We are in Hebrews 12:4-11 this morning, wrapping up our author’s instructions on how to benefit from God’s discipline in our lives.
We have seen that our author wants us to (1) recognize God’s purpose in our discipline, which could be to correct us, protect us or perfect us; (2) but also to remember God’s encouraging word that we are His sons (Heb. 12:5); (3) then to realize God’s everlasting love (Heb. 12:6); but also to (4) regard with both seriousness and steadfastness God’s rod of discipline (Heb. 12:5); then to (5) respect God’s holy purpose in our discipline (Heb. 12:7-11); and finally, we will get to (6) reach out and help others (Heb. 12:12-13) in this race.
Verse 10 in Hebrews 12 says…
10 For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.
And here we see that another benefit of submitting to God’s discipline is that it produces “holiness.” At the end of verse 10 is says that we “share in his holiness.” God “wants to make his sons like himself. He has a specific aim that they may share his holiness. While the earthly father’s action is essentially short-term, the heavenly father is concerned with our eternal welfare. Sharing his holiness is the antithesis of a short-term benefit” (Donald Guthrie, Tyndale NT Commentaries: Hebrews, p. 255).
William Bates wrote, “The devil usually tempts men in a paradise of delights, to precipitate them into tell; God tries them in the furnace of afflictions, to purify and prepare them for heaven” (Puritan Sermons, Vol. II, p. 597).
Later our writer of Hebrews tells us that without sanctification, or holiness, we will not see the Lord. God is holy and to have fellowship with Him we must be holy. But here we are being assured that it is through discipline God so works “that we may share his holiness.” So that’s a good thing, right?
The most holy of us are those who have properly endured the most discipline. What a gift, then, discipline is! Jonathan Edwards says of such people:
They are holy by being made partakers of God’s holiness, Heb. xii. 10. The saints are beautiful and blessed by a communication of God’s holiness and joy, as the moon and planets are bright by the sun’s light. The saint hath spiritual joy and pleasure by a kind of effusion of God on the soul. (John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards , vol. 1 (Powhatan, VA: Berea Publications, 1991), p. 423, quoting from Works (Worcester reprint), IV, p. 174).
What more could we wish in this life?
It ”is only through suffering that we do come to holiness. And why does He want us holy? Because He is holy. The future fellowship He has planned for us is also holy. He has to get us ready for it. That’s why the established path is ‘suffering first and the glory which follows.’ For God to let us go through this life unchanged and unholy is unthinkable. The more holy we become, the more suited we are for a place near Him in the eternal fellowship” (C.S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Hebrews, p. 302).
If only we could remember, when we are going through the pain and trials of discipline, that it really is for our best good, our eternal best good.
God’s willingness to take the time and trouble to discipline us shows that He is more concerned about our sanctification than we often are. “We care about success; He cares about holiness. We care about temporary pleasures; He cares about eternal consequences” (Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace, p. 177). “God puts our regard for him at risk rather than allowing us to continue in courses that would damage us spiritually” (Bryan Chapell, Holiness by Grace, pp. 177-178).
If we want to see God; if we want to live with Him throughout eternity, then we must strive after holiness. Though we will “hit the wall” many times, we are called to “tough it out,” realizing that the hardships we endure are disciplines that enable us to share in God’s holiness (cf. vv. 4-11). (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, vol. 2, 178)
God wants us to live in blessed fellowship throughout eternity and that is why He disciplines us—to produce holiness in us.
Then, in verse 11, he says,
11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
He admits that discipline is not pleasant, but painful. I think we can all agree with that. Discipline is painful, not pleasant. Sometimes it really is quite painful, other times we exaggerate the pain beyond what it really is. But our author admits that discipline is painful. It is not punishment, but it is painful. But as the cliché goes, “no pain, no gain.”
It would be weird to be disciplined by your father and to come out laughing. We can only rejoice from what results from discipline, not the discipline itself. And it’s okay to acknowledge that pain and even to cry out to God to relieve it, or to ask God to help you persevere in it.
