8. Error 6: No Fatherly Chastisements for Sin.
Error 6: No Fatherly Chastisements for Sin.
Error 6. That God is not angry with the elect, nor doth he smite them for their sins; and to say that he doth so is an injurious reflection upon the justice of God, who hath received full satisfaction for all their sins from the hand of Christ.
There are several mistakes and errors in these assertions; and I suppose our Antinomians were led into them, (1.) By their abhorrence of the Popish doctrine, which errs more dangerously in the other extreme; for they wickedly assert our sufferings to be satisfactory for our sins, which is the ground of Popish penances, and voluntary self-castigations. (2.) From a groundless apprehension, that God's corrections of us for our sins are inconsistent with the fulness of Christ's satisfaction for them. Christ having paid all our debts, and dissolved our obligations to all punishment, it cannot consist with the justice of God to lay any rod upon us for our sins, after Christ hath borne all that our sins deserved.
This mistake of the end of Christ's death occasions them to stumble into the other mistakes; they imagine that Christ's satisfaction abolished God's hatred of sin in believers. But this cannot be; God's antipathy to sin can never be taken away by the satisfaction of Christ, though his hatred to the persons of the redeemed be; for the hatred of sin is founded in the unchangeable nature of God: and he can as soon cease to be holy as cease to hate sin, Hab. 1.13. Nor was Christ's death ever designed to this end; though Christ hath satisfied for the sin of believers, God still hates sin in believers. His hatred to their sins, and love to their persons are not inconsistent. As a man may love his leg or arm, as they are members of his own body, and notwithstanding that love, hate the gangrene {575} which hath taken them; and lance or use painful corrosives for the cure of them.
Neither do our Antinomians distinguish as they ought, betwixt vindictive punishments from God, the pure issues and effects of his justice and wrath against the wicked; and his paternal castigations, the pure issues of the care and love of a displeased Father. Great and manifold are the differences betwixt his vindictive wrath upon his enemies, and the rebukes of the rod upon his children. Those are legal, these evangelical. Those out of wrath and hatred, these out of love. Those unsanctified, but these blessed and sanctified to happy ends and purposes to his people. Those for destruction, these for salvation.
To narrow the matter in controversy as much as we can, I shall lay down three concessions about God's corrections of his people.
Concession 1. We cheerfully and thankfully acknowledge the perfection and fulness of the satisfaction of Christ for all the sins of believers; and with thankfulness do own, that if God should cast all, or any of them into an ocean of temporal troubles and distresses; in all that sea of sorrow there would not be found one drop of vindictive wrath. Christ hath drunk the last drop of that cup, and left nothing for believers to suffer by way of satisfaction.
Concession 2. We grant also, that all the sufferings of believers in this world are not for their sins; but some of them are for the prevention of sin, 2 Cor. 12.7. some for the trial of their graces, Jam. 1.2,3. some for a confirming testimony to his truths, Acts 5.41. Such sufferings as these have much heavenly comfort concomitant with them.
Concession 3. We do not say that God's displeasure with his people for sin, evidenced against them in the sharpest rebukes of the rod, is any argument that God's love is turned into hatred against their persons: No, his love to his people is unchangeable. Having loved his own, he loved them to the end, John 13.1. Yet notwithstanding all this, three things are undeniably clear, and being thoroughly apprehended, will end this controversy.
1. That God lays his correcting rod in this world on the persons of believers.
2. That this rod of God is sometimes laid on them for their sins.
3. That these fatherly corrections of them for their sins are reconcileable to, and fully consistent with his justice, completely satisfied by the blood of Christ for all their sins.
1. That God lays his correcting rod in this world upon the persons of believers. This no man has the face to deny that believes the scriptures to be the word of God, or that the troubles of good {576} men in this life fall not out by casualty, but by the counsel and direction of Divine Providence. He that denies the hand of God to be upon the persons of believers, in this life, in the way of painful chastisements and sufferings, must either ignorantly or wilfully overlook that scripture, Heb. 12.8. "What son is he whom the father chasteneth not? but if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." Nor will any sober
Christian deny these troubles of believers to be the effects of God's governing Providence in the world, or once imagine or affirm them to be mere casualties and contingencies; for "affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground," Job
5.6. In what Eutopia doth that good man live upon earth, that feels not the painful rod of God upon himself, nor hears the sad laments and moans of other Christians under it! This sure is undeniable, that the rod of God is every where upon the persons and tabernacles of the righteous; and if any doubt it, his own sense and feeling may in a little time give him a painful demonstration of it.
