How to punish a Calvinist (1 Cor 11:32) - Part II

I love to spring 1 Cor 11:32 upon Protestants, especially Calvinists, because of the reaction it gets from them: But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. The plain teaching of this passage is that Christians are not "eternally secure" but rather must be disciplined to be kept from turning to sin, falling away, and being damned. I wrote about this in an older post (HERE). 

In this post, I want to call up one of my favorite Catholic apologists, John Calvin, for his thoughts on this verse:

But when we are judged Here we have a consolation that is exceedingly necessary; for if any one in affliction thinks that God is angry with him, he will rather be discouraged than excited to repentance. It is an inestimable consolation that the punishments by which our sins are chastened are evidences, not of God’s anger for our destruction, but rather of his paternal love, and are at the same time of assistance towards our salvation, for God is angry with us as his sons, whom he will not leave to perish.

When he says that we may not be condemned with the world, he intimates two things. The first is, that the children of this world, while they sleep on quietly and securely in their delights, are fattened up, like hogs, for the day of slaughter (Jeremiah 12:3.) For though the Lord sometimes invites the wicked, also, to repentance by his chastisements, yet he often passes them over as strangers, and allows them to rush on with impunity, until they have filled up the measure of their final condemnation. (Genesis 15:16.) This privilege, therefore, belongs to believers exclusively - that by punishments they are called back from destruction. The second thing is this - that chastisements are necessary remedies for believers, for otherwise they, too, would rush on to everlasting destruction, were they not restrained by temporal punishment.

The reason why John Calvin is one of my favorite Catholic apologists is because he often proves the Catholic case for us, so that his beloved followers (Protestants/Calvinists) cannot object without looking silly. For example, many Protestants would try to dodge this verse by saying Paul isn't talking about real Christians (but rather fake Christians) and/or that Paul isn't talking about damnation. Both of these (weak) objections are denied by Calvin.

Here we see that not only does being chastised not mean that God is angry with you, it is for your own good, since God only disciplines His sons. This means that His Son, Jesus, could not have been punished in some manner equivalent to eternal damnation, such as how Protestants think Jesus endured in our place while on the Cross. Next, we see that we cannot be "covered by the Imputed Righteousness of Christ," as Protestants think, nor are we eternally secure, since by acting sinfully God sees this and inflicts temporal punishments so that the Christian will reform their life and not be damned. Thus, God is not looking at the Imputed Righteousness of Christ instead of us, but rather God looks at us (Paul says we are "judged" by God) and rewards/punishes us accordingly, to keep us on the right track, since it is by our behavior as Christians that determines if we are saved. This verse is a dagger against Faith Alone.