God's Discipline

Hebrews 12 opens with the analogy of a race, and it calls us to run with endurance, or perseverance. A race requires perseverance because there is the pain of running. And the people to whom this message was originally given were experiencing the pain of what it means to follow Christ.

We get a glimpse of that pain in chapter 10, verse 32. Go ahead and turn back there with me. Hebrews 10:32 says: But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, [33] sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. [34] For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

You have a description there of what following Christ meant for them: a hard struggle with sufferings, public reproach and affliction, prison, and the plundering of their property. In other words, it was painful. It cost them their reputation, their comfort, their personal freedom, and their property.

In calling the people to perseverance, Hebrews 11 lists some of the pain of the saints of earlier generations. Jump with me for a second to Hebrews 11, verse 35. This is what a life of faith meant for some. We’ll start in the middle of verse 35. Hebrews 11:35—Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. [36] Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. [37] They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— [38] of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.

You may not have had to face that level of pain as a result of your faith, but there is a pain, nonetheless. What are the kinds of difficulties and challenges you face today as a result of following Christ? How would your life be easier or more comfortable, from an earthly perspective, if you weren’t a committed Christian? That is Christian pain, and it’s a pain we are called to endure.

When we started studying Hebrews 12, we saw that the exhortation to endure came with three initial reminders. If we want to run well, we need to remember the saints that have gone before us. We need to remember the stumbling blocks that will inhibit us. And, most of all, we need to remember the Savior who endured more than we have.

I don’t think it’s a common message in the Christian church, or even in culture, but we need to learn how to endure in suffering. We live in a world that wants to erase pain and suffering altogether, as if that’s even possible. Many times, it’s done in the name of mental health.

In the news this past week, it was revealed that starting in Fall 2027, the University of Michigan is going to, for some students’ transcripts relace traditional letter grades with pass/no credit grades. This is for the students who are part of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. So, instead of seeing grades on a transcript, it will simply say “Pass” or “No credit.”

According to the university, this is meant to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals.” It’s also intended to “foster an environment where college students can acclimate to the demands of a University of Michigan education and pursue new academic challenges.”

I find that statement both ironic and tragic because you can’t pursue new challenges well if you aren’t able to handle the current ones, right? But that’s the spirit of the age. Rather than learning to deal with pain and with setbacks, many in this world prefer to live in ignorance or fantasy.

We have produced, in large part, a generation of students and adults who are, in the words of the late Kobe Bryant, “soft.” Kobe famously used that word back in 2014, and he was given a technical foul during that exchange. When asked about it afterward, he said, “It’s the game… Trash talk is part of the game. I don’t know when the NBA became so sensitive. It’s all part of it.”

D you think the Christians of previous generations might say the same thing about us? When did the body of Christ become so sensitive? When did they forget how to endure. Pain is part of the process.

Again, this may come off as harsh to some people, but this is the message the author of Hebrews has in our passage today. He’s not downplaying the pain, but he is calling us to endure it, to keep going despite the pain.

There are three lessons in today’s passage that can help us endure the pain that Christianity brings. The first lesson is that, yes, it hurts, but it’s expected.

Pain Is Expected

As a Christian, pain is expected. It’s inevitable, unavoidable.

Look at verse 5 with me. The author gives a rhetorical question—“And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?” Then he quotes from the book of Proverbs: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. [6] For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

That is a quote taken from Proverbs chapter 3, verses 11 and 12, which was originally written as part of the wisdom passed down from a father to a son. I think every Hebrew child would have been familiar with the passage. They would have learned it from their fathers. And so, the preacher says to them, “Did you forget it? Did you forget what you learned as a child.”

Pain is to be expected. Pain might make you feel like something is wrong, but, no, pain is part of the process. It hurts, but it’s expected.

Jesus said this to His disciples in the Upper Room. He needed to prepare them for what it would mean to serve Him and continue His mission. He said to them, “The world hates you… In the world you will have tribulation.”

Peter said the same thing in his letter. First Peter 4:12 says—Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. This is not strange. It hurts, but it’s expected. It shouldn’t surprise you. This is what we signed up for when we surrendered our lives to Jesus Christ. We agreed to take up our cross and follow Him.

The analogy in this passage is that we are sons of God. And God, as our heavenly Father, will personally introduce, or sovereignly allow, pain into our lives. So, don’t downplay the reality of pain. Don’t try to avoid it all costs. It’s part of the package. It’s part of the deal. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Don’t grow weary. This is normal.

Notice what it says in verse 6—The Lord disciplines and chastises every son whom He receives. Every son. That word “chastise” literally means “to whip,” “to scourge,” to inflict pain. This morning’s sermon isn’t intended as a parenting lesson, but a verse like should help you understand where God falls on the issue of corporal punishment. It’s part of the process.

