Hebrews: Jesus Is Greater

Discipline is essential for the child of God. Running our race requires us to embrace God’s discipline knowing that He disciplines us out of love and intends our good through it. An exposition of Hebrews 12:4-5.

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Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 4:

4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;

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.”

7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom His Father does not discipline?

8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?

10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness.

11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. (Heb. 12:4–11 NASB)

Embracing God’s discipline is not an easy thing. If it were, we would not need the instructions that we have here in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 4–11. If embracing God’s discipline were easy, we would not need to be reminded that it is a good thing for us and how it is that we ought to approach His discipline.

There’s a very real danger for us as God’s children in undergoing His discipline, that we would either despise it—look down upon it and resent it or grow in bitterness—or that we might despair underneath of His discipline. This is the opposite response that the author wants us to have here in Hebrews chapter 12. He wants us to embrace God’s discipline, trusting and believing that it is for God’s glory and it is for our good and that God will ultimately bring to pass in our lives those things which will produce the peaceful fruits of righteousness: sanctification, holiness without which none of us are going to see the face of God. That is the objective of God’s discipline.

It is no accident that this section in Hebrews 12 falls on the heels of, right after, a large section in chapter 11—it’s not surprising that twelve follows eleven, but the content, that the discipline section follows the great chapter on faith. It is by faith that you and I must embrace God’s discipline. It is by faith that we understand and believe His promises concerning all of the afflictions that He has allowed into our lives, ordained for our lives, sent into our lives, and given to us as His gift to us. See, without faith to embrace that, without faith to trust in the good providence and the sovereignty of God, you and I will kick against the goads of God’s discipline constantly. We will come up against affliction and discipline and suffering and God’s chastening and the rebukes and the reproofs of His Word and of this life, and rather than allowing it to produce in us the holiness that God has intended to produce in us, that which He sends it into our lives to produce, we will kick against it and only be miserable under the Lord’s chastening hand instead of embracing what God wants to do and is trying to do—is doing, not trying to do, is doing through His discipline. God has a purpose, God has an intention in the discipline, and He is accomplishing His good pleasure in it. Now listen, God is going to accomplish His purposes in it. So you can either enjoy it and go along for the ride, embrace it, welcome it, understand it comes to you from the loving hand of God, or you can kick against it. But God will accomplish in your life what He is intending to accomplish.

Last week I suggested that there are two things that we must do to embrace God’s discipline in a loving way and in the way that He intends for us to embrace it. Two things that we must remember, I should say—having a proper perspective on God’s discipline. That’s verses 4 and 5. The first one has to do with our mindset. We have to remember that the afflictions that we endure are less than we deserve. That is verse 4. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Those words help frame our perspective on suffering in this life. Whatever affliction comes into our life, whatever suffering it is that God sends and appoints for us, it is not what we deserve. It is certainly less than it could be. We can always remember in the midst of suffering and affliction and under the hand of God’s discipline—we can always remember that whatever that affliction is, there are others always who have suffered more than we, and whatever it is that we endure, we could be paying an even greater price. But we will not pay an even greater price because Christ has borne the full wrath of God on our behalf. So we have escaped eternal judgment. But that eternal judgment means that God is going to bring into our lives those things which will purge us of our sin, grow us up, discipline us, train us for lives of righteousness and holiness. That was the first thing. The afflictions that we endure are less than we deserve.

The second thing we have to remember to embrace God’s discipline well is that God disciplines His sons and not His enemies. God’s discipline is for His sons and not His enemies. Look at verse 5. This is verses 5 and 6, and the relationship that we have as sons of God is developed from verses 6 through 8. Verse 5 is our focus this morning. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 5: “And you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons [and now he’s quoting here from Proverbs 3], “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.’ ” You and I must remember that whatever afflictions we endure in this life, they are less than we deserve, and God’s discipline is reserved only for His sons, not His enemies.

He’s reminding these Hebrews of something, in chapter 12, verse 5. He’s reminding them of an exhortation that he says is addressed to them as sons. They had forgotten an encouragement regarding God’s discipline, and the author wants them to look back at the Old Testament and meditate upon something that was revealed back then, even under the old covenant, concerning how God deals with His people. Proverbs 3:11–12 that he is quoting from here, those verses describe for us not only the mindset in which we embrace discipline, but the manner. The manner of embracing it is the last part of verse 5: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord [that is, we’re not to despise His discipline], nor faint when you are reproved by Him.” We’re not to despair under His discipline. That’s the manner in which we embrace it. But the mindset is in the introductory part of verse 5, the first part of verse 5: “You have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons.” You need to call something back to your memory, something you know to be true, that obviously you have forgotten in your fainting and in your despairing under the hand of God. There’s a nugget of truth that you must remember, that is, that God disciplines His children, His sons, and not His enemies.

This is the framework under which all of the other instructions in verses 4–11 are given to us. We have to interpret and understand everything that is said in this passage about God’s discipline in light of this. He’s describing something that is true of His children, of His people, who are redeemed by Him, adopted into His family. This is not something that applies to unbelievers. This should be a source of tremendous encouragement, and the truth here in verses 5 and 6 is intended to be a source of tremendous encouragement. That’s kind of what the word exhortation means there. It is a word that describes something that is said for the purpose of kind of coming alongside and being an encouragement in an exhorting way. Not an exhortation like a condemnation type of exhortation where you’re trying to drive somebody to something, but rather an exhortation in terms of an encouragement where you’re trying to come along and lift somebody up and give them something that should lift their hearts in the midst of their affliction.

They had forgotten the exhortation which was addressed to them as sons, and there are actually two reminders in verse 5. Two reminders. The first, he is reminding them of the exhortation itself. That is, he’s quoting here from Proverbs chapter 3 to remind them of what God says concerning discipline. And we’ll talk about this in a couple of weeks, but let me give you a little preview of something that is to come. By going back to the book of Proverbs, the author is reminding his audience that this is not just a way that God deals with people under the new covenant. This is how God has dealt with His people from way back when, under the old covenant. Solomon said to his son, do not disregard or think lightly of the discipline of the Lord. In other words, just because you’re in the new covenant as a child of God, this is not some new way that God deals with His people. God has always disciplined His people.

The second exhortation here is that they are indeed sons, and that is something that is developed down in verses 6–8. Just read those verses with me. “ ‘For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.’ It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.” This is a blessing that is uniquely reserved for God’s children.

The author is honest with them about the suffering that they had endured. They had been reproached, they had been reviled, they were suffering persecution from family and from friends and from people that they used to work with. And all of that persecution and affliction that has now come into their lives was causing some of them to faint and almost peter out and be exhausted by it. It is not easy undergoing difficult times, suffering and affliction. It’s certainly not easy to undergo those things for an extended and long period of time. It wears on you. It wears you down. It can make you get to the point where you just want to give up. You just want to tap out. You want to be done with it. You want to go home to glory, or you just want to be out from underneath of what you perceive as God’s disciplining and disfavorable hand upon you. That can cause your heart to just faint and to despair, which is why the author is encouraging them with this. This is how God deals with His people.

Their sufferings were real, and Scripture is honest with us about the sufferings that we can expect in this life. It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God, Paul said in Acts chapter 14, verse 22. It’s through many tribulations. Have you gone through many tribulations? Not as many as you’re going to go through. If you haven’t gone through many tribulations, you have more ahead of you. And how do you know when you’ve gone through your last tribulation? When it’s your last tribulation. You step into glory and you say, OK, that was the last one. Then you know that that was the last one. But until you step into glory, it is through many tribulations that you and I must enter the kingdom of God. That is the course that our good and benevolent and loving and all-wise God has laid out for His children. There is a purpose in it. That purpose is our sanctification.

Now, notice the author’s approach here. His approach is to remind them of a truth that is revealed in Scripture in the Old Testament, a revelation from God that he says is addressed to them and is something that they had forgotten. He’s simply pulling a truth out of the Old Testament and he’s saying, look, I want to remind you of this truth. He’s bringing it to bear to them, something—not a new revelation in this sense, not new truth. This is an old truth that goes back hundreds of years to the time of Solomon. The remedy for their weakened hearts was to hear the truth again. The cause of much of our spiritual weakness, by the way, is that we forget biblical truth. That is the cause of much of our spiritual weakness. We despair, we despise God’s discipline, we slip into sin. We become spiritually weak. We become spiritually and emotionally anemic. We get frustrated under the disciplines and afflictions of this life because we forget biblical truth. And so the author here simply says to them, oh, you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons.

Now, let’s be clear. The Hebrew Christians had not forgotten Proverbs chapter 3. They knew it intellectually, right? Many of those Hebrews to whom the author is writing could have quoted that passage from memory, just as the author of this passage quotes it from memory. So it is not that they forgot it in the sense that, “Oh, that’s right, yeah, God disciplines His people. I totally—I don’t know where that was at. I just forgot it.” No, they had it in their head, but they had forgotten it in the sense that their understanding of God’s discipline was no longer informing their affections and their wills and their hearts and their choices. It was no longer informing their emotions. So now, under the hand of God, under that discipline, their emotions were getting away from them. They were becoming faint because they had forgotten, emotionally, that biblical truth, even though they may have known it mentally.

Let me give you an illustration: somebody who struggles with anxiety over future events or future decisions, and they are worried, and they are anxious, and they are up late at night, lacking sleep, and they’re up early in the morning, and they’re just churning over that all the time—anybody here been anxious over the future in some way? Right, the anxious person. What is the answer for the anxious person? It’s to come to the anxious person and say, “Look, at this moment, you are forgetting the sovereignty of God.” They’re not forgetting it in the sense that, “Oh yeah, I forgot God is sovereign.” They know God is sovereign. It’s not like they would say, “I was going through the attributes of God today—omniscience, omnipresence, transcendence, and immanence, and all these. I forgot sovereignty. It just never occurred to me that God is sovereign.” It’s not that mentally that person doesn’t understand that God is sovereign. It’s that in that moment the sovereignty of God is not being put into that situation, into their heart, so that it may mortify the sin of anxiety. You’ve forgotten the sovereignty of God.

When the truth that we know intellectually is not affecting our heart and our soul and our lives in a practical way, then we can legitimately be said to have forgotten it, biblically speaking. When the truth that we know intellectually, that is given in Scripture, that we have learned, that we have heard, that we know, when that is not informing my heart and my mind and my will in that moment, we can be biblically said to have forgotten that truth. Because remembering that truth means that I bring that truth to bear on my heart.

So if forgetting biblical truth is the cause of spiritual weakness, then what is the answer? The answer to it is to remind ourselves of the truth so that the truth may inform our hearts and our minds and our will and our affections. That’s the answer to it. To speak truth to my heart. So when my heart rebels against what is true and it wants to sin and it wants to do its own thing, I, Jim Osman, need to take the truth of Scripture and inform my heart of what is true. I need to speak to my heart, to my situation, and make my heart comply itself to that truth. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I can do that. You can do that. So if my problem is that I have forgotten something, then the answer to that is that I need to remind my heart of what is true and make my heart, my will, my emotions, my desires, my affections, my thinking, and thus my course of life—because as a man thinks in his heart, so is he—make those comply with what is written in Scripture. Speak truth to ourselves lest we forget it. That’s the answer.

Now, I want you to notice one more thing before we talk about being sons and sonship. I want you to notice one more thing. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. I want you to notice how the author speaks of what is addressed to them as sons in the Old Testament. Look at the beginning of verse 5. Again, “You have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons.” Then he quotes Proverbs chapter 3. There is a tendency within Christianity today, particularly since we are new covenant believers, to think that anything that was written to old covenant believers was for them and that the New Testament is for us. Andy Stanley has this whole thing where he wants to unhitch Christianity from the Old Testament. He’s working feverishly to unhitch Christianity from the New Testament as well. But his whole idea here is that the stuff under the old covenant, that was for them, and this is for us. But notice what this author in Hebrews gives to his audience, new covenant believers, as a source for their fainting and discouraged hearts: truth from the old covenant.

By the way, is this your view of the Old Testament? When you read the book of Proverbs, do you believe that it is addressed to you as sons? Because I think that that is something that is true not just of the Proverbs, and not just of Proverbs 3, verses 11–12. That is something that is true of the entire Old Testament. It is addressed to you as sons. There was a fantastic observation that was made by Dan Phillips when he was here for our Cessationist Conference. He said that the infinite mind of God—when God does one thing, He does that one thing as if it’s the only thing that He’s doing, even though He is doing everything else. And in the infinite mind of God, God could be giving Scripture through, say, Solomon to his son, and at the same time, that infinite God with His infinite mind is addressing that same passage to you who will live thousands of years later. So that everything that is written, is written and addressed to me. That makes all of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation personal. It’s not just that it was written to the Philippians, or to the Colossians, or to the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, but rather that those things were addressed to us as His children. So if you think that you need a fresh revelation from God, something spoken today, something relevant for you, something fresh, hot off the press, you have a pathetically low view of Scripture. This book is addressed to you as sons. So when you read it, you are reading God’s Word to you, just as if you were the only believer who had ever received this revelation. That is the author’s view of Scripture.

Now, let’s look at our status as sons. I want to camp on this for a bit, because this is the repeated refrain throughout the entire passage in this issue of discipline and properly understanding it. We need to interpret everything that is in this passage in terms of this father-son relationship that we have with God, who is our Father. There is a designation here, in fact a couple of contrasts, in this reference to us as sons that the author intends.

First, there is the contrast here between the status that you and I now enjoy as sons and the status that we once had as God’s enemies. So Scripture describes you and I as sons of God or daughters of God. And by the way, just because we live in a crazy world and I have to say this lest I be misunderstood, when I say “sons” all the way through this, we’re talking about sons and daughters. I’m using “sons” in the commonsense way that we’ve used it up until about five minutes ago when the world lost its mind and can’t figure out what a gender is anymore, OK? So when I talk about sons, this is not sexism. It’s not the patriarchy coming out in me, OK? The patriarchy comes out in me in other places. I don’t need it to come out here. So “sons” is sons and daughters, all the children of God, but I’m just going to use “sons” as shorthand.

This describes something that is true of us now that was not true of us before we were saved and redeemed by God’s grace. Once we were aliens and strangers. Once we were enemies of God. We were without life. We were cut off from the life of God, and we were under His wrath. But by the work of Christ and the grace of the Father, the Father has brought us near to Himself. Don’t forget that. We once were aliens and strangers, and we have been brought near. And now He has adopted us into His family and welcomed us as His children. And listen, He did not do this unwillingly. You and I didn’t sneak into the family unawares. He didn’t wake up one day and say, “Hey, who’s the new kid at My table? I’ve never seen him before.” That is not the way that our God works. Rather, our God sought us out. He chose us in eternity past before He created a single atom or an angel or spoke anything into existence. He elected or chose in His Son all whom He would redeem.

So He chose you as His child, if you’re in Christ Jesus, before He ever created a single thing. And then He took that gift, that chosen humanity, and He gave it to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then He sent His Son into the world so that He could live a perfect life, a perfectly righteous life, fulfill all of the Old Testament demands of His law and His moral law, and to fulfill all of that in the place of His people, on behalf of those people whom He has chosen. And then the Son was to die a sacrificial, substitutionary, voluntary death on the cross, so that He might bear all of the wrath of those whom the Father chose and gave to the Son. And then the Son calls and gathers out of humanity over the course of time all those whom the Father chose and all those whom the Father gave to Him. He draws them to Himself, calls them by name, saves them, gives eternal life to them, promises them their security and ultimate glorification, and then works in their life all the way through time and brings them finally into His presence. And Jesus said He rejects or refuses none of those whom the Father has given to Him. And the Spirit regenerates those people. And then God the Father credits to those people, whom the Son lived for and died for, all of the Son’s righteousness, credits it all to their account and takes all of the sin of that mass of humanity and imputes it to His Son, upon whose head all of the wrath of the Divine Being is poured out for our sin. And then He gives to us an eternal and infinite inheritance because He has adopted us as His sons, and gives us a seat at His table.

You and I didn’t become God’s children willy-nilly. We didn’t step into the family unawares to the Father. This was His choice. All of that was His doing. And so now we have full and complete adoption into the family of God so that everything that belongs to His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, belongs to you and belongs to me, and we share it together for all of eternity. He takes His enemies and He makes them His redeemed children, gives them the inheritance and the blessings and the glory of His infinite Heaven. That is incredible.

