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. -Hebrews 12:4-11
I was just reflecting on this passage tonight. As I’m going through a particular trial right now—some of it having to do with my personality and the way I’m wired—I was thinking about how the LORD might be using this literal fire in my life right now. There are certain areas in my life that have been unhealthy, I think. That I have been living in an undisciplined way in certain aspects of my life; that I have been allowing certain pet sins to go unchecked and unmortified; and that the LORD as a faithful and loving heavenly Father only allows His children to stay wayward in certain ways for so long, then He acts. But He doesn’t act with vindictive, but with the heart of a Father for a son or daughter that He has unmatchable love towards. And so, in His ways that aren’t our ways, He brings discipline into our lives in ways that might, in the moment seem like a touch of hell. Of course, it isn’t a touch of hell, but in fact, and instead, it is Christ’s death, which is greater than hell, that we come to experience as sons and daughters of the living Father. Nevertheless, this taste of Christ’s death can and does feel precisely like hell, at points. And yet as the author of the Hebrews, by the Holy Spirit, is noting: God’s ‘scourging’ reflects His deep Fatherly love for us; even though in the moment it might ‘feel’ like He hates us. He is able to reverse this ‘scourging’ in such a way, and at such a time (usually at the point that you feel beyond capable) that we come to recognize that He loves us just as much as He loves the Son who first died for us, that we might die, and then live with Him. Part of the Father’s discipline of us is what Paul identifies in II Corinthians 4:10 as: “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you.” It is this reality of Christ’s death in us, by the Spirit, that the reality of Christ’s life becomes ever more effervescent and apparent as we grow and walk with Him as maturing sons and daughters of the eternal Father.
I feel like I’m on the ‘death’ side of this dialectic right now. It is not fun, and yet the Father is being the Father. He remembers our frames are but dust (apparently dust is a lot sturdier than I realized, or had hoped for), and thus takes us as far as a wise Father knows He can before it is finally too far (and that is a statement of faith). God isn’t the punisher, but the Father; and as such, He disciplines so that we’ll look more and more like the ground of our life in the eternal Son, Jesus Christ. As a corollary, He also knows each one of us intimately. In other words, He knows how to work the soil of our lives in such a way that it is tailored to who we are as individual members of the body of Christ. This is why when Peter is wondering about John’s future vis-à-vis his, Jesus says the following to him:
18 Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go.” 19 Now this He said, signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. And when He had spoken this, He *said to him, “Follow Me!”
20 Peter, turning around, *saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; the one who also had leaned back on His bosom at the supper and said, “Lord, who is the one who betrays You?” 21 So Peter seeing him *said to Jesus, “Lord, and what about this man?” 22 Jesus *said to him, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!” 23 Therefore this saying went out among the brethren that that disciple would not die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but only, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you?” -John 21:18-23
Each one of us has a different story being told through us of God’s poetic work of re-creation that first took place in the one for the many, Jesus Christ. Peter’s story, and the way the Father through the Son by the Spirit was working in Peter’s life would end up looking completely different from the way He ended up working in John’s life, in regard to their trajectories, and even their deaths. I can’t help but think that Jesus didn’t have Isaiah’s teaching in mind, in regard to the way that Yahweh works sensitively per the “soils” He has before Him:
23 Give ear and hear my voice,
Listen and hear my words.
24 Does the farmer plow continually to plant seed?
Does he continually turn and harrow the ground?
25 Does he not level its surface
And sow dill and scatter cummin
And plant wheat in rows,
Barley in its place and rye within its area?
26 For his God instructs and teaches him properly.
27 For dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
Nor is the cartwheel driven over cummin;
But dill is beaten out with a rod, and cummin with a club.
28 Grain for bread is crushed,
Indeed, he does not continue to thresh it forever.
Because the wheel of his cart and his horses eventually damage it,
He does not thresh it longer.
29 This also comes from the Lord of hosts,
Who has made His counsel wonderful and His wisdom great. -Isaiah 28:23-29
Our Father knows how to “work us over,” but with a Father’s love. It might not ‘feel’ like love in the moment, but in the end, based on the fruit cultivated it will be ‘a sweet-smelling aroma leading to life.’