“Many Christians assume they can have Christ and the world at the same time. They want to mix the bronze of the devil and the iron of the world in with the pure silver of Christ. They think they can walk down the ancient path and the new highway at the same time. They end up mixing a little greed, pride, immorality, gluttony, idleness, worry, bitterness, and selfishness in with faith, hope, and love.”
According to Scripture, God both tests and refines his people, and images of refining fires, crucibles for metals, purifying fires, the smelting process, and the like are often used. While testing and purifying are somewhat distinct but related processes, they both are used in a spiritual sense to convey how God deals with his own children.
Today I again read one such passage: Jeremiah 6:27-30. It says:
I have made you a tester of metals among my people,
that you may know and test their ways.
They are all stubbornly rebellious,
going about with slanders;
they are bronze and iron;
all of them act corruptly.
The bellows blow fiercely;
the lead is consumed by the fire;
in vain the refining goes on,
for the wicked are not removed.
Rejected silver they are called,
for the Lord has rejected them.
Similar such texts would include the following:
Job 23:10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.
Psalm 66:10 For you, O God, tested us; you refined us like silver.
Proverbs 17:3 The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold,
and the Lord tests hearts.
Isaiah 48:9-11 “For my name’s sake I defer my anger;
for the sake of my praise I restrain it for you,
that I may not cut you off.
Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver;
I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.
Malachi 3:2-4 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
1 Peter 1:6-7 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
