The Discipline That God Has Promised Us
Hebrews 12:1-17
Last week, we were humbled as we reflected upon how various individuals persevered in faith and yet never saw the fulfillment of God's promise (e.g., Abraham, Moses, etc.). All these individuals are waiting for the ultimate consummation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This brings us the theme of this sermon series: running the race together. As early as Abel, every person of God is still waiting, which should compel us to endure in this race. However, this kind of endurance is not natural, but is instead developed through discipline. Thus, the focus of this chapter is on the discipline that God promises all his children whom he loves in Christ.
Even with discipline, we have a distorted and unbiblical understanding. For instance, we think of parents who lose control over their emotions. Or how God is angry at or disappointed with us. Hebrews 12, however, defines discipline as something done by a wise father who is expressing a paternal love to his child by teaching, training, correcting, and/or chastising the child so that the child can become more like Christ.
When we think of a disciplined person, we think of someone who does certain things scrupulously. Maybe someone who reads the Bible, prays, goes to church, etc., consistently. This again misses the mark of what Hebrews 12 is revealing. Hebrews 12 describes what a disciplined person looks like: someone who recognizes that his or her default actions, speech, or thoughts/attitude are sinful, so s/he instead responds with actions, speech, or thoughts/attitude that are Christ-like. This change in response (i.e, from default to Christ-like) is not natural, so it requires discipline.
We, of course, do not have an intrinsic ability to become more like Christ. We not only need his faith (as we focused on last week), but we need his discipline. Praise God that his discipline confirms that he is our faithful, committed, and perfect Father who will mature and conform us to be shaped in the image of the Son through the power of the Spirit!
Questions:
1. What are your immediate understandings of the verb discipline or the adjective disciplined? For instance, what comes to mind when you see a child being disciplined or when you think of someone who is disciplined?
2. How do these understandings miss the mark in comparison to what we learned from Hebrews 12? And how can this make a difference in your own life and relationship with God?
3. Does it surprise you that Hebrews 12 focuses less on what we typically think of when it comes to being disciplined (e.g., actions or doing things diligently) and more about our attitudes (e.g., peace, bitterness, impulsiveness)?
4. In your life, what kind of attitudes need to be disciplined by God? Close your time by praying for one another in this regard (and other prayer requests).
