And ye have quite forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons My son, despise not [the] chastening of [the] Lord, nor faint [when] reproved by him;
Just before this, the writer pointed his readers to Jesus and what He endured. Now he turns to words they already knew but had let slip out of mind. Two questions sit at the heart of the verse. Who is God speaking to here? And how should a suffering believer read His hand behind the pain?
These readers knew the exhortation. Their problem was that they had stopped counting on it. That loss changed how they read what was happening to them.
They no longer counted it one of the special blessings of the better covenant they stood in that God disciplines His people in grace. He does so because of the family relationship that now binds them to Himself in Christ. They had forgotten the exhortation which spoke to them as children. Inwardly they had in practice left the familiar nearness of adoption. As a natural result, they misread the way God was dealing with them. Through lack of faith they had fallen into the serious error of judging God by how His dealings looked rather than by His words.
The exhortation speaks to "sons." One writer draws a careful line between that word and "children."
It is one thing to enjoy by faith your blessed and sure portion and relationship as "children of God," in the sense of John 1:12-13. The true rendering there is "children," not "sons." It is quite another thing to remember and heed the "exhortation, which speaks to you as sons."
The ESV calls it "discipline." Older versions say "chastening." Either word covers more than correction for a fault.
"Chastening," however, carries the general thought of discipline and training. It includes punishment, but that is only a part of it, and possibly a small part of it.
The passage sets chastening beside scourging. The two are not the same.
The scourging may be more God's governmental dealing with us, rebuking and correcting us for actual failure. The chastening need not be because of any sin. Its purpose is to develop in us what agrees with the nature of God, so that we may share His holiness.
The verse warns against two opposite reactions. One writer shows what each looks like.
We can despise the chastening of the Lord — we may think it a trifle, and throw it off. A man may say, I don't care for people's opinion — that is nothing to me: he may brave it out, in his own strength. He is "despising" the chastening of the Lord. He does not have to go to God about it. It cannot be a severe chastening that does not bring us to God. On the other hand, some "faint" when He rebukes them. They are overwhelmed, their hands hang down, and they lose heart.
Each warning has its own reason.
It will not be without a cause in me; it will never be without love in God. So I am not to despise it, because there is a cause in me that makes the holy God of love act this way. And I am not to faint, because it is His love that does it. It is correcting a son in whom his Father delights.
Some writers refuse to call this discipline "punishment." They base that on what Christ has already borne.
We do not like the term "punishment" as applied to the dealings of our loving Father. There is nothing penal, in the strict sense of the word, even in His wise and faithful correction. Christ our blessed Substitute exhausted on our behalf all that was penal. God chastens His children to make them partakers of His holiness, as we learn in Hebrews 12.
Commentators differ here. Pollock allows punishment as one part of chastening. Mackintosh does not like the word at all.
The quotation comes from Proverbs, where Solomon has already set out the purpose that Hebrews takes up.
The Father's discipline may or may not be corrective, but its aim is always to purify us. To chasten is to purify. This has always been God's way with His children, as Solomon wrote in Proverbs 3:11-12. Solomon, like the writer here, sees discipline as both purifying and corrective.
- Forgotten — They knew the words but stopped leaning on them. When the sense of nearness as sons fades, we misread what God is doing.
- Sons — The exhortation speaks to us as family. Discipline flows from that relationship; it does not deny it.
- Trained — "Chastening" means discipline and training as a whole. Correction for a fault is only one part of it, and maybe a small part.
- Two ditches — Despise it, and you brave it out alone without going to God. Faint under it, and your hands hang down. There is a cause in you, and there is love in Him.
- Purified — Nothing penal is left for the believer, because Christ exhausted it. What remains is a Father purifying a son in whom He delights.
for whom [the] Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives.
This verse gives the reason behind every hard thing a believer meets. Love holds the rod in the Father's hand, and it falls on sons, not on strangers. Two questions follow: why love should ever hurt, and why no child of God escapes it.
The first question is who God is dealing with here.
Notice this: God is not dealing with us as sinners again, but as sons. … Now study this whole subject of fatherly chastening. Is not this chastening really perfect in its place, and applied to every son? I thank my Father for all the chastening I have known, for these forty years.
Two wrong responses are possible: shrugging the discipline off, or collapsing under it. This verse answers both.
The Lord chastens those He loves. … The word draws two conclusions from this truth. … It will not be without a cause in me; it will never be without love in God. So I am not to despise it, because there is a cause in me that makes the holy God of love act this way; and I am not to faint, because it is His love that does it. It is a Father correcting a son He delights in.
