Hebrews 12:5-11 (NLT)
And have you forgotten the encouraging words God spoke to you as his children? He said, “My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline, and don’t give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.”
As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? If God doesn’t discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and are not really his children at all. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn’t we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits, and live forever?
For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
To understand this passage, you have to understand something else first: God loves us and God loves you.
He has loved us from the beginning of eternity. When He said, “Let there be light,” He was creating the light for us that He would be glorified through us, His most prized creation. He so loved the world that He gave His only son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for our many sins. God loves us perfectly.
It is because of this perfect love that He disciplines us and teaches us. He wants to teach us more about who He is. He wants us to take hold of our glorious future. He wants us to let go of the temporary and commit our lives to the eternal. The writer of Hebrews tells us that sometimes this discipline will be painful. Sometimes it will feel like punishment. That’s what discipline is anyway, right?
Now you’re thinking about God punishing you and you don’t like it… I know. I’ve been there too. When we grow up hearing about this mighty God that loves us enough to die for us, we often don’t leave room for this aspect of this character. Compounded with the fact that our culture has programmed us to view discipline, correction, and punishment in very negative lights, the idea of a divine punishment coming into our lives from the hands of this loving God is something that is very difficult for many of us to accept. That’s because we like a “Santa Claus” god more than we like the mighty King that He is. We expect God to take care of us on our terms if we take care of Him on our terms. But God doesn’t work like that. He never has and He never will.
This scripture tells us to stop treating the Lord’s discipline in our lives as a harmful thing. It tells us to not give up. It also tells us that along with this punishment comes acceptance. We can find great joy in this today if we can stop blaming God for pain and instead begin to ask Him what He’s trying to show us through it. We can find great peace in this if we can view the trials we face with an eternal perspective.
As my lion-hearted counterpart says often: God loves you just the way you are but also loves you way too much to leave you that way.
