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I. THE PURPOSE OF GOD'S JUDGMENTS. Paul's words imply two great propositions.

1. God's chastisements are judgments. A most strange assertion, on the ordinary acceptation of judgments as special interferences of Providence to punish some special evil! But if the word means to discern between good and evil, then this strange assertion becomes merely a statement of the result which afflictions ever produce in the heart and conscience of a Christian: they make us discern the good and the evil, the fleshly and the spiritual in our own selves, as we never saw them before. Many a man in the quiet days of sickness and pain has found a light searching him, and separating the true from the false. It is ever in the whirlwind and. darkness of adversity that we learn to say with him of old, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself in dust and ashes."

2. The design of God's judgment is to save us from condemnation. The spirit of the world is the choice of darkness rather than light, therefore to be condemned with the world is to be left in ever-deepening blindness to all the light and glory of God. That doom of being given up to one's self, and. being ruined by the secret idolatries and evils of self, is the doom into which every one of us would fall if God's chastisements, which are judgments, did not deliver us from its peril.

(1) Sometimes He breaks the concealed idol of the heart. We did not know it was an idol until it had gone.

(2) Sometimes He permits us to have our own way, and allows us to discover its vanity.

(3) Sometimes He prevents man's will from ever being fulfilled. This is the meaning of the chastening judgments of God. Let us accept it heartily and broadly, even when we cannot trace it. Let us not limit it to individuals. It is true of nations, and has been true of this England of ours again and again. It is true of Churches; hence the meaning of chastenings as the response to the most earnest prayers: it is God's method of revealing the hindrances to their growth, of manifesting the impediments to their spiritual power.

II. THE NECESSITY OF SELF-JUDGMENT. Two questions meet us here —

1. If God be judging us why are we bound to judge ourselves? Because —

(1) Every chastening is a voice of mercy calling us to exercise the faculty of judgment which God has given us.

(2) Past sorrow and disappointment revealed the secrecy of the heart's life, and the necessity for guarding that life.

(3) If we let our wonderful inner life go unwatched, we shall need continued and repeated chastisements.

2. How is this work to be accomplished? Paul implies that we have the faculty of judgment, but dare not use it; God chastens thus that He may awaken it. In trust on His education let us judge ourselves.

(1) Let us bring our spirits into His light by prayer — one flash of that light may reveal to us the meaning of our lives.

(2) Guard the springs of action — the beginnings of sin. Let a man slothfully allow himself to move in a path that is dubious, and which he fears to examine, and God will hedge in his way with thorns, and send him deep desolate sorrow, that he may not be "condemned with the world."

III. THE BLESSINGS WHICH SELF-JUDGMENT WOULD BRING.

1. Confidence. But does not self-searching create doubt, and wither the energy of action? Not when exercised in the trust that God will reveal us to ourselves. "Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life."

2. Insight into God's truth and love (ver. 28).

(1) Those Corinthians are asleep because they did not judge themselves — asleep to all the beauty of the Christian sacrament. If we let our spirits go unwatched the beauty and power of sacraments will fade.

(2) Let us believe that God is testing us; that Christ's light is dwelling in us; and in that belief guide our spirits and guard them; then, all God's works will become a sacrament of love and glory!

(E. L. Hull, B.A.)

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KJV: For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.

WEB: For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep.