THE DAMAGE OF THE SECOND DEATH –
Reflections on the Millennium
Chapter 1
DISCIPLINE AND REWARD
WEEK 1 – MONDAY
Bible Reading: 1 Cor. 5:1-5
Read and pray: “As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, make an effort to settle with him on the way, so that he may not drag you to the judge, and the judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last cent.” (Luke 12:58-59)
THE REASON AND PURPOSE OF DISCIPLINE (2)
We must not make the mistake of thinking that because we are eternally saved, we can live carelessly on this earth. No one can refute the fact that once a person is saved, he is saved forever. That is a fact.
If a Christian gives way to his lusts, commits sins, falls into perversion, and lacks the holiness of God, God will stretch out His hand and discipline him through his environment, his family, his health, and his future plans.
He may encounter difficulties in his family. He may experience much sickness and misfortune in his environment. God’s purpose in allowing these things to happen is not to punish him. They do not come to cause him hardship but to make him partake of God’s holiness and to render him worthy of the grace of His calling.
This is the proper understanding of salvation. No one should say that if a Christian does not do good, God will deny that he is His child and cast him out like a dog. If anyone says this, he is either blind to the work of the cross of Christ or considers the work of Christ a trivial matter. The Bible shows us that salvation is eternal.
At the same time, the Bible also shows us that there are very serious punishments among believers. If we fail, there will be much punishment for us. God wants us to partake of His holiness. On this earth, He wants us to live as children of God. He does not want to intimidate us with hell so that we will seek holiness.
To be saved is entirely of grace, but God has His way of leading us into His holiness. He causes us to face many things in our families, in our bodies, in our careers, and in our environment, so that we will turn to Him. This is the purpose of discipline.
Ananias and Sapphira were Christians; they were saved. They committed the sin of lying to the Spirit and received very severe discipline (Acts 5:1-10). At one time, I thought that perhaps Ananias and Sapphira were not saved. But reading the Bible carefully, we must recognize that they were saved, because they were with the disciples at the time of Pentecost.
Moreover, they also made an offering. They were only seeking some vain glory. Their sins were not as grave as some may think. They did not get drunk nor commit fornication. The fact that they were quickly taken out of the world proves that they were Christians. If they had been worldly people, they might have lived much longer. The fact that they were swiftly removed from the world proves that they were our brothers.
The Corinthian Christians did not respect the meeting of the Lord’s Table. They did not respect the Body of the Lord and treated the Lord’s Supper lightly. What were the results of such things? Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:29-30: “For the one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.”
The disciplining hand of God makes people sick and weak, and even causes them to die. God dealt with them this way because they treated the Lord’s Body lightly. They did not see the Lord’s death or Christ’s work, and they did not see the Body of Christ.
They did not see the respect they should have toward the Lord Jesus, nor their proper place in the Body of Christ. This resulted in weakness, sickness, and even death. After they had sinned, God disciplined them. Verse 32 says: “But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.”
There is a purpose in God’s discipline. It is to save us from condemnation in the future. God disciplines us so that we will not fall into the condemnation that the world will receive. In other words, discipline proves that we are saved. Discipline preserves our salvation.
The way God does things and the way we do things are entirely different. We think that if we tell people they are saved, they will become careless and unrestrained. God is not like this. He proclaims clearly, absolutely, and without limitation to all who believe in Him that whoever believes has eternal life and shall not perish.
Nevertheless, He has His way of keeping us from sinning and from being loose, libertine Christians. His discipline is a substitute for condemnation. Man may think that condemnation is the best method to keep us from sinning, but God does not use condemnation. Instead, He uses discipline.
It is very evident that God separates Christians from the people of the world through discipline. The matters of discipline and salvation must be clearly distinguished. Discipline is exercised only for the present and has nothing to do with our eternal salvation.
There is a good example in 1 Corinthians showing that discipline for a Christian is proof that he is saved. Even if a Christian has committed a very serious sin, he is still saved. First Corinthians chapter five speaks of a Christian who committed adultery. Such an act of adultery with his stepmother was not even found among unbelievers.
Those who know the law of Moses would say that this person would surely perish and go to hell. But surprisingly, 1 Corinthians shows us clearly that here is someone who committed a grave and shameful sin, one not even committed by common people.
Paul says that with the power of the Lord Jesus, he delivered such a person to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, allowing Satan to show his power over his body, possibly making him weak, sick, and even die. Paul’s purpose in doing this was that this person might be saved in the day of the Lord. Discipline is for this life. It is absolutely unrelated to eternal salvation.
If it were up to us, we would say: “It is finished. Though this person was saved, surely he will perish again because he committed such a gross sin.” Yet Paul says that this person will not perish even though he committed such a sin. A saved person may temporarily receive discipline but cannot be punished with eternal perdition.
This is Paul’s teaching. A Christian may have temporary discipline in this age, but he cannot perish eternally. We may need discipline, but we will still be saved eternally. Paul often made a clear distinction between these two things in the New Testament.
The destruction mentioned here and the sleeping mentioned earlier refer only to the body, not to the spirit. The matters of the spirit and eternal salvation were already settled when we believed in the Lord. Some people have difficulty with 1 John 5:16, where it says we should not pray for someone who commits sin leading to death.
They have difficulty because they do not understand the Word of God. They think that sin unto death here means perdition. In reality, there is no such thing. First John 5:16 speaks of some who sinned to such an extent that God had to put them to death and their flesh had to be removed from the world. The death mentioned in 1 Corinthians 11, the destruction in 1 Corinthians 5, and the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira are all deaths of the flesh and have nothing to do with the death of the spirit.
Discipline is entirely related to the body. Therefore, in the Bible, many passages that seem to say that Christians may perish are actually speaking about discipline.
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