2. And for the second, that this rod of God is sometimes laid upon believers for their sins, methinks no sober, modest Christian in the world should doubt or deny it, when he considers, that,
1. God himself hath so declared it.
2. The saints in all ages have freely confessed it to be so.
1. God himself hath fully and plainly declared it to be so, 2 Sam. 12.914, "Wherefore hast thou despised the commandment of the Lord, to do evil in his sight? Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thy house," &c. Here is the sword, a terrible and painful evil upon David's house, a man after God's own heart, and that expressly for his sin in the matter of Uriah. So Moses, one of the greatest favourites of heaven, for his sinful shifting of the Lord's work, "The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses," Exod. 4.13,14. "For the multitudes of thine iniquities, because thy sins were increased, I have done these things unto thee," saith God to his own Israel, Jer.
30.15. To instance in all the declarations made by God himself in this case, were to transcribe a great part of both testaments.
2. And, as God hath declared the sins of his people to be the provoking causes of his rods upon them; so they have freely and ingenuously confessed and acknowledged the same, Lam. 3.39,40,
"Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord."
This was spoken by Jeremiah in the name of the whole captive church; so Psalm 38.3,5, "There is no soundness in my flesh, (saith
David) because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sin. My {577} wounds stink, and are corrupt because of my foolishness." And were it not an hideous and unaccountable thing to hear a child of God, under his rod, to stand upon his own justification, and say, Lord, my sins have not deserved this at thy hand, nor is it justice in thee thus to chastise me after thou hast received satisfaction for all my sins from the hand of Christ? Would it not look like an horrid blasphemy to hear the best men in the world disputing and denying the justice of God in the troubles he lays him under? For my own part, let the Lord lay on as smartly as he will upon me, I desire to follow the holy patterns and precedents recorded in scripture for my imitation, and to say with the people of God, Ezra 9.13, "Thou hast punished me less than mine iniquities deserve." And Micah 7.9. "I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned against him." And he that refuses so to do gives little evidence of the spirit of adoption in him, but a very clear
proof of the pride and ignorance of his own heart. Job indeed stiffly stood upon his own vindication; but that was when he had to do with men who falsely charged him, laying those sins as the causes of his troubles, which he was innocent of, Job 22.5,6. But when he had to do with God, he disputes no more, but saith, Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth, q.d. I have done, Father, I have done; whether these chastisements be for my sin or no, sure I am, my sin not only deserves all this, but hell itself; thou art holy, but I am vile.
3. Nor can it at all be doubted, but that these fatherly corrections of the saints for their sins, are reconcileable to, and fully consistent with his justice, satisfied by the blood of Christ for all their sins. For,
(1.) If it were not so, the just and righteous God would never have inserted such a clause of reservation in his gracious covenant with his people, to chasten them as he saw need, after he had taken them into the covenant, Psalm 89.30-33, "If they transgress, I will visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquities with stripes; nevertheless (saith he) my loving-kindness will I not take away."
That [nevertheless] clearly proves the consistency of his stripes for sin, with his loving-kindness to his people, and with Christ's satisfaction for their sins. (2.) If this were not consistent with the justice of God, to be sure he would never single them out to spend his rods upon, rather than others. It is most certain the holiest men have most lashes in this life; Asaph said, Psalm 73.12,14. "The ungodly prosper in the world, but he was chastened every morning;" and verse 5, "The wicked are not in trouble as other men." 1 Pet. 4.17.
"Judgment must begin at the house of God;" and if piety would give men an exemption from all troubles, pains and chastisements, then men might discern love or hatred by the things that are {578} before them, contrary to Eccl. 9.1,2. Neither could those that are in Christ, suffer the painful agonies of death, because of sin, expressly contrary to Paul, Rom. 8.10, "And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin." (3.) In a word, As Christ never shed his blood to extinguish or abolish God's displeasure against sin, in whomsoever it be found, so he never shed it to deprive his people of the manifold blessings