CHAPTER V.
PLEASURE IN INFIRMITIES
The subject of our last chapter connects itself with this, as the whole with the part. We have looked upon “circumstances” in their entirety as representing, as conveying, to the Christian the will of God. Here we have before us a special class of circumstances, or of conditions under which we meet them.
In 2 Cor. xii. 7, 8, 9, we read a passage full of manifold instruction about the ways of Christ with His people in their life of grace and faith. St. Paul has been spiritually privileged to a degree inconceivable without the same experience. He has been present, it matters not how, in the Third Heaven, in Paradise, and has heard words there not to be reported by a mere human being; words, very possibly, expressive of eternal kindness and approval towards himself and his work. He returns from this more than Tabor to the plain of common life. And he is put at once under severe discipline; “the thorn in the flesh,” “the buffeting angel of Satan,” is “given to him.” Yes, this was the next “gift on behalf of Christ.” And, as if to make thorn and buffeting more unbearable, we might think, it was intimated somehow to him that this was all done, all assigned by his Master, for a reason most humiliating. It was “lest he should be exalted above measure”; it was to check personal vanity in advance, to prevent something coming up in his experience which otherwise would have come up – self-satisfaction. Such was St. Paul, it thus appeared, that strong measures on Jesus Christ’s part were needed, in an acmé of spiritual experience, if he was not thus to sin.
Such a fact, painfully real for the Apostle then, speaks an abiding word of holy humiliation to all true believers, since and now. It is manifestly written “for our learning,” and says to us that “this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated.”* True, it has been argued – I have heard it so argued – that even St. Paul’s experience is not to be our standard; and we should aim, in Christ, to rise above even it! And there is thus much truth in this, that most surely the only true standard of inner principle and outer practice is the Lord. But then, when the Holy Spirit instructs an Apostle to record his own experience as part of a passage of instruction, as here, it is obvious that the experience is meant to embody and illustrate permanent truth. The Lord is, as ever, the unaltered standard. He, who needed no discipline to keep HIM meek and lowly, is the standard; and we are in Him. Nevertheless, we gather hence that it is a permanent fact of the life of grace and faith on earth that, notwithstanding our being in Him, we need His discipline to keep us low. It is meant to keep us low; it can do so; accepted, it will do so. But let His hand be taken off, and self will reappear indeed. It “lusteth,” it tendeth, “against the Spirit” still.
Let us not be discouraged. Our souls are touched from above – and from within, for it is by the Indweller – with that desire, longing, and choice for conformity to Him which nothing but Himself can satisfy. But let us not be discouraged by the Holy Spirit’s intimation here that “this infection of nature doth remain.” In the very recognition of this humiliating fact on the witness of the Holy Word, in a meek submission to this condition, mystery that it is, there can come to the soul a direct gift of sanctifying peace and power.
Even thus, as this passage clearly indicates, St. Paul found it to be. He thrice asked the Lord, the Master, to remove the thorn, to forbid the buffets. And He who knew St. Paul better than he knew himself, though he had been in heaven, said no. It was to remain. I think we gather that it was lastingly, at least indefinitely, to remain. Whatever was the pang, the burthen, the restraint, the hindrance (and doubtless he said much to the Lord about this, for see Phil. iv. 6), he was to go on with it, and to know all the time why he was to do so; lest he should be exalted above measure.
* Art. IX. of the Church of England.
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