The English word suggests punishment, but the passage is weighted differently.
This passage uses three words: chastening, rebuking, scourging. The last does of course mean a whipping, and the second means a reproof. But the first, though it may sometimes mean a beating, mainly means discipline in the sense of child-training. And note this: each of the other two words appears only once in these verses, while this one appears eight times. This is the main thought of the passage. We ARE children of God, and so we come under His training.
The verse names two things, and commentators distinguish them.
The Apostle speaks of chastening and scourging. The scourging may be more God's governmental dealing in rebuking and correcting for actual failure. The chastening is not necessarily for any sin, but rather to develop in us what is according to the nature of God, so that we may share in His holiness.
The reason behind the discipline is not always the same.
In the light of the New Testament, chastening may be sent as repayment, as we see in 1 Corinthians 11:30. But it may not be. In Paul's case — 2 Corinthians 12:7 — the thorn in the flesh was preventive, in case he should be puffed up and fall. Or again, it may be neither repayment nor prevention but education, as Hebrews 12 shows. The Father trains and disciplines His children, and even scourges them. But it is all in pursuit of His goal — "that we may share His holiness."
"Every son whom He receives" leaves no exceptions — even after the warmest welcome.
Does "scourging" look like "receiving"? Or "chastening" like "loving"? Certainly not in any other relationship, but it is exactly what marks a father's love for his son. First, it is true, came the Father's kisses of welcome. Then the BEST robe, then the ring and the sandals. Then the fattened calf, and the music and dancing. And afterwards — the rod. The rod does not taste like the kiss, but the same love that gave the kiss wields the rod.
Sometimes the discipline arrives as hostility from other people. That makes God's hand hard to see.
It is very interesting to notice the character of these chastisements. They are persecution, scorn, hatred, the reproach of man. You say, if God would only lay me on a bed of sickness, I could bear it. If it were God who had done these things — but it is just the wretched malice of man. I cannot see Him in it. Well, faith sees God in it. … We bear these things. However much they seem to come from spite, envy, or hatred, we know they also come from a Father's heart, who permits them for our blessing.
Circumstances are a poor guide to God's mind.
Worldly prosperity and celebration, even when it is the fruit of God's care behind the scenes, is not always a sign of His approval. And affliction is not a sign of His disapproval. Job's case shows this even more clearly.
- Son, not sinner. The chastening of this verse is family business. God is not dealing with the believer as a sinner again, but as a son.
- Son loved. Love is the cause: there is a reason in us, but never anything but love in God — so neither shrug it off nor sink under it.
- Son trained. The main word means child-training, not just punishment. Scourging answers actual failure. Chastening may simply grow in us what matches God's nature.
- Every son. No child is exempt. The same love that gave the welcome, the robe and the ring later takes up the rod.
- Son shaped. Even hostility from people is a tool the Father permits. It aims at one goal — that we may share His holiness.
Ye endure for chastening, God conducts himself towards you as towards sons; for who is the son that the father chastens not?
These believers were suffering at the hands of people opposed to them. The verse tells them to read that suffering as the training a father gives a son — and asks what it would mean if the training never came.
The verse does not say the discipline might come. It says why the suffering comes at all.
The sense is: not for harm but for good, for chastening you endure. It is the sure lot and mark of God's family here on earth. So the challenge follows: what son is there whom a father does not discipline? To be without such dealing, which all have shared in, would point instead to being false sons, not true ones.
The trouble these readers faced came from people who hated them. Yet God takes what those enemies do and uses it as His own discipline.
Notice one special thing here, as this unfolds God's ways with His children. He takes up "the contradiction of sinners" — the opposition and persecution we may meet in the path of faith — and uses them as needed chastisement. This Scripture does not speak of the direct dealing of God's hand. It speaks of the trials and difficulties that come with a believer's path through this world. God still uses them as instruments for our needed chastisement and blessing.
The men who caused their trouble were not the ones in charge of it.
Why did they suffer? Because they were God's sons. Men, the instruments of their sufferings, might seem to be dealing with them as they chose. It was not so. God indeed allowed it. He had His own purposes in it all for the rich blessing of His saints. Behind the hand that struck them was the Father, permitting it in His love to them and for their profit.
The most natural reading of hardship is that God is angry. The verse rules that out by naming the relationship first.
As a loving father who loves his children, He chastised them. They were not to forget this — that He speaks to them not as to sinners, but as to sons... God, as Father, permits trials and tribulations to come to believers for their own good. Such experiences are not evidence of divine displeasure, but evidences of sonship.
Enduring is not shrugging the trouble off, and it is not fighting back against it. It is a way of taking it from God.