But, there’s a second important lesson that we need to make sure we keep in min. The inevitability of pain isn’t meant to make us fearful or hopeless. It’s supposed to be encouraging. What is so encouraging about this?

Lesson number 2: It hurts, but it’s loving.

Pain Is Loving

The pain is expected, and the pain is loving. The pain you and I feel as we seek to honor Christ is an expression of love.

This is a lesson that, to the world and to our culture, feels backwards. Why do we say that this is loving? Well, that’s what it says here in Hebrews. Look again at verse 6. It says—the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. The pain that God brings or allows into our lives is an expression of His love. It’s not an expression of anger or disapproval. It’s an expression that He receives us with open arms.

In Proverbs 3:12, the wording is a little different. It says that God reproves the son in whom He delights. God is pleased with us; He loves us. That’s why pain comes into our lives.

How does the pain prove God’s love? Well, remember that some of the members of this church had already begun to abandon the faith. They would no longer publicly affirm their faith. They stopped attending. And when that happened, there were two results.

Number 1, the pain went away. If you no longer identify or live as a Christian, the pains of following Christ disappear. Number 2, your affirmation as a follower of Christ went away, too. The church understood that you were not a true disciple. You might have had some kind of faith at first, but it was superficial and artificial.

So, the ones whom God truly loved, the ones with whom God was truly pleased, the ones who were truly sons of God, were those who faced the pain. It’s like Jesus’ parables about the seed and the soils. When the seed landed in shallow soil or among thorns, it sprouted at first, but then the plant died. And that is representative of people who respond positively at first to the gospel but then walk away because of earthly concerns or because of the threat of persecution. They leave because they don’t want the pain.

No pain, no gain. If someone isn’t willing to endure the pain, they aren’t a true disciple. But those who will endure prove they are sons of God. They are His beloved children, accepted by Him by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That’s one way we can understand this connection between pain and love. The willingness to endure the pain proves that the relationship is real.

But there’s also a second connection, and this is what gets emphasized more specifically in this passage. The pain is evidence of God’s love because of its effect.

This is the third lesson about Christian pain from this passage. Yes, it hurts, but it’s expected; it’s loving; and third, it’s working.

Pain Is Working

The pain is doing something that is good for us.

Look at verse 7—It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. You have there the same word that is used in verse 6—discipline. In verse 6, it’s used as a verb; God disciplines us through the pain. Here it’s used as a noun; We endure because of discipline.

We generally associate the word “discipline” with the negative consequences of disobedience, but the idea behind the Greek term is much broader. The Greek noun here is “paideía.” The verb is “paideúo.” These words include and can be applied to punishment, but they are also much broader. The word refers to the entire training regiment of a child.

Here’s how one Greek dictionary defines the noun. It is “the whole training and education of children (which related to the cultivation of mind and morals)… It also includes the care and training of the body.” In other words, every part of a child’s training is included here. That’s what discipline here is. Today, we might use the word “training” or “education.” It’s the whole package.

Moms and dads, we need to understand that our calling in life is not neutral. We have a responsibility to see that our children are trained. That kind of training includes all kinds of things. Kids learn to speak a language. They learn to read and write. They learn to tie their shoes. They learn to add and subtract. And they learn how to relate to others effectively and properly.

How do kids learn these things? Some things they seem to pick up on their own. They watch and they listen, and then they copy it. Other things are explicitly taught to them. This is how long an inch is. This is how long a yard is. And other things are learned through instruction and practice. They learn how it’s done, but they have to do it over and over again until they’ve mastered it. That’s how they learn to eat with a fork and a knife. That’s how they learn to tie their shoes. That’s how they learn to make themselves a sandwich.

Well, in the training of a child, there is going to be an element of pain. They will have to clean their rooms when they don’t want to. They will be punished when they disobey. They may lose certain privileges when they fail to do something properly. They may have to learn how to eat a certain vegetable they don’t like. That’s part of growing up. That’s part of training.

Those of you who have played in competitive sports or excelled in music or some other art, you know this as well. It takes effort, and it takes pain to get better. Learning the guitar gives you blisters. Running faster or lifting more weights makes your body hurt. The pains are associated with the gains.

This is a simple message, and yet it is so far from what many in our culture understand. Pain is part of the process of growth. Pain strengthens us so we can do more. God treats us like His sons.

I would say that the greatest tragedy of modern parenting is the failure to accurately know God. We don’t form God into our image; we seek to emulate Him. And God will use pain in our lives for a greater purpose. It’s not pain for the sake of pain. It’s not an unjust punishment or some kind of abuse. It is a loving introduction of difficulty and pain so that we grow and improve.

