God's Tough Love

My dear friends, that’s the only way to deal with the agony of sin. Don’t deny the pain, blame it on others, or run away from it. Instead, embrace the pain and let it do its purifying work.

Then don’t ever let your guard down. Keep on resisting sin until the day you die. Agonize until you experience the limit of discipline. Now, in order to do that, you have to…

APPRECIATE THE EVIDENCE OF LOVE IN DISCIPLINE.

Be thankful for the agony. Value the pain, because it’s a sign that God loves you.

Hebrews 12:5-7a And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure.

That is to say “You endure suffering for the purpose of discipline.” In the original Greek language in which this was written, “discipline” literally means “child-training.” It includes everything parents do to equip their children for life. It includes instruction and correction, teaching and corporal punishment, as well. It’s what the old-timers called “applying the board of education to the seat of learning.”

You see, pain is God’s way of training His children. Suffering is God’s method to get them ready to handle their heavenly inheritance.

Hebrews 12:7b-8 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. (ESV)

Now, in Bible days, a Roman father had legitimate and illegitimate children. He had children by his wife and children by other women.

Demosthenes, a classical writer from the time, wrote: “We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day-to-day needs of the body; we keep wives for the begetting of children and for faithful guardianship of our homes.

Well, the only children a Roman father cared about were those he had through his wife. Those are the ones he disciplined and trained to take over the family fortune someday. The rest of his children he ignored. He didn’t care how they turned out, so he left them without discipline. He didn’t bother to train them, at all.

In the same way, God trains His legitimate children, i.e., those who have come to faith in Christ, His Son. He disciplines them, because He cares for them. Pain is not a sign of God’s displeasure; it’s a sign of God’s delight. Discipline is not a sign that God hates you; it’s a sign that He loves you very much! You see, He is getting you ready to handle the family fortune someday! He is getting you ready to handle your heavenly inheritance.

Our brothers and sisters in Asia seem to understand this better than we do here in the west. Ajith Fernando is a Christian leader from Sri Lanka who ministers to the urban poor. She writes:

“The church in each culture has its own special challenges—theological blind spots that hinder Christians from growing to full maturity in Christ… I think one of the most serious theological blind spots in the western church is a defective understanding of suffering. There seems to be a lot of reflection on how to avoid suffering and on what to do when we hurt. We have a lot of teaching about escape from suffering and therapy for suffering, but there is inadequate teaching about the theology of suffering…