Study 57 – The Grace of Discipline

Once you’ve been set free from your childhood submission to the law and have received full rights as a son (Gal. 4:5), Paul urges you not to submit again to your former master. Now that you enjoy the privileges of sonship you’re invited into a direct relationship with God as your Father. You no longer have to keep your eye on the child-minder who previously kept you in check.

Who then will keep you in check? God in his great love will act as a true Father and provide his own discipline. Indeed if you know nothing of God’s fatherly discipline you have reason to question whether you’re a true son of God. ‘What son is not disciplined by his father?’ the writer to the Hebrews asks (Heb. 12:7).

Not many people volunteer for discipline. At my old school I can still remember the apprehensive queue of boys lining up outside the headmaster’s room to receive his particular form of discipline!

God Deals with you as Sons
The writer to the Hebrews urges his readers to receive God’s fatherly discipline with gratitude and understanding. First, he wants them to realise that by being disciplined ’God is treating you as sons’ (Heb. 12:7) and goes on to argue that discipline is actually a proof of sonship. A father has no responsibility for every child in his street and feels no obligation to correct a neighbour’s offspring (though he might like to do so). But he does feel parental responsibility for his own. It’s a mark of sonship to experience discipline. It’s proof that you belong!

The Lord ‘punishes every one he accepts as a son’ (Heb. 12:6). Though you’ve received the full rights of sonship through the cross, this doesn’t mean that you’ve become mature overnight! By grace you have a new standing in God’s presence, but God still has work to do in you. It could be said that he loves you as you are, but he loves you too much to leave you as you are! He wants mature sons and daughters and discipline trains you into that maturity.

For instance, Joseph’s sufferings were evidently the outcome of his brothers’ envy and jealousy. They were the human instruments, but although they intended to harm Joseph, ‘God intended it for good’ (Gen. 50:20). God was at work even through the sinfulness of men, disciplining and preparing his servant for great future responsibility.

Training is tough, but later ‘it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it’ (Heb 12:11). Discipline has purpose. It produces a ‘later harvest’ of good food. Your responsibility is to receive discipline well and to be trained by it. Sadly, you can miss the training and gain nothing from the painful experiences that you pass through.

Never forget that you belong to God and that he always treats you as his beloved son or daughter. You aren’t merely a plaything of circumstance and random events. You’re in your Father’s hands and no one can snatch you out of them (John 10:29). He watches over you every day and is making things work together for your good (Rom. 8:28). So if something difficult crosses your path, don’t get confused. Stop, remember your identity, consider that this might be one of those occasions when God wants to discipline you, and work out how you’re going to respond.

To Meditate On

The Scriptures train us to accept discipline.

‘Blessed is the man you discipline, O Lord, the man you teach from your law’ (Ps. 94:12).

‘It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees’ (Ps. 119:71).

‘I know, O Lord, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me’ (Ps. 119:75).

Food For Thought

What do these verses say about discipline within the family?

Proverbs 12:1; 13:18,24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13,14; 29:17

To Note

Read 1 Samuel 3:13 and 1 Kings 1:6.
What was the outcome of a failure to discipline in each of these two cases?

To Consider

What might God be trying to teach you in your present circumstances?

To Be Inspired

‘He remembers our frame and knows that we are dust.  He may sometimes chasten us, it is true, but even this He does with a smile, the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is.’
A.W. Tozer