Even Jesus did that. In the Garden of Gethsemane he acknowledged the pain of taking our burden of sin. He was not being punished for His own sins, but for ours. And was an unendurable burden He was taking on.
He, according to Hebrews 5:7, “offering up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears.” He submitted to God’s will and did bear the penalty for our sins on the cross. By the way, notice that our author does not mention Jesus in this passage about discipline. Although He is our example in how to navigate suffering and trials, He never experienced the discipline of the Father.
Notice, this verse gives us two encouragements to endure God’s discipline and not lose heart.
First, it is “for the moment,” only for a limited time. Unfortunately, that limited time may be far longer than we would like. God is always “on time,” just not always on our time! Compared to the “eternal weight of glory” we will receive it ultimately will seem short and insignificant, but not while we’re going through it. When Paul is comparing today’s sufferings with eternity’s glory he says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” In other words, if you do the math, the pain we are going through now will seem like nothing compared to the glory we will experience throughout eternity. Not only is the glory greater than the pain, but eternity is much longer than “the moment.”
It may not seem like it, but the discipline will eventually be over. And when we step into eternity, the reward for going through that will be multiplied many times over. When I was a hospice chaplain I illustrated that by saying, “Take our sun, an extremely large object, but when you compare it to Canus Majoris (which means “big dog”), if our sun were the size of a golf ball, then Canus Majoris would be the size of Mount Everest. You wouldn’t be able to see a golf ball from the top of Rich Mountain, much less Mount Everest. It just wouldn’t be visible. It wouldn’t register.
Secondly, it “later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness,” but only to those “who have been trained by it.” As with trials, we have to persevere to receive the full benefits of either trials or God’s hand of discipline.
As we endure and learn our lessons from God’s discipline—whether it is to correct us from some path of sin, or to protect us from some greater sin or to perfect us—it will produce a “peaceful fruit” in our lives.
“The peaceful fruit of righteousness” comes to believers who endure under discipline—not just the objective, imputed righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), but a subjective, day-to-day righteous life. To the eyes of onlookers the believer’s righteous life becomes apparent—as he more and more shows the character of God. But that is just half of the crop, the other half being a harvest of peace— shalom. As Isaiah wrote, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever” (Isaiah 32:17). Peace— shalom —means not only quietness of soul but wholeness. As Richard John Neuhaus says: “It means the bringing together of what was separated, the picking up of the pieces, the healing of wounds, the fulfillment of the incomplete, the overcoming of the forces of fragmentation. . . .” (Richard John Neuhaus, Freedom for Ministry (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 72).
“The righteousness produced by discipline is that perfect righteousness, which, imputed in justification and striven for in the Christian race, is fully imparted when at last the victor stands before his exalted Lord face to face (1 John 3:2); of it is indeed nothing other than the unblemished righteousness of Christ himself” (Philip Edgecombe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 533).
The result of our submission to the discipline process is that God produces a spirit of conformity in our hearts and a new desire to live up to God’s standards…and that leads to true holiness. As Christians we need to submit to God’s discipline in our lives, “painful” as it may be, because it will result in fullness of life (v. 9), greater holiness (v. 10), and righteousness along with peace (“the peaceful fruit of righteousness”) when we “have been trained by it.”
The word “fruit” in this image “peaceful fruit of righteousness,” reminds us that neither righteousness nor peace are reached quickly. Spurgeon reminds us, “Many believers are deeply grieved, because they do not at once feel that they have been profited by their afflictions. Well, you do not expect to see apples or plums on a tree which you have planted but a week. Only little children put their seeds into their flower-garden, and then expect to see them grow into plants in an hour.”
This, of course, is God’s overall purpose in our lives, to “conform us to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:28-29), using both the good and the bad circumstances in our lives, the trials and the discipline of God, to produce a good result, to become more like Jesus Christ.
