There is a firmness in real, perfect love which an easy, amiable nature is not able to appreciate or exercise. We see it in the Lord Jesus. He maintained His discipline or education of His disciples (of Peter, for instance), and did not relax, as one who sacrificed their blessing to present gratification.
The Lord will not slacken the hand or the word that is chastening His servant, but His heart is as near His servant as ever, and His purpose both to honor him and to make him happy, just as perfect and fresh as ever. It reminds me of Jesus and Peter. “I have prayed for thee,” says the Lord Jesus to Peter, “ that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22). Was not that putting new honor upon a chastened, humbled Peter? As before, in the time of Matthew 16:1717And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 16:17), it was a rebuked Peter that was taken up to the mount of glory.
What a tale of divine, perfect love all these things tell us! Rebuked Peter is taken up the hill; humbled, chastened Peter is commissioned to strengthen his brethren; Moses, who had lost Canaan, is to ordain, endow, instruct and dignify his successor — to strengthen, more than strengthen, his brother!
This is the way of perfect, divine love. It is firm, but it is unchanging in its favor and its objects. A mere easy, amiable nature, again I say, can neither appreciate or imitate it.
Girdle of Truth, Vol. 2