5. The Blood does not dispense with discipline. The classic instance of this is David after his lapse and recovery (2 Samuel 12:12-14). He was pardoned, his sin put away, the capital punishment remitted, and all this because God was able to give the repentant offender the benefit of the blood Jesus would shed. But to the announcement of pardon the sentence was added that his child should die and the sword would harass his house to the end. He had sinned publicly and had given great occasion to the enemies of his God to blaspheme, and that holy God was bound to vindicate His holiness and to show publicly that He does not tolerate sin in His people. The after life of David showed that he humbly bowed to this severe chastisement and was benefited by it. The leading passage on parental discipline by God is Hebrews 12:1-17. This follows the great exposition of remission through the blood and of cleansing by the water. Can discipline, then, add ought to these? The passage declares that the Father “scourges every son whom He receiveth,” and that this is a proof of His love and of their sonship. The object of this severe treatment is “for our profit, that we may be partakers [eis to metalabein, so that we may partake] of His holiness” (verses 6-10). Every one of His sons has already been reckoned righteous by faith in Christ. But that is something imputed, securing a clear and safe standing in law; this holiness is the actual character and activity of God infused into and wrought out in His sons. The only other place of this exact word in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 1:12, where Paul uses it of his practical conduct at Corinth. In that city notorious for vice he had “behaved in holiness and sincerity of God.” For the furthering of this needful and noble end chastisement is employed by God our Father, and neither blood, water, nor oil dispenses with it. Gold is freed from dross by neither of these but by fire (1 Peter 1:7). This is set in direct connexion with the believer being found unto “praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Our passage in Hebrews puts heavy emphasis upon this same connexion by exhorting us to “follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one shall see the Lord” (verses 14-17), that is, God the Father, for every eye is to see Christ and every knee to bend before Him at one or other session of His judgment seat. In my commentary on Hebrews it was shown from many Scriptures that there is a possibility that this “scourging” of a child of God may continue after death. An indignant critic complained in a magazine that it seems that what the blood cannot do, a thousand years in purgatory is to do. I had shown that the process proposed differed radically and essentially from the Roman Catholic conception of purgatory in that the Catholic doctrine makes salvation dependent upon such purgation, which is false. The critic ignored this. His phrase was clever, well calculated to catch the unwary and mislead the uninstructed by a seeming honouring of the blood:but it revealed the common and regrettable theological error that the blood is like money and answereth for all things. Yet it is very evident that in this life at least the atoning blood does not serve the end that chastisement serves, nor, if discipline be resented, will the blood compensate by perfecting holiness in the child of God. To lead the people of God to rest on this misconception is injurious to their souls and to their prospects. It retards growth in holiness, induces unwarranted confidence, and conduces to lethargy.