Coach Tom Landry of the Dallas Cowboys is reputed to have said, “The job of a coach is to make men do what they don’t want to do, in order to become what they’ve always wanted to be.” God also has a good purpose in mind for your life and He is committed to working on us to produce that holy character.
The need is that we allow ourselves to be “trained by it,” to submit to the process and stick to it until God is finished with us.
The word training is gymnazo, from which we get the word “gym,” but literally means “to strip naked.” This may be because runners ran naked, stripping off every needless weight or encumbrance.
But it also speaks to the image of a trainer looking over an athlete’s naked body, identifying which particular muscles needed a work-out in order to achieve maximum effectiveness in a race or in a match.
God’s trials and discipline are designed to identify and work on those very areas of our lives would trip us up or keep us from achieving God’s purpose in our lives. “Enduring the trial and standing the test of disciplinary affliction is precisely the ‘training’ of which our author is speaking here. It is the perspective of faith which explains the ‘unutterable and exalted joy’ of the Christian athlete as, willingly enduring all things, he fixes his gaze on the glorious Person of him who is the object of his faith and his love (v. 2 above; 1 Pet. 3:8)” (Philip Edgecombe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, p. 533).
God’s training is measured, meaning that He submits us to lesser trials before we encounter the really difficult ones. Athletes work out on lesser weights or run shorter distances in preparation for lifting heavier weights or running greater distances.
God trained David for Goliath by sending a bear and a lion first. He trained Abraham for offering up Isaac by gradually weaning him away from leaning upon other surrogates like Lot, Eliezer or Ishmael. Thus, Genesis 22 begins, “After all these things…” The really painful trial came after a series of less painful trials.
My question to you this morning is:
- Do you really want to live?
- Do you really want to grow in holiness and righteousness?
- Do you want to experience genuine peace in your life?
I imagine all of us would say, “Yes! I definitely want those things in my life.”
But are we willing to submit to the training process?
That isn’t easy for any of us to do. And that is why our last response leads us to helping one another and depending upon the Christian community for support and aid.
Finally, we need to reach out and help others.
The final verse in our passage says…
12 Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Our author well understands the tendency we all have to reject well-intentioned advice to submit to this painful training process and just waddle through the mud hole of our own misery.
We derive a kind of perverse pleasure from doing so. But verses 12-13 give us two specific actions. The telltale signs of flagging energy are drooping arms, flopping hands, and wobbling knees that reduce the runner’s stride to a halting gait.
First, strengthen your own feeble arms and weak knees. Deal with yourself first. Get your own heart right toward your troubles.
Now, the plural imperative implies a joint effort by many. We can help each other draw upon the resources of Christ by offering encouraging words and mutual prayers, sharing our experiences and sometimes simply being with a person who is going through a trial.
Second, make straight paths for your feet. In other words, watch your influence on others. Take care that you are not a stumbling block to those who travel with you, whose faith may be much weaker than yours.
These two exhortations look back to Isaiah 35:4 where the prophet exhorts:
Say to those who have an anxious heart, “Be strong; fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.”
This is not only an exhortation to wait patiently for the coming of Christ, but also to expect God to “come” in some sovereign action of deliverance in response to His people’s prayers. Acts 12 records just such a deliverance. As the people prayed, an angel released Peter from prison.
The point is, every consideration should be made to help everyone finish the race.
It reminds me of a race in which, when the gun went off, all the runners began their race. Those watching, however, knew that this was not a normal race, it was a Special Olympics race.
As the runners sped down the track as fast as their arms and legs could carry them, at about 25 meters into the race, one of the runners fell, sprawling headlong across the track. The rest of the contestants continued on down the course a few meters further.
But then, a most amazing thing happened. All of a sudden, without anyone speaking to anyone else, they ALL stopped dead in their tracks, turned around, and came back to their fallen friend. Together, they picked her up, dusted her off, and then they ran arm-in-arm to the finish line together.
Really and truly we are all disabled, and the only way we will finish the race is, of course with God’s help, but also the help of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Grace Still Amazes 