And you are a child, by the way, not in the sense like the redheaded stepchild who’s really not one of the family, kind of off to the side—you’re one of the family, but you’re not one of the family. So you’re kind of welcomed, you’re there, but you’re always sort of on the outskirts of it. You’re different than everybody else. Everybody else is the real sons, but yeah, you’re technically a son. You’re involved in the family chat, but you’re not in the family chat. You know what I mean? Not that kind of a son. Not at all. Full status, no qualifiers at all. No qualifiers. You’re as much a child of God as the apostle Paul was and the apostle John was. The disciple whom Jesus loved, you share the same status as that one. That’s unbelievable. That is the mindset with which we must evaluate God’s discipline.

There’s a contrast here also between God’s people and unbelievers. He does not deal with us as He deals with unbelievers. God doesn’t discipline unbelievers. That is a blessing He has reserved for you and I. He doesn’t discipline unbelievers. He will leave them in their sin. He doesn’t correct them in their sin. He leaves them in their sin. That is judgment. That is wrath. That is abandonment. That is damnation. The correction for sin, that is a blessing that is reserved only for family members. Unbelievers don’t get this. They get punishment. They don’t receive His love, they get His wrath. They aren’t corrected in their sin, they’re abandoned to it. They aren’t trained, they’re judged. Discipline is for us. Thank God for that. You get discipline. Would you rather not have discipline? If you don’t get discipline, you get wrath. Those are the two options. Those are the two ways that God deals with people. Either He deals with them as sons in discipline, or He deals with them as enemies in His wrath. Those are the two ways that God deals with mankind. And if you are in His Son, then you get His love and not His wrath. That distinction helps us to understand what discipline is and why we should embrace it.

And with that framework in mind that we are sons, now let’s define a little bit from our context what discipline is. We’ll define discipline, then we’ll kind of work through some scenarios. [Looks at the clock] Never mind, we’re not going to work through some scenarios. I’m going to define discipline, give you three principles here in just a moment. First, the word discipline here, it is found in our passage, verses 4–11, in both its noun form as well as its verb form. It comes from the word pais, which is a reference to “child.” According to one commentator, the word is a broad term, signifying whatever parents and teachers do to train, correct, cultivate, and educate children to help them develop and mature as they ought. That word, some form of it, verb or noun, is used nine times in these eight verses. This word can be translated as, listen carefully, “punishment”—doesn’t mean punishment in our context. It can be translated as punishment, as chastisement or correction, training, education, or instruction. It can be a word that is painful, and it can be a word that is pleasant. It can be a word that’s painful and a word that is not painful. It can refer to education or instruction, intellectual training or discipleship or discipline. It can refer to the emotional forming or shaping of a child. It is a very broad word.

Now, I think that the author has in mind in our context the kind of discipline that is not necessarily pleasant. For instance, you can discipline your child by rewarding them for something that they’ve done that is good, for good behavior. That is a form of discipline. It is moral training and education and instruction. That’s pleasant discipline. But then there’s also unpleasant discipline. Now, which is it that you think causes the Christian to lose heart and almost despair, the pleasant discipline or the unpleasant discipline? It’s the unpleasant discipline. None of us have said, “I just don’t think I can handle any more blessings. I just don’t think I can handle any more pleasures in this life. This life is just everything I’d ever want. This is Heaven on earth. I can’t take any more.” None of us have ever said that. But we have been under the chastening hand of God, the unpleasant kind of discipline, and thought to ourselves, “I don’t know if I can take any more of this”—in all seriousness. Hebrews 12, verse 11: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful.” That’s the kind of discipline the author has in mind, a chastening that is uncomfortable, unpleasant, and possibly even painful.

Now for many of us, when we think about the act of God’s discipline, this instruction and training that He does for those who are His, considering that raises more questions for us than Hebrews 12 answers. And I want to be honest with this right at the front of our little talks here on Hebrews 12. This issue raises for us more questions than Hebrews 12 answers. Let me give you some examples. How often should I expect discipline? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Twice a year? How long is that discipline supposed to last? How severe will it get? What form will it take? Which sins in my life bring discipline and which ones does the Lord let slide maybe for a period of time but then later on He does something about it? And how long will He let them slide before He will do something about those sins?

What am I to learn when under discipline? What is the specific lesson that I am to learn? How does my discipline affect those around me? Do my children suffer when I am disciplined? If the Lord disciplines my children, will I suffer when He’s disciplining them? And here’s where it gets even more complicated. What if the Lord disciplines my spouse? How does that affect me, and how does that affect the children? And how does that affect everyone else in the church and our family?

Is all difficulty in this life discipline or are there difficulties in this life that are not discipline, that are just the results of me being stupid, doing something foolish, making a dumb mistake? And how do I know the difference? Can I be underneath of affliction in this life, suffering, and say, “Well, this isn’t discipline. No, this is just so-and-so doing something stupid. This has nothing to do with the discipline of God”? And is there some connection between sin and the discipline that I endure? Is there a one-to-one correspondence between these two things? Can I always know in the midst of affliction that this is connected to this specific sin, and because I did this sin, I’m now enduring this difficulty? Can I know that all of the time? And here’s another question. If I can’t know that, then am I justified in saying that whatever difficulties or sufferings or afflictions I’m going through have nothing at all to do with my sin? Is that a right conclusion to make? Is all discipline painful? And how do I know if I’m experiencing God’s discipline or just living in a horrible world?

I wish there were some algorithm that we could plug all of the various factors into and come up with an answer to many or all of those questions. I wish there were. I wish there were some flowchart given in Scripture—are you experiencing this, this, this, this, or this? Right. OK, I’m this. I’m over here, number three. OK, did you sin last week? Yes or no? Yes. OK, over here. This is it. Was the sin grievous? Yes or no? Yes. OK, you’re down here. But there is no such algorithm. There’s no such formula. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. He does not reveal these things to us. He does not tell us all that He is doing through all of the things that we endure as individuals, as families, as couples, and as a church. He doesn’t reveal those things.

But instead what Hebrews 12 does tell us is that suffering and affliction are connected in some way to sin, though not necessarily to a specific sin. Sometimes God may be working to purge me of sin that I don’t even know is there and has not even had a chance to manifest itself yet in some grievous way. But instead He is disciplining me because He knows that if He doesn’t, that that sin that is in there, that resides in me, will blossom and flourish at some point in the future, and without that discipline in my life at this moment, in this severity, at this time, that sin will destroy me or destroy somebody else. He doesn’t need to reveal all of that because in the secret providential counsels of His mind and in the working out of His will amongst His people, He is the only one that needs to know what He is doing in everybody’s life. But He does instruct us on how to respond to these things.

See, so the temptation as we talk about discipline—and we’re not talking about church discipline, by the way. That’s an entirely different subject. We’re not talking about church discipline. As we’re talking about discipline, there will be times when you might be tempted to come up and ask me and say, “Jim, what sin is it that I have committed that has brought this upon me, and what am I supposed to be learning at this time?” Those are the wrong questions to be asking. They’re the questions we want to ask, but they’re the wrong questions to be asking. The right question to be asking is “How can I respond in humble submission to what God is doing through this event?” That’s the question I need to ask. How can I embrace this and learn from it and pursue holiness and pursue God in the midst of this trial? That’s the question we need to ask, and not be concerned with how do I get out from underneath of it, but how do I learn what God wants me to learn in the midst of it?

So let’s put some foundational truths in place as we think about discipline. I have a three-point outline for you this morning, and here are the three points. And we will get through all three of these. First of all, we talked about this last week, discipline is not a punishment. It is correction. It’s not punishment, it’s correction. Discipline is correction, not punishment. It’s not punitive. God’s discipline is not punitive. How do I know that? Because of the cross. That’s how I know. All my sin was laid upon Him, all the wrath for it was borne in full. There’s nothing left to pay. When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He wasn’t saying, “It’s finished except for all the stuff that I’m going to pour out on the heads of My people throughout the course of their lives.” It didn’t mean that. It’s finished. If the price has been paid, then there is no longer any condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

A Christian can never say that their suffering or their affliction in this life is a punishment for their sin. In fact, I would submit to you that that is a blasphemous slander against the character of God for you to say that. You can never say the afflictions of this world are intended as a punishment for my sin, and that I now am making atonement for my sin. Never, if you are in Jesus Christ, because God has poured out upon His Son the full wrath for every sin you have ever committed. The only way you can be a child of God is if all of your sins have been paid for and the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed to your account, so that you stand in the sight of God, not just as a sinner who has been forgiven, but a sinner who has been declared righteous, so that God sees you through the righteousness of His Son. Therefore, He can never be displeased with you in the sense of wanting to pour out His wrath or His anger upon you for your sin.

