Why Does God Chasten?

Quoting D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones:

"Then take the question of health. I have already reminded you of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter eleven. The apostle teaches quite specifically that there were some people who were sick and ill because God had sent this upon them in order to teach them and train them. "Let a man examine himself and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup; For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.' Now this is the method that God often employed, so that those who say that it is never God's will that any of us should be sick or weak are simply denying the Scriptures. But let no one drop into the trap and say: 'Are you teaching that every sickness is a punishment sent by God?' Of course I am not, I am simply saying that God at times uses that method in order to chastise His children. If it is 'for this cause' that many are 'weak and sickly', it is God's action. God allowed that to happen to them, or God may have brought it upon them, for their own good. God's will is more important than the health of a man's body, and if a man will not submit himself and subject himself to the positive teaching of the Word, then God will certainly deal with that man, and He may very well send an illness upon him and lay him aside in order to make him think.

May I remind you that the great Dr. Thomas Chalmers always said that what really brought him, under God, to understand the gospel truly was an illness which confined him to his sick chamber for nearly twelve months. He had been a brilliant 'scientific' and 'intellectual' preacher, but he came out of that sick chamber as a preacher of the gospel, and he thanked God for that visitation. There is a parallel to that in the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, first chapter and ninth verse where he tells us that he had 'the sentence of death' in himself. And then there is the classic statement about the thorn in the flesh in chapter twelve. God did not remove the thorn because He was anxious to teach the apostle to say 'when I am weak then am I strong', and to rejoice in infirmity rather than health in order that God's glory might be promoted. There is no doubt that God allowed this thing, God perhaps even produced it, in order to chastise and train His servant in that particular way."

FROM: Spiritual Depression, Its Causes and Cure