Benefiting from Affliction ⁽¹⁾
4. Sent for Reproof
James Buchanan

The day of adversity is intended not only for our instruction, but also for our reproof. As a chastisement, it is designed to rebuke and humble us. The grand design of God, both in His Word and providence, is to produce genuine humility of heart. Many of His most solemn messages to us in the Bible are intended for this purpose. But the evil is that pride is too apt to resist the application of these passages to ourselves; nay, the more proud any man is and the greater his need of being humbled, so much the more averse is he from this faithful application of God's revealed truth to his own soul.

The day of adversity is designed for our probation and trial. It brings with it particular temptations, which are fitted to test, as well as to exercise, the graces of God's people. Thus Abraham was tried or tempted when he was commanded, apparently in direct opposition to God's covenant promise, to offer up his son Isaac. This was, in every point of view, a sore trial; it brought with it peculiar temptations to unbelief and disobedience, such as had never assailed the patriarch before. But he was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and his faith and obedience were rendered only better and more illustrious by means of his trial.

So is it with the people of God, who are the children of faithful Abraham. God visits them with adversity, not merely with a view to instructing or chastising them, but for the purpose of trying and exercising their Christian graces; and by means of such trial and exercise, these graces are strengthened and matured. For just as the bodily frame is more fully developed, and grows in vigour by means of active exertion, so the principles of spiritual life in the soul are improved and perfected by means of discipline - that discipline calling these principles into exercise, and thereby increasing their strength and vigour.

Thus, when a man who has long been weak in faith is visited with adversity, he is laid under a necessity, as it were, of having recourse to God in his straits; he feels that he has no other being on whom he can depend for succour or support. And as one consideration after another presents itself to his mind, as to the all-sufficiency and faithfulness and love of his Lord, his faith acquires increasing confidence; and when he is weak, he feels that he is strong.

So the man who, while he lived in the sunshine of earthly prosperity, may have been easily annoyed by trifling inconveniences and been reluctant to submit to them, is, as it were, compelled to recognise God's hand in it when he is visited by a signal and sore affliction. Thus he exhibits a holy resignation to God's will and a submissive temper in his severest trials, such as he was unable to preserve in former times - these graces of the Christian character being called into lively exercise, and thus strengthened and matured. And if this be the benevolent design and this the happy effect of affliction, how much reason he has to rejoice that, while his outward man perishes, his inward man is renewed day by day! Who that knows the unspeakable value of those heavenly graces, which are thus invigorated and strengthened, will murmur at the discipline which God uses to call them into exercise and to carry them onward to perfection.

The day of adversity is designed as a means of preparation for the future which lies before us. This is an interesting aspect of our present trials. We are too prone to take a retrospective view of their causes and occasions, while we think little of their prospective design and results. But we ought not only to look back on the causes which may have rendered our afflictions necessary; we should also look forward to the events for which they are designed to prepare us. I believe that affliction is often sent, not so much as a chastisement for past sins, but as a means of preparation for future duty. And it is most suitable and efficacious for this end.

It is a means of fitting us for future trials. All the afflictions of life are not sent upon us at once; otherwise we should be in danger of being overwhelmed by them. But one is sent at a time, and this makes way for another and prepares us for enduring it. The Lord, in His providence, follows the same rule as in His instructions: He gives line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; according as the disciples are able to bear it. One affliction, duly improved, prepares us for enduring another and deriving good from all.

There is great diversity indeed in God's methods of dealing with His different disciples. Sometimes by a sudden stroke He visits a prosperous disciple with the heaviest calamity at first; and it is not wonderful if, thus unprepared by previous discipline, he should feel it to be almost overwhelming. But then, if such an affliction be at all improved as it should, it must serve, by its very magnitude, to suppress all repining and to produce a meek and resigned spirit under the smaller afflictions which may follow it. In other cases, the smaller trials are sent first, and one follows after another until the disciple is prepared for enduring the heaviest of all. The mind that is in any measure duly exercised by the former, becomes, as it were, familiar with the principles which administer support and comfort, and is ready to have instant recourse to them when the latter arrives.

O how mercifully does God deal with His people in thus adapting the method of His discipline to their respective circumstances. He sends on one, who might otherwise fail to be awakened to his highest interests, a stroke like a sudden thunderbolt; and on another, whom such a stroke might overwhelm, such preparatory minor trials as initiate him gently in the school of affliction. Some may wonder that we speak of so many successive trials and of the wisdom of God in making one affliction prepare the way for another, but it is even so in the experience of God's people. Affliction is not one act of chastisement but a course of salutary discipline, a series of preparatory trials leading on to the glorious consummation - for it is "through much tribulation" that we must enter into the kingdom of God.

Adversity is a means of fitting us for future temptations. God, whose foreknowledge extends to all future events, sees that a disciple is ere long to be placed in circumstances which will throw strong temptations in his way. And He, whose knowledge extends to the secrets of the heart, knows also that, in the frame of mind which present prosperity has induced, that disciple would be ill qualified to resist these temptations - perhaps prone to yield to them. He must be called off from the world, brought to his knees, and strengthened inwardly with strength in his soul. But so long as prosperity continues, this moral change, so essential to his future safety, is not to be expected; and therefore, in the exercise of His unfailing love and faithfulness, the Lord takes him into His own hand and visits him with affliction. The disciple is grieved, no doubt, but he is also humbled and instructed and strengthened by this discipline; a new and more spiritual frame of feeling is produced; the truths of religion acquire a firmer footing in his mind and a fuller ascendency over his heart. And these truths, thus applied to his soul, furnish him with new and stronger motives, so that, when the hour of temptation comes, he is prepared, through God's grace, to meet it, and his very sorrows are his preservative from sin.

Little do we know the temptations from which we have been preserved or delivered by means of such salutary discipline. Little do we know what we might have been if we had fewer trials. The Christian disciple who has been subject to protracted illness may be apt to wonder why he should be kept for so long a time in a condition which apparently hinders or impairs his active usefulness. But perhaps that very disciple had the seeds of vanity, worldliness, or intemperance in his heart, which the constant sunshine of prosperity would have caused to spring up and ripen; or he was likely to be placed in circumstances which would have tempted him to open sin. How thankful then should he be for God's restraining grace, even though that grace has operated through the discipline of sorrow - especially if he finds that during his sickness his spiritual health has been preserved and increased, while he sees that many a prosperous professing Christian has fallen before the power of the temptation from which he has been so graciously preserved.

Endnotes:
1. Taken, slightly edited, from Buchanan's book The Improvement of Affliction. The previous article appeared last month.