So a Christian can never say that my suffering and my affliction is a punishment, that I’m paying for my sins or atoning for my sins. That can only be said if somebody is outside of Jesus Christ. But if you’re in Christ, there’s no condemnation for you. The payment has been paid in full. That’s not to say that affliction and discipline are not connected to sin. They certainly are. But it is to say that discipline is not punishment, atonement, or payment for sin. That has already been paid for. You have to understand the difference between those two things. There’s a difference between disciplining your child to make them pay for something they have done and disciplining your child out of love to correct them so that they don’t do what they did again. Those are two vastly different approaches to disciplining children. It is two vastly different understandings of what God is doing in the process of disciplining us.

You may sometimes experience difficulties because of your sin as a direct consequence of a sin that you have committed. There may not at times be a connection obvious to you between some indwelling sin and discipline that you’re going through. You don’t necessarily need to be able to make that connection in order to benefit from the discipline. You need to be open to what God might be doing. Sometimes we suffer the consequences of our sin and we reap what it is that we sow. That’s true. And there are connections between what we do and what happens as a result of what we do, and we need to be able to make those connections when they are obvious.

But if I say that I am being punished for my sin, that I am paying for my sins in this world, that is a slander against God’s justice. If God has poured out all the wrath for my sin upon His Son, it is unjust for God to punish me for those same sins. It’s unjust. Therefore, to say that God is punishing me for my sin is a slander against His justice. And it’s a slander against His righteousness because if I’m in Christ, then He has clothed me with His righteousness, and all of the perfectly righteous life of Jesus Christ is credited to my account. And therefore God is not going to punish me, a righteous one—and not righteous because of my conduct, but righteous because of my standing—He’s not going to punish me, a righteous one, for sins that I have done. It would be a slander against His righteousness. And it would be a slander against His love. If God in love has poured out all of my sin upon His Son, for me to say that that love is somehow deficient, that now He is going to exact, in love, the same punishment for me, that’s a slander against His love. And I think that if we went down through the character qualities of God, we could probably find a way in which that statement—God is punishing me for my sin—is a slander against half a dozen or a dozen of His attributes (His holiness, His righteousness, His justice, His wisdom, His love). And so we could never, as Christians, say this chastisement, discipline, is a result of or a punishment for my sin.

Now, to the unbeliever who might be listening to me, I can offer you no such comfort. None whatsoever, because Scripture says at this very moment you are under the wrath of God, so that any affliction, any suffering, any misery that you are in in this life is only a harbinger of what is to come if you will not repent and trust Christ for salvation. If you have not been born again and you have not come to understand the depth of your sin and seek the only remedy that God offers, and that is in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ—if you have not done that, then I promise you, if you leave this world impenitent, unredeemed, and not having your sins atoned for, you will wish that you could be back on this earth living your worst day over and over and over again Groundhog Day–style for all of eternity. Because what awaits you is worse than anything you have experienced in this life, because you are under the wrath of God even now. And the worst affliction in this world doesn’t hold a candle to what is to come for you.

You want to avoid that? You want to avoid the wrath of God? Scripture offers you one remedy, and it is in Christ Himself who bore the wrath for all who will repent and believe. Turn from your sin, call out to God for mercy, repent, and trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ who bore the wrath for all sinners who believe in Him. You do that, you will find that He will forgive your sin, give you the righteousness of His Son, and take you to Heaven to be with Him.

So, first, discipline is correction, not punishment. Second, the motive for discipline is love and not anger. It’s love and not anger. God deals with us as with sons. Verse 6: “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines.” Don’t miss that. “Those whom the Lord loves He disciplines.” It is love that is behind what we think is His displeasure with us or His anger toward us. The discipline of God seems like anger when it comes at us, but it is not anger. It is love that is behind that. As William Cowper said, it is a smiling face that is behind the cloud of God’s providence. What strikes us as God’s anger with us is not anger at all. It is His love. That is what is behind His discipline. The familial love that God has for His own means that He applies the perfect measure of discipline, the perfect amount of discipline, the perfect time of discipline to His people to accomplish His purposes, which is our good.

“Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). Right? Christian parent, you’ve quoted that a hundred times if you’ve quoted it once. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, and the rod will drive it far from him. Folly is also bound up in the heart of the child of God, and the rod of God’s discipline will drive it far from him. Be thankful for it. I’ve told my kids a number of times, you should be thankful that I disciplined you. I think they are.

Psalm 119:67 says, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word.” Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now, after being afflicted, I keep Your word. Psalm 119:71: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes.” Obedience is our highest good. Growth in holiness is our highest good. And God will move Heaven and earth to accomplish those ends because He loves us just that much.

Charles Spurgeon said this, “When he afflicts his child [speaking of God], chastisement is applied in love, his strokes are, all of them, put there by the hand of love. The rod has been baptized in deep affection before it is laid on the believer’s back. God doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve us for nought, but out of love and affection, because he perceives that if he leaves us unchastised, we shall bring upon ourselves misery ten thousand-fold greater than we shall suffer by his slight rebukes, and the gentle blows of his hand.”

Did you hear that sentence? The rod has been baptized in deep affection before it is laid to the believer’s back. There’s a quote of Spurgeon’s that we like to embroider on pillows and put on calendars and on chalkboards, right? “The sovereignty of God is the pillow on which we lay our head at night.” You’ve heard that quotation? This is one you should stencil on a pillow: “The rod has been baptized in deep affection before it is laid to the back of the believer.” In other words, God does not just grab His rod and start coming after us. Instead, it is all motivated by love, a love that we cannot plumb or understand or even begin to grasp in this life. That’s the infinite love of God. But that is what informs His discipline. It is for correction, not punishment. The motive is love and not anger or wrath.

And third, it is for our good and not our harm. God intends for us good. Look at verse 10, chapter 12. “For they [that is, earthly fathers] disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good [and what is the good?], so that we may share His holiness.” That’s the good. That we get to share His holiness. Every blow of the rod is for our good because He has in His mind our benefit and the kind intention of His will toward us. His goal is that you and I would fix our eyes on Jesus, that we lay aside every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles us, and that we would run the race that is set before us with endurance, looking to Him and considering Him who endured such hostility against Himself. That’s the command.

How does God accomplish that in our lives? He makes us able to do that. He strengthens us for that task through discipline. This is another difference between discipline and punishment, by the way. Discipline is for the good of the person who is being disciplined. Punishment is for the satisfaction of the one who is meting out the punishment. That’s a key difference. As a parent, if you’re disciplining your child and you’re spanking them because you want to satisfy your anger, your wrath in you, to pour out on them so that you can be happy again, you have missed the whole point of discipline. The point of discipline is to correct the one whom you love. It is for their good, not the satisfaction of something in you. When God punishes the unbeliever, He is satisfying something in Him, namely His demand for justice and righteousness against sin, pouring out His wrath against sin. There is something that’s being satisfied there, not for the person who is receiving the punishment, but in the One who is doing the punishing.

But in discipline, it’s the opposite. In discipline, it is motivated out of love. And it is for the good of the one who is being disciplined, not to satisfy something in the person who is meting out the discipline. God doesn’t need to satisfy anything in Himself by disciplining us. He’s doing something for our good. Now, He will end up being glorified for it, but He’s doing something for our good. He is taking away sin. He is killing it. He is purging it from within us—indwelling sin and corruption—so that we may have more of grace, and more of Him, and more intimacy, and more love, and walk in more holiness. Like a surgeon must take a knife and yes, it’s painful, he must cut cancer out of the body and remove it, so God, through discipline, does the same thing in the lives of His children with indwelling sin. Matthew Henry said, “Sin is the worst enemy both to God and man.” So then, if sin is a threat, if sin threatens my ruin and your ruin, if sin strangles our holy affections and ruins our witness and threatens our holiness and threatens our marriage and threatens our kids and threatens our family and threatens our church, then we ought to embrace it, if God will do what is necessary. And that is to painfully cut that out of our lives.