Enduring here is therefore neither despising nor rebelling, but taking it as from the hand of God. Only in this spirit can we enjoy the privileges that belong to us as sons of our God and Father. Only then do we gain the benefit of His dealings with us... But if someone found no testing of faith after claiming to be a believer, it would show he was not a son of God at all.
The verse rests on something everyone knows about fathers. A man corrects the child who is his. One writer makes the point with a story.
Walking down the street one day, a bishop saw two boys quarrelling. As he watched, he saw that one of the two was mostly to blame. Then a man came running out of a house, seized the boy who was least to blame, and began to punish him. The bishop stepped in and said, "Why do you beat that boy? It is the other who deserves it most." "That may be," the man replied, "but this is my son." So it is; God chastises His children.
Chastening has an aim. It reaches the parts of us that we cannot reach ourselves.
God puts us in the place of children, and we must look at what His thoughts about us are... My will may have to be broken. Tendencies I never knew about may have to be uncovered in me, to humble me... He hates the evil and loves the good, and is breaking us down, subduing the evil, wearing it out. He is bringing us nearer to Himself. God is educating us as children.
- Purpose — the hardship is not aimless: "not for harm but for good, for chastening you endure." It is the sure mark of God's family in this world.
- Proof — the trouble is not God's anger. Trials are "not evidence of divine displeasure, but evidences of sonship."
- Providence — hostile men strike the blow, but God "takes up the contradiction of sinners" and uses it as the correction His children need.
- Posture — the right response is neither despising nor rebelling, but "taking it as from the hand of God." Only then do we gain the benefit of it.
- Product — God breaks our will, uncovers what we never knew was in us, and brings us nearer to Himself: "God is educating us as children."
But if ye are without chastening, of which all have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
God deals with His people as sons; verse 8 presses the other side of that. If someone never feels the Father's correcting hand, is he in the family at all — and does every believer face discipline?
Older translations use the word "bastards" where the ESV has "illegitimate children." One writer sets out what the verse is saying.
The sense is this: you endure it as chastening — not for harm, but for good. It is the unfailing portion and token of God's family here below. Therefore the challenge follows, What son is there whom a father does not chasten? To be without such dealing, which all have shared in, would instead be reason to conclude that you are false sons, not true ones.
The verse says "all have participated." That word "all" leaves no believer out.
They had received a family token: they had come to know the rod of discipline. None were exempt from this except those who wrongfully claimed the title of children. For it is in the nature of a Father to control His children for their good. Because He loves them, He is not indifferent to their ways.
The contrast is not between good sons and bad sons. It is between a real relationship and one that has no legal standing.
According to Hebrews 12:8, a bastard is not a "son." The relationship is abnormal and illegitimate. Such a "child" can only say "father" because he is tolerated.
Everything in us reads correction as a sign of displeasure. One writer answers that with a story, and then with Asaph, a psalm writer puzzled by the same thing.
Bishop Fuller has illustrated this truth by an incident. Walking down the street one day, he saw two boys quarrelling, and watching them he saw that one of the two was mostly to blame. Then a man came running out of a house, and grabbing the lad who was least to blame, he began to punish him. The bishop stepped in and said, "Why do you beat that boy? It is the other who deserves it most." "That may be," replied the man, "but this is my son." So it is. God chastises His children… Asaph did not understand this truth, and so says, "I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek. They are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind." But of himself he says, "All the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning."
Commentators differ here. One holds that the rod always answers to something real in us that needs it.
God never chastens or scourges us unless there is something in us that needs it. With this truth in our minds, we shall not complain about our sorrows or trials. Instead we shall at once seek, in the presence of God, to find out what secret sin or evil habit we have let pass unjudged. That is what has made it necessary for God to come in with His rod.
Another writer sees suffering sent to guard us, not only sent because we have sinned.
Fighting against sin in an evil world brings suffering, and that suffering is not in itself chastening. But the two may overlap, and sometimes do. In every case we wrong Him who watches over us in love, if we make light of His hand or complain under it. How often He calls us to suffer in order to guard us from what would grieve the Holy Spirit of God, and not because we have sinned! And it is happy for us when it is so.
The word translated "discipline" covers more than punishment. One writer illustrates that, and names three men God dealt with for three different reasons.
The word "chastening" has a very broad meaning: discipline. There is discipline in an army, but only a very small part of that discipline is punishment. David was chastened because of sin; Job, so that he might learn what he was; and Paul, so that he might be better fitted for God's service. We are not necessarily chastened for failure. God sees certain tendencies in us, and He disciplines us to keep us from what would lead us astray. … Someone is going on well, and God says, "I will help you to go on better."
