“Whoever is honest in small things can also be trusted with great ones, and whoever is dishonest in little matters will also be dishonest with much. So if a man has not been honest with worldly wealth, who can trust him with moral decisions? No man can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.’ The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and sneered at Jesus.”
Luke 16:10-14
“It was not curiosity that killed the goose who laid the golden egg, but an insatiable greed that devoured common sense.”
E.A. Bucchianeri
“God has no pleasure in afflicting us, but He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home. A believer may pass through much affliction, and yet secure very little blessing from it all. Abiding in Christ is the secret of securing all that the Father meant the chastisement to bring us.”
Andrew Murray
‘A true opium of the people is the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders we are not going to be judged.’
Czeslaw Milosz
Very interesting, to me anyway, that the word “chastise” in any and all its forms, can only be found in the Bible when God is dealing with the nation Israel.
A child requires chastisement.
Gal 3:24-25… “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.”
Israel, under both the Old and New Testament (covenant) law systems, was (will be) in a parent/child relationship with God. A believer today who understands what Christ has done for him is an adult in Gods eyes (no law/covenant relationship). An adult ought require no chastisement as they understand their position and responsibilities. Where there is no law to break there can be no chastisement to effect correction. Believers today are not under the law, thus Paul never uses the word.
If you require the law to function in your relationship with God you are in the parent/child old covenant relationship Israel was in. How’d that work out for them? Answer: really, really badly. I’ll refer you back to Lev 26 for the be/all end/all of chastisement…
In order to keep His promise to them (Kingdom), He had to offer the new covenant to them. The Bible’s “new deal” if you will. In it, God tells them that He would cause, empower, enable them “supernaturally” by His Spirit, to be able to keep the law (Jer 31, Ez 36, Heb 8). That began to happen in early Acts (2-4). They were also able to heal the sick, raise the dead, etc… You see that occurring today?
You’re a daisy if ya do…
Christ (God) did for us what we absolutely cannot do for ourselves. And if you insist upon the attempt?
Gal 3:21… “I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.”
Gal 5:4… “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.”
Good luck explaining to God at the judgement how that what you did in your life was worth anything in comparison to what Christ did during His life among us humans.
“God has no pleasure in afflicting us, but He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home. A believer may pass through much affliction, and yet secure very little blessing from it all. Abiding in Christ is the secret of securing all that the Father meant the chastisement to bring us.”
Andrew Murray
Well, a broken clock is correct twice a day. Abiding in Christ is the goal. God however does not afflict us in this dispensation of grace. The afflictions we experience day to day are a direct result of reaping the sin WE have sown. God saves us from eternal affliction. An honest examination of the law, the fact that it is Perfect, Holy and Absolutely Just (the opposite of us), ought to bring us to Christ as Paul demonstrates in his letter to the Galatians.