Why does He do this? So that we may share His holiness. You and I have to remember two things if we’re going to embrace discipline: that the afflictions that we endure are not as bad as we deserve and, second, God disciplines us as sons, not as enemies. Knowing that distinction, knowing those truths, helps us to view discipline as we should and to embrace it as from the hand of God, for His glory and for our good and for the good of those around us in our own community of faith.

Discipline is essential for the child of God. Running our race requires us to embrace God’s discipline knowing that He disciplines us out of love and intends our good through it. An exposition of Hebrews 12:4-5.

Sermon Transcript

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Well, discipline—that is a word that probably conjures up in a lot of your minds a lot of negative images. Perhaps there is in your mind some negative memories that are associated with the idea of discipline. You had parents who didn’t do it properly or didn’t do it lovingly. It is certainly a concept that is abused in our fallen world and a concept that is misunderstood in our fallen world. And, sadly, it is misunderstood even within the church.

When we hear the word discipline, we typically think of pain and discomfort, right? How many of you think of pain and discomfort when you think about discipline? Think about something that is sometimes horribly painful? Or you may be thinking of an abuse of authority, somebody who used “discipline” in order to justify their abuse of authority. Perhaps you think of punishment for wrongdoing. Oftentimes that’s what people associate discipline with. If I do something wrong, then I have to endure the discipline. This is a punishment for something that I did wrong.

Or maybe in your mind you conjure up the ideas of anger and hatred and violent wrath that is unleashed against you whenever the matter of discipline comes up, because that is what you have experienced in some sense or at some time during your life.

There certainly is an element in discipline that is admittedly difficult for us to endure. The author is honest about that. In Hebrews chapter 12, look at verse 11. “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” The author admits discipline is not an easy thing, and in the moment, discipline—whatever he’s describing here in this passage—in the moment, discipline is not a joyful thing. It can often be very sorrowful.

Not all things that we associate with discipline are painful or necessarily sorrowful. For instance, sometimes discipline, as we use this term, is not painful at all, really. It’s just uncomfortable. So for instance, not eating every sweet thing that was put before you over the holidays, that takes discipline; that is not painful. If you think that that is painful, you need a reality check. That is not painful. Shoving ice picks underneath your fingernails is painful. Passing by the cookie plate a couple of times in the holiday season is not painful. It might be uncomfortable, it might be difficult, it might take some mental and emotional and spiritual focus, but it’s not at all painful. Or not filling your plate to overflowing every single time you dish up, even for seconds, that is not necessarily painful. It might be uncomfortable for you, it might be difficult, but it’s not painful. Going to the gym and exercising is not painful. You say, Jim, you don’t know what would happen to me if I exercise. No, it’s not painful. It might be uncomfortable, it might make you sore, but it’s not painful; it makes you uncomfortable. Turning off the TV so that you can spend more time reading is not painful, it’s just uncomfortable. Getting up an extra thirty minutes early on a workday so that you can read Scripture is not painful; it is uncomfortable. These things are not painful, and they just involve saying no to some things so that we can say yes to other things. Those things make us uncomfortable, but they do not cause us pain. And we need to think clearly in terms of the difference between pain and discomfort. We need to think clearly, in fact, in terms of saying no to some things so that we can say yes to other things. And in many instances, that is the heart and soul of discipline.

Some discipline is educational. For instance, if you want to acquire a new skill—say, the ability to play a musical instrument, or some new bit of knowledge or some new craft or some new art—it’s going to take some discipline. It’s going to take some practice and some sacrifice and some repetition and muscle memory. And all of that goes into disciplining yourself so that you can pick up a new skill. The point of that discipline is instruction. It’s training in some way.

In all of these cases, these things are not joyful in the moment. Even in the case of enduring discipline for the sake of acquiring a new skill, in the moment, during the practice, it involves sometimes sweat, it involves sometimes a focus, it involves a sacrifice of time. It’s not necessarily enjoyable in the moment. But the reason we discipline ourselves for certain things is so that we may enjoy the fruit of it, right? You go to the gym and exercise so that you can enjoy the fruit of that exercise. You pass by the cookie plate so that you can enjoy the fruit of passing by the cookie plate, which is sometimes not as delicious as enjoying the cookie plate, but there is a fruit or a thing to be gained at the end of that. That’s why you discipline yourself.

Now my objective—and I’m going to be honest with you here right at the beginning of this, what we might call a miniseries of sermons on the subject of discipline—my objective is to disabuse you of all of the false and wrong notions of discipline that you might have lodged in your mind. There are a lot of them, and I’m not going to give them to you right now. But by the time we get to the end of verse 11 and actually into verses 12 and 13 that deal with the [church] body’s response to the discipline of God in the lives of God’s people, by the time we get through the end of 11, 12, and 13, I am hoping that you will see the need and have a love for embracing God’s discipline. Did you expect anybody to ever say that in your life? To embrace God’s discipline? Because it is something that we ought to embrace, and it is something that we ought to love, and it is something that should be of great encouragement to us. Not because we enjoy the discipline itself. As verse 11 says, no discipline in the moment is joyful—we don’t enjoy it in the moment—but those who have been trained by it enjoy the peaceful fruit of righteousness. So that’s why we embrace God’s discipline, not because we’re masochists who love pain and discomfort, but because we enjoy and love and long for and delight in the fruit that God brings into our lives through that discipline.

So I’m going to challenge your understanding of discipline over the next few weeks. I want to dispel any unbiblical and worldly notions of discipline that have crept into your thinking, remove some of the misunderstandings of it, and bring some clarity to what it is and what it isn’t and the ways in which God disciplines us so that we can see the hand of God in our lives as He brings discipline into our lives and then we can gladly embrace that and be encouraged by it. We’re encouraged by it because then we know this is evidence that I am a son and this is evidence that He loves me. And if He has brought this into my life, then He will do something profitable and fruitful and glorious through it. And so therefore, I can embrace it and I can be thankful for it.

So here’s our outline. We’re in chapter 12, verse 4. Here’s our outline, for those of you who like sermon outlines. I know there are some of you who do. You know who you are. More importantly, I know who you are. And so I’m going to give you a sermon outline here for chapter 12, verse 4 all the way through the end of verse 11. There are four things in these verses that you and I must understand about God’s discipline.

First, in verses 4 and 5, we have to have the proper perspective on God’s discipline. Verse 4: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 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’” (Heb. 12:4–5).

Second, we have to understand the proof of discipline, or know the proof of discipline, that it proves that we are His children and that He is our Father. Verse 6: “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons” (Heb. 12:6–8). That’s the second thing.

Third, we have to understand the purpose of discipline in verse 9: “Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness” (Heb. 12:9–10). That’s the purpose of it.

And fourth, the product of discipline in verse 11: “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

The proper perspective on discipline, the proof of discipline, the purpose of discipline, and then the product of discipline—what discipline produces.

Now, I have an advantage that guest speakers do not have, and that is that I don’t have any obligation at all to fit all of that into one sermon. And I don’t feel any obligation at all to fit all of that into one sermon. And I’ll be honest with you, I’m not even going to try to fit all of that into one sermon, and my lack of trying is going to become evident to you very quickly in this sermon. I don’t know how many weeks it is going to take to get through all of this passage, but we will get through all of it, and I will be referring back to that outline from time to time as we do. We’re not going to rush this because I think that there’s a number of things in this passage that will equip us for life and for godliness, and I’m confident that God is going to do things in our hearts through this passage as we understand the purpose and His intentions in discipline.

Now, I want you to see some of the contextual connections that are here. It is tempting for us to think that when we get to verse 4 we are switching subject matters. Verses 1–3 was what? It was the race analogy, right? Run with endurance the race that is set before us, the purpose of the race, how we’re to persevere through it, the example that we have—Jesus—who did it by faith. Verse 3, we are to consider Him who endured such hostility against Himself at the hands of sinners so that we will not lose heart and we will not faint. And then we get to verse 4 and it says you’ve not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin and you’ve forgotten the encouragement that is addressed to you as sons to not despise the discipline of the Lord. We get to verse 4 and think, OK, so the author now, he gets to the end of verse 3, and now he’s just switching, he’s changing gears, he’s turning a corner. Now he’s going to start talking about discipline. That is not true. Discipline is essential for an athletic contest, is it not? You must be trained in the race. You must be trained how to run the race. You must be trained and disciplined yourself so that you might be competitive in the race. So the author switching to the subject of discipline is really not a switching. He’s simply now addressing another aspect of running the race, which is the discipline that we endure from the Father, which equips us for the running of the race.

