THE EFFECT OF DISCIPLINE

^[p. 473] THE EFFECT OF DISCIPLINE

Discipline (Hebrews 12) is to make us partakers of His holiness, that is, as separate from everything as God is essentially.

Abraham’s history and Paul’s describe the end and object of the Father’s chastening: that there is no one but God! Abraham reaches it on mount Moriah, Paul in 2 Timothy 4. It is different from the passage of Jordan: there you die to everything; but in this case everything and every one has died to you - terrible moment - but in result unspeakably glorious! You get the sense in your soul of God only - “All men forsook me” (2 Timothy 4: 16), says Paul, “the Lord stood with me”! I could not convey to you the sense of satisfaction it gives me to see that it is all God, God only. Oh, how much is lost by not walking in the Lord’s confidence!

How could any one be near the Lord and not fit for His company? How could one enter into the holiest and enjoy our Aaron there, who is not in priestly garments? And if I know that I must wear a snow-white dress, I cannot suffer you to be in one - originally white, but - spattered over with this world’s mud. “Keep thyself pure” (1 Timothy 5: 2), then you will be able to distinguish between the holy and the unholy.