January 23

If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; If they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. - Psalms 89:30-32.

GOD loves his children too well to allow them to act improperly, or suffer them to violate the discipline under which he has placed them, without visiting them with severe and loving rebuke. It were to suppose the greatest absurdity to imagine that God will suffer his authority to be despised and his law forsaken, his statutes broken and his decisions set at naught. The very discipline he exercises in his family shows that he has not abandoned them to their own wayward and foolish courses. He gives expression to his paternal tenderness towards his disobedient children:-“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? How shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned within me. My repentings are kindled together.”

No; he will “not cast away his people whom he foreknew;” but this is the law of the house:-“he will visit their transgressions with a rod, and their iniquity with stripes.” “Nevertheless,” he says, “my lovingkindness will I not take from him, nor cause my faithfulness to fail.” And these corrections of our heavenly Father regard sins of omission as well as of commission. For he commands us to do as well as prohibits, and we forsake his law and break his statutes by neglecting to do what is enjoined upon us, as well as by doing what he has prohibited us from doing.

These corrections regard the state of the heart as well as the conduct of the life. Where no deviation from the path of obedience, no miscarriages in duty, are apparent to others, our heavenly Father discovers a falling away in our feelings and motives. What a forsaking of first love-what ingratitude-what unbelief and distrust- what prodigality of time-what a perversion of that which is good-what misimprovement of privileges-does he discover in his children! These defections in duty, these backslidings of heart, call frequently and loudly for the rod of correction; and can there be any reason for wonder or surprise that we are afflicted?

Surely we have more reason to sing, “It is of the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” “He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our transgressions,” but “his strokes are fewer than our crimes, and lighter than our guilt.”