There is a different analogy that is pictured in verses 4–11, that of a father and a son. It’s the family analogy. But in verses 1–3 it’s the race analogy. It’s still really a race that we’re talking about as we talk about the discipline that equips us and trains us for the race. But now he brings in the father-son analogy—in the family, the father disciplines his son—simply to show that the discipline is necessary and simply to show that the discipline is an evidence of God’s love for us and simply to show that the discipline is an evidence of our sonship with Him. So it’s not a different analogy. It’s kind of an analogy layered on top of another analogy, which is really still the race metaphor that he began in verses 1–3.

There are some important themes that are consistent through the entire passage, and I want to highlight four of them for you. The first one is considering Jesus. There is a comparison in verse 4: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” Who might he have mentioned right in the immediate context who in His striving against sin shed blood? It’s Jesus, in verse 3. He’s just simply continuing the comparison that he began in verse 3 as he moves into verse 4 and begins to apply it to us, showing us that there is something that we are to consider in our consideration of Jesus, who endured that hostility. We are to consider and remember that we have not yet shed our blood in our striving against sin. Jesus in His faithfulness did.

The second theme that is woven here through verses 4–11 that we’ve also seen in the context is that of striving against sin itself. Look at verse 4. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Look back up at verse 1. We are to “lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.” So in both the race analogy as well as in the discipline analogy, in talking about discipline and in talking about the race, there is a sin issue that is at the heart of all of this.

Why is discipline necessary? Not to punish us for our sin, but to purge us of our sin. That’s the point of discipline. Again, we’ll get into this more next week. It is not punishment for our sin, it is purging us from our sin. So we have an obligation, a moral obligation, to lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, to fight that fight, to wage that war, to go to battle against it. That’s our obligation. But here’s the good news. We have a Father in Heaven who loves us enough to do something to us to make that really easy—purging ourselves from sin. That’s where discipline comes in.

The next theme is that of losing heart. Look at verse 5. He says, ”My son”—look at the quotation from Proverbs chapter 3—”My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him.” That is the idea of losing heart, of losing spirit, of sort of collapsing within. It’s the notion that was also up in verse 3, that we are to consider Him who endured such hostility against Himself at the hands of sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. See how he’s continuing the same idea? We are to run our race, and we are to do it with endurance and with faith, to persevere, to look to Jesus so that we don’t lose heart. And then we have the Father who disciplines us for that purpose, and we are to embrace that so that we don’t what? So that we don’t lose heart.

The theme of enduring is also here. Endurance is a theme that has been present with us in Hebrews for quite some time. Look down to verse 7 in our passage. “It is for discipline that you endure.” Have we heard about endurance anywhere in this context? “It is for discipline that you endure.” Look at verse 1: we are to run with endurance the race that is set before us. Verse 3: we are to consider Him who endured such hostility against himself. In fact, the theme of endurance goes all the way back to chapter 10 at the very end, where he says, “You have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised” (Heb. 10:36). So from back in chapter 10 he has been talking about enduring in the face of hostility, suffering, affliction, and difficulty, just as the saints of Hebrews chapter 11 did. And then you are to do it, chapter 12, verses 1–3. And then we have the Father disciplining us to enable us to run that race so that we don’t lose heart. And it is for discipline that we are to endure. So the theme of endurance traces all the way through as well.

Then in verse 11, notice the reference to training. “To those who have been trained by it [that is, discipline], afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” The idea of training is core; it’s central to the athletic metaphor. It fits the athletic analogy in verses 1–3. So the author is not radically changing course at verse 4. I want you to see that. He’s taking the same things he’s been talking about really since the end of chapter 10, and now he’s weaving them through chapter 11, and he’s bringing them to an applicable conclusion in chapter 12, verses 1–11. We’re to run our race, not lose heart, persevere through it because the Father in Heaven is disciplining us, training us, to enable us to do the very thing that He has called us to do. It is safe to say that the discipline that God wisely and lovingly brings into our lives is intended to work in us those things which will strengthen us for the race. The purpose of discipline is to strengthen you for the race. It is to train you for the race so that you will lay aside the sin that sometimes causes the discipline, and you will look to Jesus and run the race that is set before you and carry you across the finish line so that you can receive the reward.

Our job is to run; the Father’s job is to discipline and train us so that we can run. Now, if the Father knows perfectly and precisely and wisely, infinitely so, what is necessary to bring you and I home to our eternal glory and to give us that reward, if He knows everything that is necessary for that to happen, why would you not embrace that, right? If He has called you to run, and then He knows exactly what is necessary to take you across the finish line and bring you to that reward and give it to you, why would you not embrace that thing that He has planned for you? Why would you not embrace that process and do so lovingly? Listen, especially if you know that it will, for all of eternity, infinitely increase your joy and your reward, you would embrace that, wouldn’t you?

So now let’s jump into verses 4 and 5. You say, Jim, that wasn’t the first point, not even close yet. The proper perspective on discipline. Remember, I want to challenge you to embrace God’s discipline in your life and to cooperate, as it were, with Him in the discipline and through the discipline so that it may accomplish what it is that He has designed for you in the difficulty that He has brought into place.

The proper perspective on discipline, verses 4–5. And this deals with our thinking, our mindset. We need a proper perspective on it so that we can think of it rightly. And when we think of it rightly, then we are more likely to embrace it. So we have a mindset here that is being described for embracing God’s discipline. The mindset is in verse 4 and the beginning of verse 5, and then the manner in which we are to embrace God’s discipline is in verse 5, the quotation from the Proverbs. So here’s the mindset. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. . . .” There’s a mindset there, a way in which we are to view our afflictions and a way in which we are to view our relationship with the Lord.

And then the manner in which we are to embrace this discipline is in verse 5. “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord [In other words, don’t despise His discipline. And then second, don’t despair in that discipline.], nor faint when you are reproved by Him.” There are two errors that we can make when God disciplines us. One is to despise it, and the other is to despair underneath of it. These are two opposite errors. They’re both folly in some regard. One of them is really caused by a vain, selfish pride, and the other one is caused by a foolish misunderstanding of the purpose of discipline.

So we want to have the right mindset for embracing discipline. That’s what we’re looking at today, the mindset that we have. And we’re to remember two things. So if you’re keeping track of your outline, those of you who like your outlines, here it is. Verse 1 was understanding the proper purpose of discipline. Under that is two points, if you’re keeping notes, two points. Number one, we are to have the right mindset, and then [number two] the right manner of embracing discipline.

Under the first point [that we are to have the right mindset], there are two points. Number one, the afflictions that we endure are less than we deserve. And second, God disciplines His children, not His enemies. Those are the two things that affect our mindset.

So this is two points. Today we’re going to deal with the first of the two points. Under the one of the two points, which is under one of the four points. Did you catch that? OK. It’s really much more simple than I make it out to be. And there are some people—let me just say this real quick—there are some people who think that you have to spend all four of your homiletical points in one sermon. I don’t believe that at all. I’m going to milk all four of these points so long, you’re going to think that there’s a Guernsey right here in the middle of the sanctuary, and we’re going to take our time going through it.

So if you’re not keeping track of the outline, then wake back up. This is where we jump into verse 4. Our mindset. We are to remember that the afflictions that we endure are less than we deserve. This is verse 4: “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Now notice that the author is aware of their affliction. He’s aware of their suffering. He admits it, he knows it. Maybe because he has experienced some of what they have experienced. Do you remember back at the end of chapter 10, verse 32? Turn back there if you don’t remember what they endured through; I’m going to read it. Verse 32: “But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one.” They had endured all of that affliction, and he recognizes at the end of chapter 10 that their suffering was real, their affliction was real, their pain and agony in all of that was real. And from what the author describes here, it looks as if it is only, in his mind, about to get much worse. And he is equipping his readers to deal with that affliction. So he recognizes that at the end of chapter 10.

Then in chapter 11 he reminds them that this is not at all uncommon for the saints of God. You go through the catalog of the heroes of the faith, they all sacrificed something, they all endured something. It wasn’t easy for any of them. There were good times and there were bad, yes. But some of them, you remember, they were sawn in two, they were stoned, they wandered about in caves and holes in the ground trying to find shelter. They endured all of those things. So what they were enduring was not out of the ordinary in terms of God’s saints. And then in chapter 12, he counsels them to run the race with endurance, just as the heroes in chapter 11 have done.

