View source for The Love and the Discipline

<p>&quot;As many as I&nbsp;<strong>love</strong>, I rebuke and&nbsp;<strong>chasten</strong>—be zealous therefore,  and repent.&quot;—<strong>Revelation 3:19.</strong><br><br>
  <strong>How quickly a believer may  become lukewarm!&nbsp;</strong>How quickly his love and holiness and zeal  fade away! His cheek becomes pale, with the symptoms of deadly decline; or  flushed with the passions produced by drinking the world's cup, and partaking  of the world's fellowships.<br><br>
  Spirituality loses ground.  Worldliness, either in a gross or a refined form, steals in. Reality in  religion disappears. Enjoyment of prayer and the Bible ceases. Pleasure,  politics, and exciting literature supply the place which the things of God once  held. First love is gone. Joy and  peace become strangers.<br><br>
  Religious formalism, routine, and  ritualism are adopted, by which a man is enabled to quiet his conscience with a  few external performances--while devoting the rest of his time to vanity or  business.<br><br>
  The soul withers; the eye that  looked upward now looks downward; and the once 'religious man,' who 'did run  well,' takes the downward path into lukewarmness or death. Yet Jesus leaves him not. He hates divorce. He pursues  His fugitive. He pleads with the backslider—'Return, and I will heal.'<br><br>
  <strong>I. The love.&nbsp;</strong>The 'I' here is emphatic, and by its prominence Christ presents Himself specially as—the lover, the rebuker,  the chastener. His thoughts are not our thoughts, nor our ways His ways. He  loves where others would hate. He shows His love by chastening where others  would show theirs by indulging. &quot;He who spares the rod, hates the child!'  'Whom the Lord loves He chastens!' Herein is love—love to Laodicea, even in her lukewarmness. It is not  'Repent, that I may love you.' It is, 'I love you, therefore repent.' The  lukewarm backslider, whether of Ephesus, or Sardis, or Laodicea—as  long as he remains self-satisfied and happy in his worldliness, cares only for  the love of the creature. He loves the world, and he would gladly have the  world love him.&nbsp;<strong>This world  would be his heaven—his gods and goddesses would all be here!</strong><br><br>
  But when trial comes, and sorrow  lays hold, and the deep consciousness of evil burdens, and the prospect of  coming wrath rouses him, then he looks round and asks for love. 'Is there  anyone to love me, anyone that can love one so unlovable?' The answer is, None  on earth! But One in heaven! Jesus  loves still.<strong>&nbsp;</strong><strong>All Laodicea's unloveableness  has not quenched His love!</strong>&nbsp;The  worst of the seven Churches is that which receives His fullest words of  love—'that love which passes knowledge.<br><br>
  <strong>II. The discipline of love.&nbsp;</strong>Mark the way in which this love deals with Laodicea. It deals in  tenderness, and yet in solemn severity. Instead of letting Laodicea escape, it takes hold of her, as a  wise father of his disobedient child, and makes her sensible how much it hates  the sin. Love cannot bear lukewarmness. It expects love for love—and will leave  no method untried in order to win back the straying heart, however far it has  gone, either in indifference or hatred.<br><br>
  <strong>(1) I REBUKE.&nbsp;</strong>He reproves by word and deed. His words are full of  tenderness, yet also conveying solemn and searching rebuke. Such rebuke may be  'His strange work,' for 'fury is not in Him.' Yet He does administer the rebuke  when it is needed—not harshly, yet sometimes severely—for He speaks as one who  has authority, and who will not be mocked.<br><br>
  <strong>(2) I CHASTEN.&nbsp;</strong>What the chastening was we know not—it would be something  specially suited to the self-sufficiency and worldliness of the Laodiceans.  Perhaps they were stripped of their riches; perhaps visited by sickness and  death; perhaps laid desolate by grievous sorrow; some heavy blow, or some  long-continued trial stroke upon stroke, crushing and emptying them. The  chastisement, we are sure, would correspond with the cherished sins, searching  the conscience and breaking the heart in pieces. For the Lord leaves not His  own, even in their backsliding; nor indeed any who name His name.&nbsp;<strong>The unbelieving world may be  allowed to go on unchecked in its wickedness and vanity, but those who call  themselves Christ's may expect discipline.</strong>&nbsp;By naming His name, they have brought  themselves under His special rule, and He will deal with them as He dealt with Laodicea. They profess to  be His, to have been bought by Him, to follow Him; they must therefore know His  rod, and be treated differently from those who reject His sway and service.  Discipline, because of permitted sin, because of indulged worldliness, because  of defection from truth or holiness—discipline, it may be, of great  severity—they must be prepared for. In faithfulness as well as love He will  chasten. Whatever it may cost, they must be made to feel the evil of their  ways.<br><br>
  <strong>III. The exhortation of love.&nbsp;</strong>'Be zealous, therefore, and repent.' The word&nbsp;<strong>zealous</strong>&nbsp;contrasts with lukewarmness, and  implies true warmth and fervor. While He says, 'I wish you were either cold or  hot;' He shows by this word 'zealous' that He desires to see zeal quickened in  this Church, and lukewarmness done away. Be zealous! Be fervent in spirit! Be  done with coldness and half-heartedness! Rouse yourself into the fervor of your  early days, before this lukewarmness falls upon you!<br><br>
  <strong>Repent</strong>&nbsp;also! Repent of your present miserable  estate; of your apostasy, and declension, and worldliness! Repent in dust and  ashes! Retrace your steps! Awake from your lethargy! Your estimate of yourself  is high—come down from your loftiness. You say—I am rich, and increased in  goods, and have need of nothing. Come down from the self-sufficiency, and learn  that you are not what you think yourself to be. God's estimate of you and your  estimate of yourself are widely different. Know yourself—as He knows you. Take  His estimate of your poverty and blindness, and cast yourself down before Him.  You are not the Laodicea  of other days. You must go back to your early zeal, and faith, and love. Be not  high-minded, but fear. Abhor yourself—and turn from your lukewarmness!<br><br>
  All this is the language of love;  it is the treatment of love. It is love that is rebuking, and chastening, and  exhorting. Hear the voice of love—the unchanging love of Him who yearns over  you in your declension, and longs to see you restored. This was the beginning  of your love, as well as of your confidence. 'We have known and believed the  love which God has to us.' Go back to this, and what you first got there—you  will get there again. Know that God is love!</p>
[[Category:Revelation]]