Jim Miller
Gray, Miane
Just as children need to be corrected by their parents and taught right from wrong so does the Christian. Learning should be a never ending process in our lives. Anyone who assumes they know all there is to know and rejects correction has missed the mark completely.
Yet there are those even among us who feel they are above reproach and should not be rebuked. They take the stand that all is love and peace and mercy. how dare anyone try to correct them.
All we have to do is look at society around us to see what lack of discipline offers. Adults who think of nothing but themselves, Children and teens with no moral compass and no respect for either the law or their parents. Yet from these folks you will here love and peace and mercy proclaimed as if that is all that is needed. Friends that is far from the truth of Gods word.
Going all the way back to the beginning we see Gods correction of man. Simply read the punishment of Adam and Eve, of those who were destroyed in the flood in the days of Noah in the captivity of the Jews by the Egyptians. History is replete with all manners of correction by God to man. Discipline or correction whether great of small in designed to bring about obedience. This seems to be lost on the people of our day though and society as a whole has suffered the cost.
We are told many time in the book of Proverbs about correction and about the consequences of sparing the rod, Here are just a few.
Pro_22:15 Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. Pro_23:13 Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Pro_23:14 Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell. Pro_26:3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back. Pro_29:15 The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
The rod we are to use today is the word of God when correcting brothers or sisters, when you truly love one another you want to correct them and if they love you it will be the same. Though what is written above may seem harsh it is still necessary. We have been told we can no longer use the rod be it for correction of a child or the rod of the word for the correction Christian.
Friends the Lord is going to deal out punishment like no other has ever seen when he separates the wheat and the chaff and it will be an eternal punishment. I ask you to remember the words of Peter………… 2Pe 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; 2Pe 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; 2Pe 2:6 And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrha into ashes condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly; 2Pe 2:7 And delivered just Lot, vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked: 2Pe 2:8 (For that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their unlawful deeds;) 2Pe 2:9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished:
Do not despise correction, do not forsake discipline, I say be glad when your are loved enough and cared about enough that someone will come to you with the rod of the word to bring you back to God. True love of another is not when they allow you to continue in sin but when they try to save your soul from that final death. Jas 5:19 Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; Jas 5:20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.