So at the end of chapter 10: you’re suffering. Hebrews chapter 11: What you’re enduring is the same thing that all the saints of old have endured. How do you handle that? Chapter 12, verses 1–3: you’re to run your race that is set before you with endurance, and do so looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith. So that’s the theme of what the author has developed. But listen, he has not answered one key question that anybody with two brain cells to rub together in that congregation would have been asking. They would have had a very pressing question. Why do I endure these things? Why am I going through these things? If I am the object of God’s love, His infinite and unbounding love, then why do I suffer? That’s a good question, isn’t it? Why, if I am elect, and I have been granted grace in Christ from eternity past, and the plan of salvation was hatched with me in mind, and the Son came to live in my place and to die in my place and to rise again in my place and then to bring me to Himself and to secure me everlastingly and then to pour out upon me His infinite grace and love for all of eternity—if that is the plan, and if that was the object of my salvation, if all of those things are true, then why is the heavy hand of God upon me in this life? It’s a very good question. If I’ve been granted all of the blessings of the new covenant, and the blessings of the new covenant and the Spirit are mine, and the Word of God is mine, and salvation is mine, then why do I feel like God is against me in this life? Why do I suffer? Why does it feel like I’m being punished for my sin? If all my sin was laid upon Jesus Christ on the cross, then why now do I feel like I’m being punished for the things that I have done?

See, that’s the question the author up to this point has not answered. I’ve been adopted into God’s family. Can I not, at least in some way, enjoy some of the family comforts? There are saints who ask themselves these questions. I’m in the new covenant and I have received the fullness, and yet I suffer persecution and hatred from the world and ostracization, affliction, and pain and trials and tribulations and temptations. This is my lot in all of this life. Why is it, why is it that it always seems as if God’s enemies have the upper hand? If you’ve never asked yourself that question, you are not watching the news. Why is it that it always seems as if God’s enemies have the upper hand and we have to suffer the afflictions? He answers that question in verses 4–11. The Father is doing something through these things that is for your good. It is a proof of His love. That is why you are enduring these things.

You see how the author, since chapter 10, has been building to this point? Now you get to chapter 12 and you realize, OK, the reason I endure the seizure of my property, the trials, the tribulations, the mockery, and the insults, the hatred of the world, being pushed out of polite society—the reason that people hate me is the Father has allowed these things, yea, even ordained these things for me and for my good. And that’s not just to talk about the affliction and suffering that you experience because other people just hate you and you’re a Christian. But these things apply also to the physical disabilities that plague us in this life, the way that life sometimes just falls out, and it’s not anybody’s fault, it’s just a result of living in a sin-cursed and fallen world. God ordains these things for us as well. Why? Because He loves us and because we are His sons.

And the afflictions that we endure in this life are far less than we deserve. He is calling us in this passage to a proper estimate of our sufferings. “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” Notice that they were striving against sin and they were resisting temptation and they were engaged in a great conflict and they had paid a price for their faithfulness—we know all of that—but not to the point of shedding blood. What does the author mean by that? He means that it has not yet cost you what it might and could end up costing you. The fight against sin could be more intense than it is. You’ve resisted, yes, but not to the point of shedding blood. OK, so this helps frame the mindset in which I must view my war against sin and my struggle in this world. It hasn’t cost me. The temptations always could be worse, right? The struggle always could cost me more than it has, right? That’s true. Temptations can always be more acute, more severe, and more long-lived. So, yeah, I’ve resisted, but not as much as I might have resisted had things turned out differently.

Their fight for their faithfulness and their endurance had not cost them yet everything. They had not shed their blood. It had not yet cost them their lives. They paid a price, but they hadn’t paid the ultimate price. These were their lesser sufferings. And by this time, by the way—remember in church history—by this time that the author is writing this, they would have been familiar with saints who had shed their blood, who had been faithful unto death. Already Stephen in Acts chapters 7 and 8 had been stoned. Already by this time James, the Lord’s brother, in Acts chapter 12 had been pierced with a sword and killed. So they are familiar with saints who had shed their blood and had paid the ultimate price. And this is a needful corrective. Yeah, you’re striving. Yes, you’re enduring. Yes, you’re persevering. But it has not yet cost you what it has cost others. It has not yet cost you the ultimate price.

The great faithfulness of others ought to motivate us to our own faithfulness, by the way. I want you to catch this. Others had endured more and suffered more and sacrificed more. And you and I, always, when we look at what we are afflicted with in this life, we can always look at somebody else and say, yeah, but that hasn’t happened to me yet. And if you can’t find any example in any of your life or in all of church history where you can say of that person, yes, I may be afflicted, but that hasn’t happened to me yet, then you just need to read a little bit more church history. You need to meet a few more people. And if nothing else, you need to look at Jesus Christ and realize, that has not happened to me yet. So I’ve resisted, but not yet to the point of shedding blood. The great faithfulness of others motivates us to faithfulness.

And friends, it is shameful for us to faint under lesser degrees of suffering. We can always know others who have endured more. And when we look at others who have endured more and then we say, yeah, but I just can’t endure anything else, I can’t endure more—it’s a shameful thing for us to faint under sufferings and afflictions that are less than what others have endured. What have others endured? Some of them have shed their own blood.

And by the way, don’t miss this encouragement. The most that they can do to you is shed your blood. That’s good news. That’s the most the world can do is take your life. The most they can take from you is your blood. Once they have shed your blood and killed you, that’s the most they can do to you. You say, Jim, that means they’ve taken everything. Oh no, they haven’t taken everything, not even close. They can’t take your forgiveness. They can’t take away your justification. They can’t rob you of your eternal reward. They can’t remove your status as sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus. They can’t take away from you the new heavens and the new earth and your resurrected body. All they can do is shed your blood. That’s the highest price that you will ever be asked to pay in this world in your striving against sin. Just your life. I promise you, no more. Just your life and no more. That’s the most you’ll be asked to pay.

And I would suggest to you that that is a small price to pay when you realize that the alternate is to spend eternity suffering for your own sins. Then you realize, my life is not that much, really. After all, it’s just my blood. I’ve got a whole body full of it, at least I think. I’ve got a whole body full of it. So I can shed that. I can lose that. And if I’m asked to lose that for the sake of the truth, is that really that big of a deal? Because that’s all they can take. Jesus said something similar when He said don’t fear those who can kill the body, but fear the One who can cast both body and soul into Hell (Matt. 10:28). That’s His point. The worst they can do to you in this life is take your life.

Notice also from verse 4 that God Himself appoints our afflictions. You’ve not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. There’s a recognition there that others had shed their blood and you have not. Who determines that? Who determines that somebody else suffers more than you or that you suffer more than somebody else? There’s only one being in all of the universe who has decreed that and determined that, and that is God Himself. So He is the one who appoints our suffering and our afflictions.

Not everyone dies a martyr. Not everyone sheds their blood in striving against sin. Remember that Jesus said of Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail. . . .” (Luke 22:31–32). Jesus in that moment is saying to Peter, “The devil has asked permission to come after you, to attack you, to sift you like wheat, but I am praying for you.” And if you are Peter, you would want to know the answer to this question: “So did you give the devil permission or not?” “He’s asked for permission from me, and I’m praying for you.” ”OK, the prayer is good, Lord, but there’s another question we need to deal with. Did you say yes or did you say no?”

 But the point is not whether He said yes or no. The point of that temptation, the point of Peter’s trial, is to show us, number one, that there is nothing that the devil could do to Peter that he was not given permission to do. Same thing with Job. Remember Job chapter 1. And the second point of that trial is that Jesus preserved Peter all the way through that denial and all the way through to his restoration and then used him greatly afterward.

God has appointed these afflictions for us. Nobody else has. Nobody can come at us, nobody can do anything to us unless it is appointed and designed by God to that end. And He appointed, by the way, afflictions and sufferings for His own Son, the Righteous One, in whom He is well pleased. And if the Father will teach the Son obedience through the things that He suffered, and if the Father will allow afflictions and suffering into the life of His only begotten Son, the one upon whom He has set His love from eternity past, whom He loves with an infinite measure of love, how do you think that you and I will escape that? We cannot. You say, Jim, that terrifies me. It should not terrify you at all. Remember, the whole point of this message is not to terrify you but to remind you and encourage you to embrace the discipline because it is a good thing.

