God’s Discipline: That’s Life
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father” Hebrew 12:7?
This verse tells us to endure hardship as God’s discipline. In other words, we should take every hardship we go through, every trial, every experience of suffering as something we need to help us grow up, mature and reach our full potential in Christ.
And as coming from the hand of a loving father who has nothing but our best interest at heart. To read Hebrews chapter 12, click here.
If the purpose of God’s discipline is to help us mature, and thereby have a good life, then all trials could be considered discipline. Since they ultimately make us “mature and complete” (see James 1:2-4) as we yield to them.
If it’s true that the reason we go through whatever difficulties we go through in life is because we need that very thing to grow up and mature, then we could say those difficulties are discipline. Since this is the very purpose of discipline.
Our Sin Will Punish Us
Now, it is true that it is often our sin that punishes us and not God directly. But, since He’s the one that set up the spiritual law of suffering as a result of sin (Galatians 6: 7,8) you could say the suffering that comes as a consequence of our sin could be considered discipline. From the hand of a loving father.
Discipline is chastisement that is intended to train us and make us holy or mature or complete. All suffering does this if we respond with the right attitude. So, we could therefore say that all suffering or hardship is discipline.
In fact, here is the meaning of the word “discipline” in this verse. This is according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of the NT.
To “train children, suggesting the broad idea of education. . . grace, which brings salvation, employs means to give us full possession of it, hence, to discipline. This being part of the training, whether by correcting with words, or by discipline by the infliction of evils and calamities.“
1st Corinthians 11:32 equates discipline with judgment. “Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world”. According to Vine’s again, the word discipline also means “to discipline with blows, to scourge”.
The point is, there doesn’t seem to be any real distinction between judgment and discipline, calamity and chastening. It all comes from the hand of the Lord for the purpose of “training us up in the way we should go” (Proverbs 22:6).
If We’re Suffering, It’s Because We Need It
In other words, if we are suffering for whatever reason, it’s because we need it to grow up. We need it to mature, reach our full potential in Christ and have a good life.
With that in mind, we need to take our trials personally. Said another way, we need to see that it’s come upon us because it’s exactly what we need at that point in time.
It’s not merely “bad things happening to good people”, it’s not because we live in a “fallen world”. And it’s not just that life isn’t fair or that people are cruel. It’s because we need this trial to train us. We need it to teach us a lesson so we can grow up and be blessed.
So, according to what we’ve just seen, this verse could also be worded like this. “Endure judgment as discipline”, “endure infliction of evil as discipline”, “endure calamities, blows, scourging as discipline”.
God’s Discipline Doesn’t Always Mean We’ve Been Bad
That’s not to say every trial we go through is discipline in the sense that we’ve done something bad or wrong to bring it on. But every trial we go through is discipline in the sense that it helps us mature.
To read another post similar to God’s Discipline: That’s Life, click here: The Narrow Road and Self-Control in the Bible.
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