Proverbs 17:3 ESV
The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.
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The crucible’s idea is simple: melt the metal and let the impurities separate, that they may be scooped out, if they do not burn away. These impurities are the slag and the dross, the waste, the unwanted. The end result, when the gold or silver has gone through this process, is purer metal; perhaps, depending on how pure you want the metal, this process will have to be repeated. Each time a little more dross is removed; each time the result is a little better. In the end, for man’s smiths, the result is very nearly, but not quite, pure. Some alloy remains. Yet God says this of us: “I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy” (Is. 1:25).
The analogy and imagery of the crucible, as applied to us men, is at once encouraging and terrifying. On the one hand, we are told that the Lord will sanctify us, will bring us to Himself, will rid us of our sin. On the other hand, the means by which He promises to do so are sometimes definitionally unpleasant, for the means of our purification, on this earth, include suffering. The fire, the valley of the shadow of death, the pounding of the smith’s hammer, these are the prospects we face as His people.
Worse still, to our worldly estimate, is the standard to which He sets us. As I noted, the process of purifying metal is not perfect- some dross remains behind, and more, some silver is taken away. The Lord is not so forgiving of sin as the smith is perforce of dross. No, the Lord hates sin (Prov. 6:16-19). He will not abide it in His people, and that means the smelting must be complete. The purification of His people must end only with their complete and perfect holiness (John 17:17).
So what should the Christian expect from life? He should expect not an easy path, not a featherbed smelling of roses, not a parade and a festival, but a rough campaign full of buffets and set-backs, plagued from within by his own sin (Rom. 7:21) and from without by the world (James 4:4). He should expect that the Lord will set his course through the fire’s heat, over the grim mountain, down into the deep morass. The life of the Christian, in order words, will be hard.
This ‘bad’ news, however, is bad only in the world’s eyes. To prove that, let us consider three blessings, among others, of the crucible by which God forges us anew. First, we have the assurance summed up in Hebrews 12: “God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons” (7-8). One of the great assurances of the Christian is his response to discipline; the Chrisitan does not break entirely under judgement, like the wicked can, or become calloused and hard, as the wicked often do. He may harden for a time or buckle for a space, but the fruit of suffering in the end is greater holiness, greater loveliness before the Lord, greater love of Him and others and His law. This holds true both for the discipline of the Lord, which is response to sin, and the suffering He brings to test us, as against Job (Job 42). This fruit of suffering is an assurance to His people of His adoption, His grace, His preserving hand which “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom. 8:28).
Second, we should take another perspective when we consider the crucible that is life. Remember the great stories of history and literature. Remember William Wallace, John Knox, Patrick Henry. Remember too Paul and Peter, the suffering they faced. Now turn your attention from the suffering to the fruit thereof, to the exceeding greatness of their accomplishments, to the glory they bore unto the Lord, to the impact they had upon the world. Only through great trouble does great good come- and no better proof of this can be found than the travails of Christ upon the cross (Gal. 6:14). Our suffering may not be so historically significant, to man’s eyes, but in God’s eyes, we work still great deeds of righteousness, fit to be eternally remembered (Ps. 144:12-15). Beside this, if through us He brings blessing to His flock, to our children or our family or our church, is that not glory indeed upon our names?
Third, we must remember that though the suffering of His smelting is but for a moment, His blessing and His joy are for eternity, an eternity assured to us by His great suffering. Thus can Job say, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!” Even Job, who had lost in the space of days his children, his home, and his health, even Job, bereft of all comfort from man or wife, could thus look beyond the suffering of the moment to the bounty of the Lord’s mercy. So to must we seek to see: to see beyond suffering, mercy; beyond the fire, peace; beyond the darkness, a glory beyond weighing. Thus may we rejoice.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
