The Education of Sons of God

It is always consoling to us to behold the footsteps of our Lord.

When we see him tried, we cheerfully submit to the like trial.

When we perceive that in his case an exception to the rule of chastening might have been expected, and yet none was made, we are encouraged to bear our sufferings patiently.

When we see the great Elder Brother put to more rather than less of trial, we are fully drawn to obey the will of God by submission.

I. SONSHIP DOES NOT EXEMPT FROM SUFFERING.

1. Not even Jesus, as a Son, escaped suffering.

   • He was the Son, peculiarly, and above all others.
   • He was the honored and beloved first-born.
   • He was the faithful and sinless Son.
   • He was soon to be the glorified Son in an eminent sense.

2. No honor put upon sons of God will exempt them from suffering.

3. No holiness of character, nor completeness of obedience, can exempt the children of God from the school of suffering.

4. No prayer of God’s sons, however earnest, will remove every thorn in the flesh from them.

5. No love in God’s child, however fervent, will prevent his being tried.

   • The love and wisdom of God ensure the discipline of the house for all the heirs of Heaven without a single exception.

II. SUFFERING DOES NOT MAR SONSHIP.

The case of our Lord is set forth as a model for all the sons of God.

1. His poverty did not disprove his Sonship. Luke 2:12.

2. His temptations did not shake his Sonship. Matthew 4:3.

3. His endurance of slander did not jeopardize it. John 10:36.

4. His fear and sorrow did not put it in dispute. Matthew 26:39.

5. His desertion by men did not invalidate it. John 16:32.

6. His being forsaken of God did not alter it. Luke 23:46.

7. His death cast no doubt thereon. Mark 15:39. He rose again, and thus proved his Father’s pleasure in him. John 20:17.

   • Never was there a truer, or lovelier, or more beloved Son than the sufferers. “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.”

III. OBEDIENCE HAS TO BE LEARNED EVEN BY SONS.

Even he in whom there was no natural depravity, but perfect, inherent purity, had to learn obedience.

1. It must be learned experimentally.

   • What is to be done and suffered can only be learned in the actual exercise of obedience.
   • How it is done must be discovered by practice.
   • The actual doing of it is only possible in trial.

2. It must be learned by suffering.

   • Not by words from the most instructive of teachers.
   • Nor by observation of the lives of others.
   • Nor even by perpetual activity on our own part. This might make us fussy rather than obedient: we must suffer.

3. It must be learned for use in earth and in Heaven.

   • On earth by sympathy with others.
   • In Heaven by perfect praise to God growing out of experience.

IV. SUFFERING HAS A PECULIAR POWER TO TEACH TRUE SONS.

It is a better tutor than all else, because—

1. It touches the man’s self; his bone, his flesh, his heart.

2. It tests his graces, and sweeps away those shams which are not proofs of obedience, but pretenses of self-will.

3. It goes to the root, and tests the truth of our new nature. It shows whether repentance, faith, prayer, etc., are mere importations, or home-grown fruits.

4. It tests our endurance, and makes us see how far we are established in the obedience which we think we possess. Can we say, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him”?

   • The anxious question—Am I a son?
   • The aspiring desire—Let me learn obedience.
   • The accepted discipline—I submit to suffer.

Blossomings Of The Rod

Corrections are pledges of our adoption, and badges of our sonship. One Son God has without sin, but none without sorrow. As God corrects none but his own, so all that are his shall be sure to have it; and they shall take it for a favor too. 1 Corinthians 11:32.—John Trapp.

I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my school-room is darkened, I see most.—C. H. S.

If anything can teach us anything, Affliction’s looks, Making us look unto ourselves so near, Teach us to know ourselves beyond all books,

Or all the learned schools that ever were.

This mistress lately plucked me by the ear, And many a golden lesson has me taught; Has made my senses quick, and reason clear,

Reform’d my will, and rectified my thought.

Sir John Davies.

“I never,” said Luther, “knew the meaning of God’s word, until I came into affliction. I have always found it one of my best school-masters.” On another occasion, referring to some spiritual temptation on the morning of the preceding day, he said to a friend (Justin Jonah), “Doctor, I must mark the day; I was yesterday at school.” In one of his works, he most accurately calls affliction “the theology of Christians”—“Theologium Christianorum.” “I have learned more divinity,” said Dr. Rivet, confessing to God of his last days of affliction—“in these ten days that you are come to visit me, than I did in fifty years before. You teach me after a better manner than all those doctors, in reading whom I spent so much time.”—Charles Bridges.

A minister was recovering from a dangerous illness, when one of his friends addressed him thus, “Sir, though God seems to be bringing you up from the gates of death, yet it will be a long time before you will sufficiently retrieve your strength, and regain vigor enough of mind to preach as usual.” The good man answered: “You are mistaken, my friend: for this six weeks’ illness has taught me more divinity than all my past studies and all my ten years’ ministry put together.”

New Cyclopædia of Anecdote.

Not to be unhappy is unhappiness, And misery not to have known misery;

For the best way unto discretion is

The way that leads us by adversity;

And men are better showed what is amiss

By the expert finger of calamity

Than they can be with all that fortune brings,

Who never shows them the true face of things.

—Samuel Daniel.