sink under our troubles, but they are sent that we may notsinlc. We cry out" Poison!" but it is" medicine," sent to keep us from being poisoned. God troubles his people now, that he may not trouble them hereafter. He smites them gently now, that he may not smite them then with the arm of destruction. '!'hey stand near the precipice and the rod falls upon them to drive them back. In heaven, perhaps, we shall bless God more for our earthly chastise- ments than for our earthly joys. Chastisement is sour to take, but sweet when taken. It is a nut hard and rough of shell, but goodly in kernel. It is the love of God trans- figured into darkness by the black shadow of our sin. IV. How WE MAY AVOID THE NECESSITY OF IT. "If we would judge [or, 'discern'] ourselves, we should not be judged." If we dealt with ourselves, there would be no need for God to deal with us. If we would avoid the chastisement, we must avoid the sin. If the cause be destroyed, we need not fear the effect. If the Corinthian» had examined themselves, they would have avoided the irregularities of which they became guilty. They were careless, unwatchful, o.nd so they fell, and when they fell th,y opened the door of chastisement. We may keep that door shut if we" walk with God," as Enoch did. The only way to escape the rod is to escape the necessity or it, and that is to escape the sin.-H. Ver. 3.-The headship of Christ. "The head of every mo.n is Christ." It may be of the man as distinct from the woman tho.t the apostle here speaks, but the truth asserted is one in which all human beings, without regard to sexual or any other distinctions, are alike interested. The relation in which we each and all stand to Christ, or rather in which Christ stands to us, is one that surmounts and o.bsorbs into itself every other relationship. As the vault of heaven surrounds the world, and the atmosphere in which it floats envelops everything that lives and moves and has its being in it; so does the authority of Christ embrace all that belongs to the existence of every one of us, and from it we can nover escape. The supremacy hore indicated has certain distinct phases. I. EVERY MAN BEES HIS OWN HUMAN NATURE PERFECTED IN CnnIST. Manhood is perfectly represented in him. He is the Crown and Flower or our humanity; its realized' ideal, "the Man "-the complete, consummate, faultless man-" Christ Jesus." Nol, a development from the old stock, but a new beginning, the Head of the "now creation."' The ideal of humanity, defaced and destroyed by the Fall, was restored again in the, lncarnation. "The tirst man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from, heaven" (eh. xv. 47). Adam was formed in the imago of God-a sinless, symmetrical, perfect man. But he lost the glory of his first estate, and became the father of a. ,legeneroto humanity that could never of itself rise again to the original Jovel, however long the stream of its succeeding generations might roll on. Christ, the God-Man, in the fulness of time, appears-true, peifect manhood linked in mysterious union with Deity, the "First born among many brethren;" "Partaker with the children of flesh and, blood," that he may" lead many sons to glory." We must look to him, then, if wo would know what the possibilities of our nature aro, what wo ourselves may and ought, to be. It is curious to note how different, as regards physical form and feature, aro thci, artistic conceptions one meets with of the person of Jesus; what various degrees oli serene mo.jesty and tender sorrow they express, Some of them, perhaps, exaggerate the, I. CORlNTlllANS. 20  386 THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS. [on. XI. 1-34,