… ⁵ and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; ⁶ for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”

Apparently the original audience of the letter to the Hebrews were complacent in their faith. They were tending to give in to temptations to sin by flirting with the Mosaic Law again, drifting back into legalistic approaches to God rather than resting in the finished sacrificial work of Christ on the cross. They had “forgotten” the earlier teaching about how to understand the suffering of persecution. Indeed, faith ultimately is our interpretive grid that we overlay on all of life’s experience. A human or earthly grid does not provide an adequate interpretation; it will always lead to less than genuine, godly thinking; and thus lead to earthly living and manmade religion.

First, life needs to be seen through the lens of our relationship to God. We are no longer servants, but “friends” of Jesus (John 15:15). But, even more, we are His “brothers” (Heb 2:11), and ultimately “sons,” as seen in our verse today, who may now address God as “Father” (Matt 6:9). So, when God instructs us about and leads us through life, He is a Father guiding His child. This changes everything about how we look at life. Difficult times and temptations are not the real story by themselves; God is the story, and what He is doing in our lives. The struggles and trials of life must be seen as His discipline of us.

Now this discipline is not the action of a vindictive, demanding God, but of One who loves His dear children. For many today, the idea of a loving father has suffered under the experience of an abusive father or one that is indifferent or even absent. Some have even gone so far as to reject the concept of the Fatherhood of God altogether and embraced more of a “motherhood” image, or completely reject God because of that imagery. When bad stuff happens they blame it on a God who is like an abusive or absent father. For people like that, their only hope comes through faith; they can reset the imagery away from the fallen-world concept of fatherhood to the heavenly Fatherhood of a God who is good, who loves His children, and who does it with a perfect, eternal love that will never end. That is our only hope of understanding the difficult circumstances or temptations in which we sometimes find ourselves. Only in this way can we “rest in Christ” even in the midst of our difficulties. “My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe His reproof, for whom the Lord loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights” (Prov 3:11–12).

Lord, thank You for the discipline You bring to my life in difficult times.