Quick to Be Corrected

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #138

“For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:30-32).

So the Lord’s Supper is a place for winnowing. It is not a vending machine, full of automatic blessings, but rather a covenantal meal, and we are communing with the Lord of that meal (and His people) in love and respect, or we are not doing so. If we are not, then the dislocations in our relationships will also show up in our relationship to the meal. The meal embodies what should be going on, as well as embodying what is going on.

God would not have to administer the correction if we were quicker to administer it to ourselves. God doesn’t spank His children for the sake of spanking them, but rather so that they will learn something about themselves. But if they are quick to learn it themselves, if in this area we run ahead of the Lord, we are doing well. God does not have to bring external chastisement if we bring it internally first.

But if we drag our feet, and the Lord does have to bring external chastisement, He is doing it because He loves us. The point of His discipline is so that we not be condemned along with the world.

This means that we have two divisions. The first is between the world and the saints. The world is condemned already, and the people of God are not. But within the congregation, we find another division. We have saints who have to learn things the hard way and saints who are eager to receive correction from the Spirit. This latter group is not made up of the morbidly introspective, incidentally, who confess any sin but the one they are committing. It is made up of those who are quick to hear what the Spirit is saying to them. If He admonishes them for something, it is for them as oil on the head (Ps. 141:5).