Given verse 3, who might the author have in mind when he says in verse 4, “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood”? He has there the Lord Jesus Christ in mind. We are to consider Christ. Remember the beginning of verse 3—it was several weeks ago when we talked about this—the beginning of verse 3 where it says consider Him who endured such hostility at the hands of sinners. That word consider means to count up, to add up, like an accountant might do. Remember, it was the word that had to do with summing things up and adding things up so that you might compare it to some other sum or list of things that was added. And the idea being there that you consider the Lord Jesus Christ and His afflictions, and then you look at your own afflictions and you realize His far outweigh mine.

So in verse 4 when he says you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood, he is applying that very principle. When you tally up your own afflictions, your own hostility that you have endured at the hands of sinners, it does not compare to that which the Lord Jesus Christ has endured. We have not endured as He has endured. We have not suffered as He has suffered. We have not paid the full price. None of us has. And the truth is, thankfully, that none of us ever will pay a price like Jesus paid. Why? Because He paid the price that our sin deserves.

So again, there is the reminder that whatever affliction I endure, it is not as great as it could be. It is really not as great as it should be if I got justice instead of grace. So this then reminds me that I will never suffer to the degree that the Lord Jesus suffered, because I will never suffer the infinite wrath of a holy God against me for all of my sin and rebellion. However heavy my afflictions or your afflictions are, we can take solace in the fact that they are lighter than they could be. Remember that. However heavy they are, they’re much lighter than they could be. And until you or I have suffered as much as Jesus has suffered for our sin, we are getting off really easy no matter what we endure in this life. No matter what affliction or suffering or discipline comes into our lives, it is far less than our sin merits. Far less. We cannot even fathom in our minds what our sin merits. This is why the psalmist says, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute [his] iniquity” (Psalm 32:2).

O Lord, if You were to count up my transgressions, who could stand? Who could stand before Him? Who could stand before God’s holy bar, standing there in His presence, and have God start to list his sins and his iniquities? Could any of us stand before that? No, we couldn’t. And what would we get if we got what we deserved for that? We would get eternal separation from God under His wrath, in the torments of Hell, in bodily punishment forever and ever and ever. That is what my sin has merited. So no matter what discipline comes into my life in this life, it’s less than I deserve. It’s less than it could be. It’s less than I really would get if it were not for the grace of God. When I remember that and I compare the two, this is the beginning step to having the mindset to embrace the discipline of God in our lives.

To be clear—we’re going to get into more of this next week, and I don’t want you to misunderstand me, so I don’t want to leave you hanging on this—to be clear, God’s discipline is not punishment for our sins. Who paid for your sins? Christ did. I’ll develop this next week. Who paid for your sins? Christ did. So whatever discipline comes into your life, it is not a punishment or a payment for your sin. God has exacted in full every last measure of the debt that your sins merited, laying them upon His Son and punishing them fully in Christ. He has borne all of that wrath. He has drunk that cup down to the last bitter drop for our wrath. So there is no punishment to be meted out to God’s people, none whatsoever. So discipline is not about punishment. Christ has borne that punishment. Discipline is about being trained in righteousness. So whatever you are going through, you will always be wrong, always be in error, and always be saying something false if you say God is punishing me for my sins. God is not unjust, and He is not unloving, and it would be both unloving and unjust for God to punish His Son for your sins and then to punish you for some sin. Discipline is not God’s punishment for your sin.

This is the proper perspective: God’s discipline, our afflictions, though they cost us things—our faithfulness, though it may cost us, it has not cost us yet everything, and it has not cost us what it cost others. And whatever it has cost us, it costs us far less than we deserve.

Now, what sin is it that they were resisting? This is something that is true regarding reference to sin in general, that you and I strive against sin, but it is also something that is true of a specific sin that this congregation in the first century would have been struggling with. They were faced with the temptation—and persecution helped bring about this temptation—they were faced with the temptation to step back in their profession of faith in Christ, to abandon their confidence that they had in Christ. Because having come out of Judaism and having left the temple worship and all of the forms and figures of Old Testament Judaism, now they have come to Christ and they have none of that. They have left and come out of that into a new covenant community, the church, and now all of their old family and friends who were part of that Judaism and the old system, they were now persecuting them. And this congregation then would have been facing the very real temptation that would have said, if I just give up my confession of Christ, abandon my confidence in Him, and go back to what I had before when things were easy, life would be easier. But it would also be sin, wouldn’t it, to abandon that?

So that’s the temptation that they are facing, the temptation to abandon their profession and to fall back and to walk away. To basically give in and deny Christ and thus apostatize. That was the sin that presented itself. And these believers had then to resist that sin and to strive against that sin, and the more they resisted the temptation to apostatize and go back and make it easy on themselves, the worse and worse it got for them. So he says you’ve not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. That is the sin. The sin that they had to fight was the temptation and the sin of denying Christ in a context in which professing Christ was ultimately probably going to cost them everything. To deny Him would be a sin. To remain silent would be a sin. To adopt the perspective of this world and its values would have been their sin. To abandon their profession, give up their confidence in Christ for ease and comfort and relief from affliction and persecution would have been sin. They had to resist. They had to strive against it. And that was the temptation that they had to endure and not give in to.

Say you grew up in a Christian family. Look, none of my kids are facing persecution for being Christians from their family members. None of them are. Probably not very many people in here are really striving against the sin or the temptation of abandoning Christ just so your life will be easier. At least, not at this point we aren’t. It may come around sometime in our lives. We don’t know. But at this point, we don’t face that. But we do, nonetheless, strive against sin, and we are obligated to strive against sin. Notice how the author assumes that in verse 4. You’re not resisting to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin. This was nothing unique for them. And it is something that is true of every believer, that every believer has a responsibility to strive against sin. If you are in Christ, this is your lifelong war.

The word striving here is antag?nizomai. Antag?nizomai. And it means to struggle or to strive or to conflict with. And you can hear the word, our English word, antagonism or antagonist in that word antag?nizomai, to antagonize someone. So when you’re antagonizing someone, you’re picking a fight with them, you’re striving against them, you’re struggling against them. That’s what an antagonist does. An antagonist doesn’t make life easy for you. And as sin’s antagonist, you should not make life easy for your sin. This is what it means to go to war with your sin, to say no to it, to resist it, to not yield your instruments as members of unrighteousness, but to yield them instead as instruments of righteousness to do the will of God. Our striving against sin means that we repent of sin, we kill it, we mortify it, we put it to death. It’s not easy, but it is essential. And whether that sin is the temptation to deny Christ in order to make your life easier, as it was for them, or whether that sin is the temptation to lust or to lie or to be lazy or whatever the sin is, you and I are to strive against it, to be an antagonist against the sin in our own lives.

You and I cannot hope—we cannot possibly hope to persevere in faith faithfully and receive the reward if we will not fight the fight against indwelling sin. And this is the beauty of God’s discipline. It helps us to fight the battle against indwelling sin. And if we understood how ugly, how hideous, and how horrid our indwelling sin is, which none of us here does, if we understood it, we would embrace that discipline, understanding that this is necessary for me to finish my race, for me to cross the finish line and to get the reward. And the Father knows exactly what my indwelling sin is, and He knows exactly what needs to happen to me and what I need to endure in order to get rid of that indwelling sin and to have that indwelling sin mortified. God’s discipline makes the mortification or striving against sin easier, and therefore we should embrace it and we should love it.

Sin in us will strangle our faith. It will quench our holy desires. It will numb our conscience. It will cripple your walk with God. It will rob you of your assurance. And here’s the kicker: it gives us nothing in return. It does all of that and gives us nothing in return.

A walk in faith is going to produce in us a striving against sin. And if there is no striving against sin, there is no true faith. Only believers strive against sin. Only believers hate their sin; unbelievers don’t. And if there is no striving against it, then you have every reason to question whether it is genuine faith inside at all. We must strive against sin. It is our obligation.

So this is the very first thing that you and I must remember if we are to embrace God’s loving discipline, that the afflictions that we endure are less than we deserve. The second thing of our mindset is that we have to remember that God’s discipline is for His sons and not His enemies.