FOOTNOTES:
[1] While God visits us at all, it is a sign He thinks of us. The present life is not the time for punishment devoid of mercy. While the debtor is on his way to prison, he may agree with his adversary, and escape the messenger’s hands. While the sick man feels pain, there is vitality and activity in his constitution, and he may recover. And therefore I think it must be a terrible thing to have one’s perdition sealed; to have the process already closed; both depositions and sentence, and laid up in God’s chancery, as an irreversible doom, and so him who is its object troubled no further, but allowed the full choice of his pleasures,—as one permits a man, between sentence and execution, his choice of viands, in full certainty that when his hour hath tolled the terrible law will take its course. How smoothly glides along the boat upon the wide, unruffled, though most rapid stream that hurries it onward to the precipice, over which its waters break in thunder! How calm, and undisturbed by the smallest ripple, slumbers its unreflecting steersman! Or for one rock in the midst of its too smooth channel, against which it may be dashed and whirled about, to shake him from this infatuated sleep! It is the only hope that remains for him. Woe to him if to the end his course be pleasant! That end will pay it all!—Wiseman.
[2] Afflictions leave the wicked worse, more impenitent, hardened in sin, and outrageous in their wicked practices. Every plague on Egypt added to the plague of hardness on Pharaoh’s heart; he that for some while could beg prayers of Moses for himself, at last comes to that pass that he threatens to kill him if he come to him any more. Or, what a prodigious height do we see some come to in sin after some great sickness or other judgment! Oh, how grossly and ravenous are they after their prey, when once they got off their clog and chain from their heels! When physic works not kindly, it doth not only leave the disease uncured, but the poison of the physic stays in the body also. Many appear thus poisoned by their afflictions.—Gurnall, 1617–1679.
Trust not in any unsanctified afflictions, as if these could permanently and really change the condition of your heart. I have seen the characters of the writing which the flames had turned into a film of buoyant coal; I have seen the thread which has been passed through the fire retain, in its cold grey ashes, the twist it had got in spinning; I have found every shivered splinter of the flint as hard as the unbroken stone: and let trials come, in Providence, sharp as the fire and ponderous as the crushing hammer, unless a gracious God send along with these something else than these, bruised, broken, bleeding as thy heart may be, its nature remains the same.—Guthrie.
Needless Stripes.
i. 9. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more.
That sin should not go unpunished is a law of our own hearts, and it is a law of God. Punishment is intended to be remedial;[1] but remedies that are intended to cure sometimes irritate, and God’s remedies may act in two ways—they may make a man better, or they may make him worse.[2] There are those who “kick against the pricks,” and as the result of afflictions which their own sins have brought upon them, become desperate. Chastisement is then of no further use, and like a father weary of correcting the child who has proved irreformable, God may say, “Why should,” &c. (Hos. iv. 17). Terrible meaning, then, may lurk in these words: they may speak of that state in the sinner’s career when his moral malady has become incurable, when the Good Physician feels that His severest and most searching remedies are of no avail, when God withholds His hand, and says, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.”[3] So some here understood these words.
But a more gracious meaning may be contained in them; they may be the first note of that tender Divine invitation which is fully expressed in ver. 18. For mark, God begins here to reason with men,—bids them look at themselves, their situation, the fatal folly of sinning when sin brings its own sure punishment. What need of these disasters? Note: the first aim of the Gospel is to make the sinner understand that sin and its torments are alike of his own seeking; repentance cannot come until he feels this.
These words may then be regarded as implying—I. That there is no inherent necessity that sinners should continue to be stricken. 1. There is no reason in the nature of God (Ezek. xviii. 23). God is love. Love may ordain laws for the general security and safety, the breaking of which may be attended with terrible consequences; but yet God has no delight when these consequences overwhelm the transgressor. He pities even while He punishes, and is on the outlook for the very first beginnings of penitence, that He may stay His hand.[4] 2. There is no reason in the nature of man. As man is not impelled by any inherent necessity to sin, but in every sin acts by deliberate choice, so neither is he compelled to repeat his transgressions. Even when he has done wrong, his consciousness testifies that he might have done right, and it is precisely on this account that his conscience condemns him! II. That a way of avoiding the merited punishment is open. We know what that way is. The prophet saw it afar off, and rejoiced (ver. 18; ch. liii. 5, 6). “Why should ye be stricken any more,” when Christ has been stricken for you? The way of reconciliation is open: avail yourselves of it with patience, with thankful joy!—But if men despise the offered grace, let them know that when the doom from which they would not be delivered comes crashing down upon them, they will neither have nor merit any pity. Even the Angel of Mercy will answer them, “Ye have destroyed yourselves!”—W. Baxendale.