For they indeed chastened for a few days, as seemed good to them; but he for profit, in order to the partaking of his holiness.
The verse sets two fathers side by side: the ones who raised us and the One who now trains us. Three things separate them: how long their authority lasts, what guides it, and what it aims at.
Our human fathers deserved respect. But there was a ceiling on what they could do. Their rule was short, and their judgment was their own.
Many an earthly father wavers. Some are plainly unwise and unworthy. None is reliable in absolutely everything. Yet we used to pay them respect during the "short time" of their authoritative training, whatever failures happened now and then through the weakness of the flesh. For they could not rise above what "seemed best to them." They could be mistaken, and sometimes they were. Not so the Father of spirits. He alone is wise. He is good and does good. He acts without error for our advantage, so that we may share His holiness.
A human father goes by what seems right to him. God's training is different, down to the smallest detail.
God Himself designed this human relationship as a picture of something much higher and spiritual. Correcting a child is absolutely essential for the child's good. Yet it depends on the father's attitude. Whatever seems suitable to him will govern how he trains the child. But God's training is perfection itself: its object is the pure profit of the child, and no detail of it can be a mistake. How good to be in such a hand! Only in this way do we learn to conform to God's own character of holiness, to honestly love what is good, and to hate evil.
Human parents are pulled by other things. God is not.
An earthly parent is often ruled by instinctive fondness instead of sound love. Even when he means well, his own inherent selfishness frustrates him and blocks his work in a thousand ways. God is not like this. He chastens us for our profit. This is His immediate and undivided object.
The verse does not say God trains us to become holy people. It says we come to share what belongs to God Himself. That turns a demand into a gift.
He delights in us, and He delights in conforming us to Himself. So grace comes in wonderfully and makes us share His nature. It is of what He is that He would have us partakers — not merely partakers of holiness, but of His holiness. He does not say, You must be holy; it does not come out in that form: He communicates the holiness — His own nature. See the contrast between grace and law. Does not God require holiness in His presence? That is true, but that is law. Grace means that He delights to give it.
The New Testament uses more than one word for holiness. Darby points out which one stands here:
We need to distinguish between the words used for holiness and sanctification in the New Testament. One word, hagiōsynē, is the thing itself, the habit. Once — in Hebrews 12:10 — it is hagiotēs, the holiness of God Himself.
God loosens our grip on the things our hearts wrap themselves around.
Like vines, our poor hearts send out tendrils in every direction. They wind themselves around this object and that. Then the Father allows trials or persecutions, or maybe sickness, to come in and snap these ties to objects other than Christ. In these chastenings of His hand He shows us Himself and His love to us. So He seeks to wean us from everything that might hinder our progress, and to draw us more fully to Himself.
Even the hardest things a believer meets can serve this purpose.
There is almost no limit to the discipline God may use to exercise His children's souls. Physical death may, in His hands, be a way of rescue from something worse. The Lord may chasten this way to save His people from the condemnation of the world (1 Cor. 11:32). But in every case His object is their profit. He will make them partakers of His holiness.
The correction itself proves the relationship.
When a father chastises his child, it is not to kill it, but to form it according to his own character. This is how God deals with us too, "that we may share His holiness" (Heb. 12:10). This is a comforting thought. God acknowledges us as His children when He chastens us. He chastens us precisely because we are His children.
- Cause — sonship. Correction is not a sign that God has turned away; He deals with us this way because we are His children.
- Method — perfect. Human fathers ruled for a short time and acted on what seemed best to them. The Father of spirits acts without error. No detail of His training is a mistake.
- Aim — undivided. Our profit is not one of His motives among several; it is His immediate and single object.
- Gift — His own holiness. He does not merely demand holiness of us; He communicates His own nature. Grace gives what law requires.
- Reach — unlimited. Trials, sickness, loss, even death may serve this end; in every case the aim stays the same — that we share His holiness.
But no chastening at the time seems to be [matter] of joy, but of grief; but afterwards yields [the] peaceful fruit of righteousness to those exercised by it.
Hebrews 12:11 admits something hard and promises something good in one breath: discipline hurts now, and it pays later. But the promise has one condition — the fruit comes only to "those who have been trained by it."
The verse does not soften the experience, and commentators are quick to say why. If correction could be arranged so that it caused no pain, it would stop being correction at all.
The writer goes on to say that "for the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant." Do you know what we all wish for? A kind of discipline that does not hurt — one that might even be a pleasure to go through. But that would be no discipline at all. It has to be painful, or it is not discipline.
That means grief itself is not a failure of faith. What God objects to is a different set of reactions.
Restlessness, or indifference, or despair are all alike sin. Sorrow is not. God expects Christians to call bitter things bitter. Suppose they do. Suppose by faith they see whose hand is giving the grief, and accept the trial as a sign from the Father. Then trouble will produce patience. Patience draws them into deeper dealings with God, and that gives them a fuller experience of Him and of His way.
The promise hangs on a word that means effort, not sitting still. One writer traces it back to its root.
The great thing is to be exercised by our troubles. Discipline means trouble. The verse itself says no discipline seems pleasant at the time. And exercise means we turn our troubles into a spiritual gymnasium. The Greek word used here is the one our English word "gymnasium" comes from. Gymnastics for the body have some profit, as 1 Timothy 4:8 tells us. Gymnastics for our spirits bring great spiritual profit. They lead to both holiness and righteousness.
In practice this means asking what the trouble is for, not just waiting for it to pass.
God wants us to feel the discipline. He wants to produce in us self-judgment and humbling before Him. That is why the blessed result comes only to those the discipline exercises. If His hand upon us produces no exercise of soul, there will be no blessing.
Because the fruit is conditional, the same trouble can end in two opposite places. Suffering by itself guarantees nothing.
The clearest proof that discipline has done good is that the sufferer is conscious of more peace. But where God's dealings are not recognised by faith, this cannot happen. Endurance on its own, with no stirring of the spirit, only hardens the sufferer and drags him down.
The fruit shows up first in a will that has stopped fighting.
God does not expect us to enjoy these exercises of soul at the time. If they were pleasant, they would not do their work. But afterwards, once the will is broken, they produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. Pride comes down when a man has to submit to what he never wanted. God also takes a larger and ever more precious place in his thoughts and in his life.
The change shows up in a person's temperament.
If we work through His dealings with us before the Father, hardship will not sour us or make us bitter. It will soften us and mellow us. In the end the character of Christ shows in us, and we bear fruit.
One word in the verse points past the trouble to the result.
Wise people look ahead to the afterward — the result of the trial. This result does not hang in the balance, the way the outcome of some great battle may hang for hours and days. God guarantees it. We only stand to gain if we are exercised by the trial.
Behind the pain stands a purpose that was thought out in advance.
What God brings on the believer is not just the product of divine goodness. It is the deliberate planning of divine love. However severe the trial, however deep the pain, however hard the test, it only convinces us more of that clear, warm love which makes no mistakes. That love cares so much about God's purpose being worked out in us that it will not shrink back from using means that hurt. For the moment they bring a tear to the eye and make the whole body wince and shake.
- Planned — what reaches the believer is more than goodness. It is love planning on purpose, and that love will use means that make the body wince.
- Painful — correction that does not hurt would not be correction; God means it to be felt, and calling a bitter thing bitter is not sin.
- Exercised — the promise is for those trained by the trouble, who turn it into a gymnasium for the soul. Endurance that never sees God's hand only hardens.
- Afterward — the outcome does not hang in the balance like a battle; the exercised believer only stands to gain.
- Fruit — the will is broken, pride comes down, God fills a larger place, and the person emerges mellowed rather than soured.