DEVOTION
TO HEBREWS
INSTRUCTION AND
DISCIPLINE
Heb 12:7-11
7 Endure hardship as discipline;
God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? 8
If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are
illegitimate children and not true sons. 9 Moreover, we have all had human
fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should
we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! 10 Our fathers disciplined us
for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good,
that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time,
but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and
peace for those who have been trained by it.
NIV
We first need to understand this discipline
is more like being chastised, or corrected when we make a mistake. God is cultivating
our souls, instructing us so that we curb our passions bend toward sin. Of
course, He wants us to have passion toward him, rather than away from him. Yet,
we also are encouraged because we are not bastards, which is the direct meaning
of the word, nothos, which is translated here as illegitimate children.
If we are not the real children of God, then we are alone, left to suffer on
our own, making our way through life on our strength, making many mistakes, having
no direct path to peace and rest, but only that wide road that leads straight to
hell. However, we gladly accepted God’s salvation, we turned to Jesus as our
Lord and Savior, because death in hell seemed insufferable. However, along with
that grace comes the truth in our lives. We are instructed in the way we are
to go. Of course, we love the Lord and respect our Heavenly Father beyond all
others. When we pray as Jesus instructed us, we start right off with “Our Father,
who is in Heaven, Hallowed be your name”. When we hallow His name, we make His
name holy, and pure, above all others. We also ask that His will be done on earth,
or in our lives, just as His will is done in heaven. We want His discipline and will to be accomplished in us, and we want to be corrected when we
make a mistake and begin to wander off that path He has lit for us to follow.
This happens when we start paying attention to our will, and get distracted by
the things of things of this world. How can we live under two fathers? We only
have had one earthly father, and he is the one whose DNA we have within us, he
fathered us, giving us this earthly life, but it leads us not to heaven, but to
hell. When we turn to God and want Him to be our Father, it means we accept His
DNA within us, we are made by him, and He gave us life, one that leads to life everlasting.
How then can we refuse His correction in our souls, in our spirits? How can we say that we still want to follow
our path in life, and try to include Him as we walk our own way? That just does
not make any sense at all if we agree God is our Father in Heaven and we want His
will to be done in us. That requires both instruction and discipline.
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