Why Does He Chasten and Scourge?

Hebrews 12:5-10 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked of Him:
6 For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.
7 If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chastens not?
8 But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
10 For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness.

God chastens and scourges every son that He receives. Now, it doesn’t say that He scourges every Christian that He receives, but every son He receives. A son is a Christian, but a Christian is not necessarily a son. One becomes a Christian simply by repenting of his sins and accepting Christ as his Savior, but a son is a Christian that has received or is receiving the divine nature of his Father. Every Christian does not receive the chastening and scourging that belongs to sons. You are not chastened and scourged because you have done something wrong but because you have done something right. You have hungered for the righteousness of the Lord, to become a new creature in God. So, He begins chastening and scourging you so that He can create Himself in you – it is a change of nature. Verse 10 says that He chastens us so that we might be partakers of His holiness. You don’t become holy by observing certain rules and regulations; you become holy by His nature replacing your adamic nature.

The chastening and scourging, then, is the process by which the Lord displaces your sinful nature. If His life is going to come forth in you, then He has to make room for Himself by eliminating your self-life. God is not interested in adding His nature to you so that you become a dual-nature, for then you would be like the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:9), and everyone that received from you would partake of death.

John 14:2b-3, 23 I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.
23 If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.

The place the Lord is preparing is not a place up in the heavens of the sky but in the heavens of His Spirit and it is to be in us. He is preparing an abiding place for Himself in His sons. Our sinful nature cannot live in His presence, so He chastens and scourges us – replaces our sinful nature with His divine nature. In this way, we become one with Him; He is in us and we are in Him. You might say that we have gone to heaven.

Oh, that all Christians would get this revelation. We don’t need to ascend up into the heavens of the sky; we need to ascend up into God Himself. That brings us to the next thing we need to consider. God doesn’t do all this only so He will have a son-company to indwell. He wants more than an abiding place.

II Thessalonians 1:10 When He shall come (erchomai) to be glorified in His saints, and to be admired in all them that believe…

Revelation 1:7 Behold, He cometh (erchomai) with clouds (see Hebrews 12:1); and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.

The presence of the Lord is coming forth in His saints to be glorified and admired. He will be revealed in them and every eye will see Him. The manifestation of the sons will be a manifestation of the Son in the sons.

Both verbs, “come” in II Thessalonians 1:10 and “cometh” in Revelation 1:7, are translated from the Greek word erchomai. Erchomai means “to go” or “to come” or “to go and come.” It is the presence of the Lord going and coming through His saints that reveals Him. So, you see, He indwells His sons so that He may function through them. They are the channel through which the Lord Jesus comes to this earth. They are the Body of Christ, the functioning many-membered Body of Christ. All of what is called “the end-time ministry of Christ” takes place through His many-membered Body. It is through them, that He establishes His Kingdom and brings every earthly kingdom under His Lordship.

Now, the question was why does He chasten and scourge every son He receives? He wants to make them His place of dwelling and His access to mankind. The ministry of Christ in the earth has to come through people, but they have to be a people whose nature has been changed. They have to be pure channels of the presence of the life of the Lord.

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