The Hebrews understood this about parenting, and so, the second half of verse 7 is another rhetorical question they would have understood. It says—For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? The answer for the Hebrews was simple: none! It would be ridiculous for there to be a father who did not discipline his son. It would be outrageous.

Sadly, in today’s culture, our answer is: There are many sons who have not seen the discipline of a father. And that has damaged a generation. Listen to what Proverbs 13:24 says. And again, every faithful Israelite would have known this and lived by it. Proverbs 13:24—Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

If you read Proverbs, you’ll see that faithful fatherly training has a lot of components. There is teaching. There is encouragement. There are appeals. There are creative lessons. But there will also be the introduction of pain.

Pain is a wonderful teacher. If you stub your toe in the dark walking around your bed, you learn to be careful when you walk there the next time. It’s simple. The pain goes away, but the lesson will stay.

Pain teaches us, and it also trains us by making us better. I remember as a kid watching my great grandma cook tortillas. And I thought, “How does she do that? Why doesn’t the pan burn her?” I just assumed she was so old she didn’t have any more feeling in her fingers. And maybe there’s some truth to that, but more accurately, she had been doing it for so long, she learned to tolerate the heat.

God uses pain in our lives to grow us, to stretch us. Pain is not necessarily an indication that something is wrong. It’s an indication that you are a child of God, and He is working in your life.

Some people think that pain is just a way that God teaches us a lesson. I’ve heard the prayer, “Lord, help me understand the lesson you want me to learn, so that this trial will go away.” Well, it may not be a lesson you need to learn. It could be an area in your spiritual maturity that God wants to develop.

Verse 8 brings us back to the idea of God’ love in the pain. The pain is an indication that we belong to God, and that He cares enough to be working in our lives. A father who is trying to avoid pain in his child at all costs is guilty of fatherly malpractice. And that is not the kind of father our God is.

Verse 8 says—If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Think of a father who refuses to accept responsibility for his son. He doesn’t love him. He doesn’t intend to leave him an inheritance. He doesn’t claim him. And he takes no interest in raising him or training him for life. That is an awful thing. That is not the type of God we serve. That is not what our heavenly Father is like.

The Hebrews of that time and culture had fathers in the home they grew up with, and they respected them. And so, the author of Hebrews says to them, “If you can look back to the ways your father raised you, even including the pain and the discipline, and be grateful for that, why can’t you be grateful for the way God is working in your life right now, especially in this pain.

Verse 9—Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? [10] For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.

He’s saying, “You didn’t like some of the things that your earthly father put you through, right? It didn’t feel good in the moment. But you did it. You submitted to them. Why can’t you do the same with your heavenly Father who loves you infinitely more and is working on something infinitely greater than academic education or life skills.”

As a father, I take some comfort in what verse 10 says. We discipline our kids for a short time. It’s not forever. One day, the training is done, and they’re grown. But until then, as long as my kids are under the authority of my home, I discipline them as it seems best to me. I train them in the way I think is best. It’s not perfect.

But God’s training, God’s discipline is perfect. Following Christ is not going to be easy. It’s going to bring pain, to varying degrees. That pain is inevitable. It’s expected. I shouldn’t be surprised by it. I shouldn’t see it as evidence that God is mad at me, or that something is wrong. I should see it as evidence of His love. It’s not meaningless. It’s purposeful. The pain is working. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, it hurts. But it is the loving hand of God shaping our hearts so that we will love Him and enjoy Him and serve Him even better, for our own good and for His glory.

When I was in seminary, I remember a professor telling me about a mother whose son was born with some kind of physical defect in his arms. I don’t remember exactly what the defect was. But one day, as they were walking out of the house, the boy was still struggling to put his shirt on. To get it over his head and to pull it down over him. And as the boy struggled, the neighbor was watching him get more and more frustrated. And so, feeling the tension and the desperation, the neighbor yelled out, “You son needs your help! Help him!” And the mother looked at the neighbor and said, “I am.”

She understood that as her son grew, he was going to need to learn to do certain things on his own. He didn’t need a lesson on a whiteboard. He needed to practice. He needed to struggle. He needed to learn to do something on his own.

We parents need to learn that lesson in the way we raise our kids, but even more than that, we need to learn that that’s how God works in our lives.

Verse 11 sums up this whole lesson. It tells us this—For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

We all want peace, don’t we? We all want to be more righteous and holy, don’t we? What is it going to take to get us there? What is going to take to make us more like Christ? It’s going to take training. It’s going to take pain, many times. The pain is a part of the process, and our heavenly Father is with us every step of the way.

We might fall off the bicycle over and over again, but God picks us up. He sets us on the right path, and He is right there alongside us, every step of the journey.