“Endure hardship as discipline, God is treating you as His children.”
(Hebrews 12:7 NIV)
When I was about ten, I had a friend spend the night. This friend had a markedly different personality than me: she was bold, forthright and even a bit of a bully. I was fascinated. I’d get drawn into her ideas, lured by her strength and edginess – a dangerous peer for sure. Anyway, during that particular sleepover we did something fairly cruel and way outside of my personality and we got caught.
I figured my parents would go easy on me because I had a friend over. Not in the least. They punished my friend, too. We were grounded to my room together and may have even had to write essays (my dad’s favorite form of retribution) about the deviancy of our actions. My friend was shocked that my folks would extract consequences from a kid who didn’t belong to them. I, on the other hand, knew my mom as a pastor, and from her perspective, all her church people were her responsibility, even wayward fifth grade friends who sat on the church pew with her own children.
Our God disciplines us as though we are sons and daughters because that’s who He’s calling us to be. We can see this discipline as punishment or we can see it as character shaping. Our heavenly Father seizes every opportunity to craft us a little further into His image. We might be taken aback to learn that He did not spare His own son from such character-shaping.
“Son though He was, He learned obedience from what He suffered…” (Hebrews 5:8 NIV)
God didn’t discipline Jesus because He was wayward, but because Jesus was being shaped intro the kind of many who would be willingly lay down His life for His friends. Jesus’s discipline was born from suffering and His discipline prepared Him to carry the cross on our behalf. Discipline is beneficial in the life of a believer.
“If you are not disciplined – an everyone undergoes discipline – that you are not legitimate, not the sons and daughters at all.” (Hebrews 12:8 NIV)
I remember asking my friend, after it was all over, what she thought of my parents for disciplining her during a sleepover. She said she respected them more because they treated her like a daughter, not a guest.
Father God, thank You for treating us as dear children. May we see discipline as a means to be more shaped into Your image. May we cooperate with Your authority, convinced of Your love and ambition for our lives. Amen.