What does the Bible say about discipline?

To help us in the path of faith we have the discipline of the Father. It may or may not be corrective, but it always has as its object our purifying. To chasten is to purify. This has always been God’s way with His children, even as Solomon wrote, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of His correction: for whom the Lord loves He corrects; even as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:11–12). Solomon, like the writer here, considers discipline in both its purifying and corrective aspects.

409 We having this nature, born of God, which has to be manifested (and alas! we find in nature many hindrances - temper, etc.), God sets about to do it for us, when we fail to resist "striving against sin," by chastenings, etc. We are set in the place of children and we must look to what God's thoughts are about us. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." I get the discipline, or chastenings, that God sends to those He loves. There is my will to be broken, perhaps, and tendencies to be found out in myself that I did not know of before, to humble me. I become exercised about good and evil. He hates the evil and loves the good, and is breaking us down, subduing the evil, wearing it out, etc. He is bringing us nearer to Himself. God is educating us as children. Sometimes when we do not see what He is doing, we get the blessing. Will works in us; He comes in to smash the will; and we see afterwards that we have got the blessing through it.

362 But there is a government of God in this world over those who are thus redeemed, and ever has been. "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." And when God exercises this discipline, which is always for our good in love, when a soul is truly humbled, He in His wisdom often takes it away, forgiving, as to His present government and ways, the sin which made it necessary. Not that all such visitations are because of sins. The world is in a state of misery through sin, and all are liable to be subject to this servitude of corruption. This the Lord states in John 9:3.

The Apostle speaks of chastening and scourging. The scourging may be more the governmental dealing of God in rebuking and correcting for positive failure. The chastening is not necessarily for any sin, but rather to develop in us that which is according to the nature of God, that we may partake of His holiness.

In the light of the New Testament, chastening may be sent for retribution, as we see in 1 Corinthians 11:30. But on the other hand it may not be, as we see in Paul's case — 2 Corinthians 12:7, - where the thorn in the flesh was preventive; lest he should be puffed up and fall. Yet again, it may be neither retributive nor preventive but educational, as Hebrews 12 shows. The Father trains and disciplines His children, and even scourges them; but all is in pursuance of His objective - "that we might be partakers of His holiness."

Hebrews 12:5-11 gives us information as to this line of things. “Chastening” however, carries with it the general thought of discipline and training, including punishment, but that is only a part of it, and possibly a small part of it.

The discipline of an army includes its whole training and system of which punishment is a last resource. Our passage, in way of illustration, speaks of the discipline or training our fathers in the flesh gave us.

The object of judgment is to obliterate evil; and when it is a question of sin, according to God’s estimate of it, death is the just and the only penalty in so far as life in this world is concerned. “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” But as that rigorous sentence would carry every soul into eternal punishment, God, who desires not the death of the sinner, introduces the principle of substitution, executes judgment to the uttermost upon His own Son, making Him, who never knew sin, to be sin for us, and then preaches peace and life by Jesus Christ. This at once divides the world into two classes, — those who accept God’s proclamation of peace and life, upon His condition of obedience to His Son, and those who do not. It also leaves God free to act in minor judgment (so to speak) in His moral government of this world. That is, to deal with evil in a way that a divinely instructed man must acknowledge to be holy, just, and good. And this minor judgment (such as loss of friends and property or bodily suffering), suiting itself to the needs of the two classes above mentioned—needs observed and estimated by a God of perfect wisdom and perfect love and grace—takes the form respectively of chastisement (properly child-training), or else, as in the case of the prodigal son, of special appeal or solemn warning. So that what might appear, at first sight, to be judgment, is really nothing but the divine movement of the heart that yearns over His ignorant, self-willed, and erring people, of the God that speaks in righteousness, mighty to save. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.”

Discipline means subjection to rule, development of the habit of obedience by training and instruction, correction, and chastisement. It is the educative training of the disciple. This is what is necessary in the home, in the school, in government, and likewise in the house of God. No institution can prosper or succeed without such discipline.

Discipline must not be thought of as merely an act of the Assembly. It is much more than that. It embraces the instructing of souls in the ways of God, correction, training in obedience, subjection to rule, and all phases of pastoral dealing with souls. The majority of cases of discipline which should be handled in an Assembly should be of a private nature, exercised by overseers and pastoral in character. The exercise of such watchful, shepherd care for the sheep, feeding, guarding, leading, correcting, and reproving in love, is a most important phase of discipline and will often have the result of rendering more severe forms of discipline unnecessary. It is of the utmost importance, then, that such care be exercised in the Assembly. Discipline begins with this.

Thus godly discipline is necessary to arrest the defiling effect of sin in the Assembly, thereby keeping it clean and unleavened. If one in whose heart the leaven of sin is working does not yield to instruction, pleading, warning, reproof, and godly care and judge himself, but persists in his course, the Assembly must, after due time and effort to deliver him, purge out that leavened person by putting him or her away as an evil person so that the gathering will not become leavened by this defiled one.

But we must not think of discipline as being merely a deliberative and judicial act whereby one is excommunicated-put out of the Assembly. The great purpose of discipline should ever be to prevent the necessity of putting one away from the fellowship of believers. Nine tenths of the discipline which should go on in an Assembly ought to be individual in character, the exercise of pastoral care, and not that of the whole Church acting in judgment. All discipline should have correction and restoration as its aim. The extreme act of putting one outside the Assembly is not, properly speaking, discipline.