Wednesdays with Watson is a weekly reading taken from my favorite Puritan writer, Thomas Watson. This week’s selection is taken from All Things for Good.
I shall show you several ways how affliction works for good.
(1) As it is our preacher and tutor — ‘Hear ye the rod’ (Mic. 6.9). Luther said that he could never rightly understand some of the Psalms till he was in affliction. Affliction teaches what sin is. In the word preached, we hear what a dreadful thing sin is, that it is both defiling and damning, but we fear it no more than a painted lion; therefore God lets loose affliction and then we feel sin bitter in the fruit of it. A sick bed often teaches more than a sermon. We can best see the ugly visage of sin in the glass of affliction. Affliction teaches us to know ourselves. In prosperity we are for the most part strangers to ourselves. God makes us know affliction, that we may better know ourselves. We see that corruption in our hearts in the time of affliction, which we would not believe was there. Water in the glass looks clear, but set it on the fire, and the scum boils up. In prosperity a man seems to be humble and thankful, the water looks clear; but set this man a little on the fire of affliction, and the scum boils up — much impatience and unbelief appear. ‘Oh,’ says a Christian, ‘I never thought I had such a bad heart, as now I see I have; I never thought my corruptions had been so strong, and my graces so weak.’
(2) Afflictions work for good, as they are the means of making the heart more upright. In prosperity the heart is apt to be divided (Hos. 10.2). The heart cleaves partly to God, and partly to the world. It is like a needle between two lodestones; God draws, and the world draws. Now God takes away the world, that the heart may cleave more to Him in sincerity. Correction is a setting the heart right and straight. As we sometimes hold a crooked rod over the tire to straighten it; so God holds us over the fire of affliction to make us more straight and uptight. Oh how good it is, when sin has bent the soul awry from God, that affliction should straighten it again!
(3) Afflictions work for good, as they conform us to Christ. God’s rod is a pencil to draw Christ’s image more lively upon us. It is good that there should be symmetry and proportion between the Head and the members. Would we be parts of Christ’s mystical body, and not be like Him? His life, as Calvin says, was a series of sufferings, ‘a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isa. 5 3. 3). He wept and bled. Was His head crowned with thorns, and do we think to be crowned with roses? it is good to be like Christ, though it be by sufferings. Jesus Christ drank a bitter cup; it made Him sweat drops of blood to think of it; and, though it be true He drank the poison in the cup (the wrath of God), yet there is some wormwood in the cup left, which the saints must drink: only here is the difference between Christ’s sufferings and ours; His were satisfactory,’ ours are only castigatory.
(4) Afflictions work for good to the godly, as they are destructive to sin. Sin is the mother, affliction is the daughter; the daughter helps to destroy the mother. Sin is like the tree that breeds the worm, and affliction is like the worm that eats the tree. There is much corruption in the best heart; affliction does by degrees work it out, as the fire works out the dross from the gold, ‘This is all the fruit, to take away his sin’ (Isa. 27.9). What if we have more of the rough file, if we have less rust! Afflictions carry away nothing but the dross of sin. If a physician should say to a patient, ‘Your body is distempered, and full of bad humours, which must be cleared out, or you die; but I will prescribe physic which, though it may make you sick, yet it will carry away the dregs of your disease, and save your life’; would not this be for the good of the patient? Afflictions are the medicine which God uses to carry off our spiritual diseases; they cure the tympany of pride, the fever of lust, the dropsy of covetousness. Do they not then work for good?
(5) Afflictions work for good, as they are the means of loosening our hearts from the world. When you dig away the earth from the root of a tree, it is to loosen the tree from the earth; so God digs away our earthly comforts to loosen our hearts from the earth. A thorn grows up with every flower. God would have the world hang as a loose tooth which, being twitched away, does not much trouble us. Is it not good to be weaned? The oldest saints need it. Why does the Lord break the conduit-pipe, but that we may go to Him, in whom are ‘all our fresh springs’ (Psalm 87.7).
[More next week…]
Words of Grace 