The Father’s discipline is not a terror, but a blessing to His children. We’ve seen the contrast, which should be an encouraging one. On the one hand, Christ endured the wrath of God through the scourgings and mockings of men, an endurance ultimately culminating upon the cross. This is our Lord and Savior who serves as the archetype of the Christian life, the great template of our religion. He went all the way to bloodshed and death. Yet, on the other hand, there is us. We have low thoughts of sin, rarely do we despise it as we ought. We do not war with it as we ought. We will not sacrifice even the least creature comfort in order to mortify it. Not only this, but whereas Jesus Christ suffered the wrath of God for sins that were not His own, we are blessed by immense grace in suffering the loving and kind discipline of God for sins that indeed belong to us. We deserve wrath, we get the grace of discipline in Christ Jesus, and we still complain as if some injustice has occurred.
The love of our own parents, in their discipline of our disobedience, is analogous to the discipline of our heavenly Father. And this is what vv. 7-11 serve to illustrate. This text comes to us as yet another reason for why we ought to “run with endurance (Heb. 12:1).” The first reason was the cloud of witnesses surveyed in Hebrews 11. The second reason is a consideration of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, the reason is the kind and loving discipline of the Father. In v. 12, a conclusion will be drawn from all these reasons, “Therefore, strengthen the hands which hang down…” Our author is giving us several reasons for why we ought to strengthen our hands and make straight our paths, and to persevere. Beginning in v. 7, our author gives reason for why we ought to endure the Fatherly chastening mentioned in vv. 3-6. “If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons…”
If a person endures or perseveres under the chastening of the Lord, they are dealt with as sons. “[Because],” our text says, “what son is there whom a father does not chasten?” Our heavenly Father, if indeed He be a Father to us, is faithful to chasten us. This is a natural and normal part of the father-son relationship. “But,” v. 8 says, “if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.” That is, if you are separated from chastening, or out from under God’s chastising care. The phrase, “of which all have become partakers,” should be understood as “all [true sons].” The point of our author in saying this is to note the universality of discipline among the true sons of God. John Owen says on this point, “it is altogether vain to look for spiritual sonship without chastisement. They are all partakers of it, every one of his own share and portion.” It would be absurd for a professing child of God to think himself exempt from divine chastisement.
Moreover, if a professing child of God is truly without divine chastisement, as our text makes clear, he is illegitimate. The more accurate term here is bastard child. A child without the loving care of his father, through chastisement, must not be a child to that father at all, and thus one in name only—hence an illegitimate one. The contrast in vv. 7-8 is between a child who receives chastisement from God, and a person who claims to be a child, yet does not receive chastisement from God.
In v. 9, our author moves into an analogy, “Furthermore,” as in, “In addition.” And he adds the normal father-son relationship as an analogy for the heavenly Father-earthly sons relationship. “We have had human fathers who corrected us…” Human fathers correct their children. This is a description of the human norm as it regards fathers and sons. The Scriptures assume this kind of relationship between a father and his child is a normal one, and is indeed intended to image the heavenly Father’s activity as it respects His adopted sons and daughters in Christ. It is nothing less than the recognition of Proverbs 22:6 in practice, “Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it.” In fact, the word for “corrected,” could be rendered, “instructor,” or, “trainer.” Fathers are our trainers. Our earthly father-son relationships are to be images of our heavenly Father’s relationship to His people.
In v. 9, there are two duties mentioned. First, the duty of the father to instruct his children. Second, the duty of the children to respect the father. Our author is here working off the foundation of the law, specifically, the fifth commandment, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the LORD your God is giving you (Ex. 20:12).” In the fifth commandment, both duties are implied—parents to children, children to parents. Parents, especially fathers, must be honorable. Children must honor.
If this is the case in human relationships, says our author, “Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live?” Our earthly parents are, to one extent, responsible for our welfare. They ensure our livelihoods at a young age, on until we reach adulthood. But their responsibility for our lives is limited. They feed us, provide us with shelter, and more importantly, they are to provide us with instruction. But they are not the ultimate cause of our lives. Indeed, they themselves rely on someone else for their lives, i.e. their parents. And if we trace such a chain back, we will see all human parents must finally ground their existence in God. Therefore, since we rendered obedience and respect to our creaturely parents, as we should, how much more ought we render respect to the Lord of life itself. Life is what the phrase “Father of spirits” intends. Job 12:9, 10 says, “Who among all these does not know That the hand of the LORD has done this, In whose hand is the life of every living thing, And the breath of all mankind?” That term for breath in the Hebrew, in Job 12, could easily translate into this Greek word for spirit here in Hebrews 12. The Father of spirits is the Father of life itself. If our earthly parents provided for us, and we respect them for it in accordance with the fifth commandment, how much more ought we regard the Father not only of our lives, but of their lives, and the lives of every person that has ever lived, from Adam onward?
In v. 10, we see a contrast between earthly fathers and our heavenly Father, “For [our earthly fathers] indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them…” This is not saying that the discipline of fathers is to no avail, but that it is to no effect if indeed God is not behind it. A man cannot affect a change in the hearts of his sons anymore than he can paint the sky green. Moreover, man’s discipline is at best approximate, and never perfect. This does not mean it should not be carried through. The Scriptures are clear: fathers are charged to discipline their children. However, it cannot compare to the accuracy and efficacy of our heavenly Father’s exacting chastisement. He disciplines “for our profit.” A profit that is certain. And its fruit? “That we may be partakers of His holiness.” On this text, Owen writes:
The holiness of God, is either that which he hath in himself, of that which he approves of and requires in us. The first is the infinite purity of the divine nature; which is absolutely incommunicable unto us, or any creature whatever. Howbeit, we may be said to be partakers of it in a peculiar manner, by virtue of our interest in God, as our God: as also by the effects of it produced in us, which are his image and likeness, Eph. iv. 24; as we are said to be made “partakers of the divine nature,” 2 Pet. i. 4.
Thus, when our text says “His holiness,” it does not intend that infinite holiness which could never be shared with any creature, “I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images (Is. 42:8),” and, “I will not give My glory to another (Is. 48:11).” We image the holiness of God, and it is the restoration of this image of holiness to which our text speaks. That is the end of Fatherly chastening. Finally, v. 11 adds an additional encouragement. We’ve seen that this leads to our participation in the holiness of God. But in v. 11, we learn, “no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” God’s chastisement is the schoolhouse of righteousness. That which appears to lack joy, and that which feels painful produces the fruit of righteousness, or the ends of sanctification—our conformity unto Christ Jesus who was and is the example to which we’ve been looking in vv. 1-6.
Victory Baptist Church | A Calvinistic (Reformed) Church in Kansas City 