- Token. Discipline is the family mark — the "unfailing portion and token of God's family here below," not a sign that God means harm.
- All. No one in the family is left out. The only ones outside the rod are those "who wrongfully claimed the title of children."
- Standing. The word denies relationship, not maturity: such a child says "father" only because he is tolerated.
- Proof. The boy who was punished was the man's own son. The wicked whom Asaph envied were the ones with no Father to correct them.
- Cause. Commentators differ. Some see every stroke answering hidden sin. Others see training that guards us before we fail.
Moreover we have had the fathers of our flesh as chasteners, and we reverenced [them]; shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?
The writer moves from God's correction to plain family life. We respected the men who raised us, so how much more should we bow to the Father of spirits — and what is the "life" that follows?
The verse leans on what everyone learns in childhood. One writer shows how far the comparison runs, and where it breaks down in God's favour.
The superior dignity of the Father of our spirits over the fathers of our flesh is clear. But no clearer than the unfailing character of His training, and its worthy end. Many an earthly father wavers. Some are clearly unwise and unworthy. None are reliable in everything. Yet we respected them during the "few days" of their authority over us. We did so despite the failures that showed up now and then through weakness. They could not rise above what "seemed good to them," and they were sometimes mistaken. The Father of spirits is not like that. He alone is wise. He is good and does good, acting without error for our advantage, so that we may share His holiness.
The verse sets the "Father of spirits" against our "earthly fathers". Older translations read "fathers of our flesh". The difference is not only in rank but in what each one reaches.
Our earthly fathers dealt with the flesh. The Father of spirits deals with us in chastening to form a right spirit within us, so that we may live to Him. To get the full blessing of these dealings we must fully submit to what God allows. By bowing to God in the trial, we keep God between ourselves and the trial. If we rebel and question God's way, the trial will get between us and God. Then our souls are not sustained in life, and we fall into darkness.
Because God works at that level, His aim in our trials goes deeper than our comfort.
He is the "Father of spirits" (Hebrews 12:9). It is a comforting thought that God, in His patient chastening, would refine our spirits from the coarse impulses of the flesh. His purpose in this is "that we might be partakers of His holiness."
The short closing phrase is easy to skip. One writer treats it as the whole point of submission, and states the reverse just as plainly.
He is the Father, not of our flesh, but of our spirits. By an eternal relationship we are the children of His love. Subjection to Him is our life. We came to know we were His sons by the obedience of faith, through the grace of Him who has given us birth. In the same way, our watchful attention to His will stirs the energies of spiritual life into action. To be left alone by Him is to sink into deadly sickness of the spirit. Neglected by the Father, the child soon begins to go wrong.
Another writer describes the same result as the effect discipline is designed to produce.
Discipline is for the body, but it has spiritual prosperity in view for the individual, and as a result he lives — that is the effect of subjection to God's healthy discipline.
Correction is not a sign that God has turned away. It rests on the relationship He has put us in.
As the children of God, we share all the privileges of His house. In fact the discipline of the house is as much a privilege as anything else. God acts in discipline towards us on the ground of the relationship in which He has set us. A father disciplines his children because they are his. If I see a stranger's child doing wrong, I am not called on to correct him. I am not his father. So I know neither the affections nor the responsibilities of that relationship.
Subjection is where the response starts. It is not where it stops.
There are three different attitudes of heart towards God's chastening: subjection, acceptance and rejoicing. When the will is broken, there is subjection. When we understand the purpose of the chastening, there is calm acceptance. And when our affections are engaged with the Father's heart, there is rejoicing.
The appeal rests on grace. It is aimed at readers in danger of giving up.
Observe here the grace that is appealed to. We have seen how much the Hebrews needed warning — their tendency was to fail in the course of faith. The way to prevent this is not to hold back warning. But we must still bring the soul fully into contact with grace. This alone can give strength and courage through confidence in God.
- Relationship first. God corrects us because we are His; a father disciplines his own children, not a stranger's.
- Reach. Earthly fathers dealt with the flesh for a few days, and sometimes got it wrong. The Father of spirits works inside us, without error, to refine our spirits from the coarse impulses of the flesh.
- Response. Bow in the trial and you keep God between yourself and it; rebel, and the trial comes between you and God.
- Result. Subjection to Him is our life. To be left alone by Him is to sink into deadly sickness of spirit.
- Ripening. Subjection is the first step. Understanding brings calm acceptance, and hearts engaged with the Father's heart reach rejoicing.