May 4, 2019
Highlights in Hebrews 36
Highlights in Hebrews
(with Roger Kirby)
36. Hebrews 12:7 - Discipline
As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father? (Hebrews 12:7 NLT )
Discipline, now there is a dirty word – in much of the West, anyway. Several hundred years go the great thinkers decided that men and women do not really need God. We are all quite capable of working everything out for ourselves. This idea was called the Enlightenment and began back in the 16th century. Since then that idea has spread and now determines what people think in most of Europe and North America.
If we are capable of working everything out for ourselves that means that the way you work things out may be different from the way I do. And the way children work things out may well be different from the way their parents do. So the parents cannot discipline their children for doing something different from what they would. The result is not good. In fact it is beginning to show up in an increasingly chaotic society. So the whole background idea from which the writer is working – (Hebrews 12:7–10) has no basis in our culture! Ouch!
However that does not make what he says invalid. We are not talking about human beings, misled by the philosophy of many centuries ago. We are talking about the Lord God, who is far above and beyond our cultures. He is going to be our judge one day when we meet him face to face. He has every right to try and bring us to a point where we can be accepted by his grace and goodness because of a life of faith in which we have tried as hard as we can to be his good people. He calls that, ‘a peaceful harvest of right living’ (Hebrews 12:11).
That does not happen by accident. Fortunately we have the Holy Spirit himself with us to help us along the good way. It is only when we slip through his clutches, fail to stay in step with him, that we will need to be subject to discipline. Remember that ‘those who are not holy will not see the Lord.’ (Hebrews 12:14)
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