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."