“BASTARD” is a hard word, for use in the church of Christ; and yet it is entirely in place; for “bastard” is the real name for a hypocrite, or, more accurately still, for every one, who chooses the outward, without belonging to the inward church.
The church then appears in the image of the woman, who has God for “her husband,” as Scripture tells us of the daughter of Zion. But this woman defiles her paths, runs after her paramours, brings forth an unholy progeny, which grows up in her family, but stands outside the childship of God.
These two sorts of children therefore must each have a mark of their own; for the legitimate children obtain the inheritance, which the bastard does not; and it is with an eye to this, that the holy apostle commands you, to seek one of these marks in chastisement.
When you see a man engaged in beating a child, not from anger but with calmness, then, ten to one, you know that that man is the father of that child; and you are quite sure of this, even when you had never seen that man or that child before; yea, though you were witness to such a scene in an altogether far and foreign land.
The right and duty of that chastisement lies in the nature of fatherhood, in connection with the sinful nature, in which every child grows up. And thus in this power of fatherhood as well as in this relation to the sinful child, the father on earth is nothing but a faint shadow-image of the Father in the heavens, Whose power over His child is absolute, and over against Whom the child stands in a yet far unholier attitude.
Thus it is entirely natural, that in His church God the Lord chastises all those who stand in His heavenly childship. And when in the church you see persons, whom the Father in heaven passes by, and whom He never chastises, there is justification for the saying: That man or woman can be no child of that Father.
And, therefore, says the apostle: “If ye (i.e., in God’s church) be without chastisement, whereof all (all children of God) are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Hebr. 12, 8).
How is this meant?
When the apostle speaks of people, who are without chastisement, does he refer to those individual worldlings, of which Asaph sang: “There are no bands in their death, and they are not in trouble like other men”? (Ps. 73, 4, 5).
Surely not.
For then experience should have to teach that God’s children alone drink the cup of suffering, and that, from the cradle to the grave, all people of the world walk a path of roses. Which is not so. For also among the people of the world there is much bitter complaint and gloomy suffering. To them also it applies: “By thine anger are we consumed” (Ps. 90). And, on the contrary, there are many children of God, who, when you compare them with many a child of the world, have known almost no suffering.
So taken, you would establish an altogether false standard and arrive at an altogether false conclusion. A conclusion, which would lead the converted soul, to invoke suffering, to covet sorrow, and when the cross tarried, to seek it by reckless self-chastisement.
This untrue antithesis therefore must altogether be set aside. There is no mention here of people who do, and people who do not know adversity; but of persons with, and persons without CHASTISEMENT.
A chastisement is something altogether different from a draught of the cup of suffering. When a man is assaulted by another man on the way and severely beaten by him, it will neither occur to him, nor to any one else, to say, that that man is chastised.
Or, when, heated by strong drink, a wicked father comes home, and tries to compel his children to drink, and they refuse to do it, and he strikes them, there will no one call this a fatherly chastisement.
Chastisement is only then and then alone, when punishment overtakes me at the hand of some one, who has the right of say over me, and my conscience bears witness, that I have deserved it.
AND hereby the apostolic word is become clear to us.
Yet this by no means implies that you are the more certain of your childship, according as you have to bear a more bitter lot on earth. For there have been many miscreants, and many naughty people, who have had to bear a dreadful lot, and who had nothing in common with a child of God.
But from this follows, that a child of God views every frustration of his plans, every stumbling-block in his way, every adversity he has to combat, in brief, everything that makes his happiness to be incomplete, as not belonging to his state as child of God, and thus endures it as something that is really foreign to his state.
That he, moreover, views these small and common hindrances as something which people do not do to him, and does not come upon him by chance, but as something that is brought upon him by his Father Who is in heaven, Who indeed was able to spare him this, but evidently deems it profitable and necessary for him to suffer it.
And finally, that seeing, in everything that is lacking or wanting in his perfect happiness, a direct act of his God, he feels himself smitten in his conscience, acknowledges and confesses that by his sin he has deserved it, that to deter him from sin it is necessary for him, and therefore in humble brokenness of heart he kisses the hand that smites him.
NOW take a man, who after the world’s standard is well-to-do; has ample means to satisfy every desire; enjoys abounding health; has a happy family; occupies an honorable position; who, forsooth, has to get along with these minor bitternesses, disappointments and disagreeablenesses of life, but takes them all as ordinary thorns, which are always part of the branch, on which roses grow; who makes the most of them; and with self-satisfaction even laughs about them; in that case there is every ground to surmise, that in God’s family this man is no child of the Father in the heavens, but a bastard.
For here you have to do with a man who is content with a very limited and small measure of happiness, and therefore seems to have no idea of the glory, that really belongs to a child of God. He evidently is a man who takes these ordinary bitternesses of life as something that comes by accident or Fate or at the hands of men, and who in connection with them has no thought of his heavenly Father. And then you observe in everything, that instead of making it a matter of conscience, and of humbling himself, by reason of all these bitter drops that are mingled in his cup, he lives outside of his soul, and dismisses it all with a haughty smile.
Take, on the other hand, people who make the bold pretense that their happiness really ought to be perfect; who, extremely sensitive as they are, feel day by day that everything troubles them, galls their cup and burdens them on the way; and who yet, far from being morose thereby or dissatisfied, on the contrary, see God’s appointment in all this, the doings of their Father in the heavens, and quietly, reverently humble themselves under it all, even to borrow from it a stimulus to live ever more painstakingly; then you observe, that you are not dealing with bastards, but with real children of your God.
AND if you ask, why then the cross weighs so heavily upon some of God’s children, while others, relatively, have so little adversity in life, then the question itself already is ungodly, when it implies a finding fault with God’s providential direction.
Little people of six and more years of age, who do not understand why father, sister and mother did as they did, and now together come to the conclusion, that their parents were mistaken, are not children, but little wiseacres.
And how much more then do we make ourselves objects of ridicule, when we, insignificant children of men, would censure the doings full of majesty on the part of the high God.
If on the other hand you put this question, that in the midst of the storms of life you might have a compass, then observe the following:
First, that driving nails into iron demands a firmer blow than driving nails into a wainscot. If then there are two children of God, whose hearts are unequal in hardening, so that one can be compared with iron, the other with the weaker wainscot, then it is altogether natural, that the one must be struck far more forcibly than the other.
Secondly, you well know, that a diamond is far more difficult to cut than a piece of crystal. Upon a diamond ten and twenty times more strength must be expended.
From Jesus’ parable you know that not all God’s children are alike. Once they shall shine as stars in the firmament, but not all stars are equal in glory.
Hence there is nothing unnatural, but something quite understandable in it, that God cuts His diamonds more sharply than His crystal lenses. Did He not do so, the diamond would never have its brightness glitter.
And thirdly, the surgeon operates externally, in case of an outward festering or dislocation; but the physician inwardly, when externally everything remained sound, but the corruption is within; and both do this in keeping with the condition of the patient. And so among God’s children the case can be, that one is severely affected in his outward lot, and the other almost not at all, and that yet the latter suffers no less, but with a suffering, which you scarcely observe.
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