Rather than dividing suffering into either “from God” or “from the world,” Greg encourages Christians to see all hardships as opportunities for growth and to act faithfully in response.
Transcript
Question: Hebrews 12 tells us not to despise the discipline of the Lord, because God disciplines his children that he loves. And all discipline, for the moment, seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. How do we, as Christians, distinguish between the discipline of the Lord that we should humbly accept and work through versus other sorrow or suffering or pain that is not from God that we actually need to push back against? Because both create sorrow. But the question is, how do we tell which one we push back against, and how do we tell which one we submit to?
Greg: That’s a good question. I think there’s an easy way out here. I think there’s kind of a false dichotomy. It isn’t as if we have discipline that comes from the Lord, and we need to cooperate with that. Then we have nasties that come from the world, and we need to push against that and rebuke it or whatever. I actually think what happens in our Christian life is that hardship comes from life—hardship of all sorts. Now, understanding the sovereignty of God, there is no hardship that comes into our life that God does not allow for some purpose. And, so, he is going to take the hardship and the difficulty, and he is going to use it for good in our lives. And this is the way he forms us. This is the way we get developed. I think this is what is being described here in Hebrews chapter 12 as the discipline of the Lord.
Now, we think of discipline like getting spanked. We did something bad; we’re going to get spanked. I don’t think that’s the sense of it in this passage. If you think about another sense of discipline, Scripture says, “Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.” So, there is a way in which we try to live in a meaningful regimen. We are working at accomplishing a goal. So, we are exercising a discipline to get to an end. You might have a diet as a discipline. You might have a workout as a discipline. You’re going to do it on a regular basis to accomplish a particular end that is good. And I think this is the kind of thing that the discipline here is talking about.
God often uses all kinds of things in our lives to work out some good end that he has in mind. And, in the book of Romans, it says that “we know that God causes all things to work for good for those who love him and those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son.” Now, that’s a key phrase here because it’s identifying what it is that God means when he says he’s working things out for our good. That is, he’s working things out to make us more like his Son, Jesus. So, he’s allowing the hardship in our life and going to use it for good in our lives.
So, there are all kinds of things that happen to us. There’s more in 1 Peter about this—that Jesus suffered hardship, and we should arm ourselves for the same purpose, it says in 1 Peter 2. And then, in 1 Peter 4, it says, “Let him who suffers according to the will of God entrust himself to a faithful creator in doing what is right.” So, you’re going through hard times? Okay, what do you do? You do the right thing.
Now, what I’m thinking here, then, is the discipline of God is interwoven in all of these things. These are teaching opportunities, and training and transformative opportunities, that God is making possible in our life and using for our good.
So, let’s just say that a woman is married to a really unpleasant man. Now, she’s got an obligation, morally, to live a certain way toward her husband, but it’s really hard, and she’s not getting much back in return. Now what? Well, what I would say here is that she has certain ways before God that she is supposed to live, and God is going to use this hardship as she turns to him, and he is going to use the hardship to conform her more to the image of Christ.
I’m just speculating here—whatever you can imagine somebody’s vices and how following Christ through hardship and difficulty has a salutary effect on a person’s character. It improves their character when they’re with Christ. Some people go south, and they get all crabby or something like that. But this is the discipline of the Lord. This is meant to help us improve and become better people. So, even if the husband, in this case, doesn’t change, there are all kinds of changes that could take place in the wife’s life that will accrue advantage to her, spiritually.
Now, it doesn’t mean she may not want to try to fix the problem with her husband and get counseling and try to talk with him and figure things out and make things better. You can work at solving the problem. And that’s why I don’t think it’s like this dichotomy you suggested. On the one hand, you could think, “If this is the discipline of the Lord, then I can’t do anything to change the circumstance.” I don’t think you have to think about it like that. I think we face life, accept the hardships that God allows in a trusting manner—that God is going to use it in our life, even though it’s not fun. And that’s verse 11: “All discipline, for the moment, seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, it afterwards yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
There’s a difficulty that we go through, that God allows us to go through. We don’t just roll over and just say, “All right. I’ll take it.” We can take proactive steps to do appropriate things to help with the problem. But the big picture is, this is a problem that God has allowed in our lives to do some work in our lives, and we want to let God do the work.
Jon Noyes just wrote an article about suffering and difficulty, and he says, “I used to view suffering and difficulty as a thing to avoid. Now I realize that God uses it in our lives in powerful ways. And instead of me now praying, ‘God, take this away from me,’ I now pray, ‘God, show me what you want me to learn in this, and don’t take it away from me until I’ve learned it.’” That’s pretty bold, right? But it’s insightful. And I think that captures a little bit of what’s going on here.
It’s not either God’s discipline or the trouble of the world that we fight back on. But, rather, we’re living a life in a world that will provide for us tribulation, as Jesus said, and the tribulation that we experience in the world is an opportunity for God to do disciplinary work in our lives—to conform us more to the image of his Son. And that’s not fun—just like it says here in Hebrews. He’s encouraging us. He writes, “Look, even your earthly fathers discipline, but they don’t do a good job. God does a perfect job.” So, it’s just part of growing up, is what he’s saying. And he’s using the analogy of men growing up and fathers disciplining, and now God, the perfect Father—the great loving Father—raising us up spiritually and using things in our lives.
It’s interesting, by the way, that what follows is some practical application: “Strengthen the hands that are weak, the knees that are feeble. Make straight paths for your feet.” In other words, there are recommendations of things to do “so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men,” etc., etc. So, even in this passage—in the immediate context—there are directives about practical things that we can do in the midst of the hardship that is being described there as the discipline of the Lord. And sometimes it’s the discipline of the Lord that drives us to these productive ends. In the illustration I was giving—the woman who’s living with an unpleasant man—she can fight him, or she could pursue peace with him. So, part of what God would be teaching her in that environment is to pursue peace. And she is being disciplined—in other words, taught that—through the unpleasantness of her husband, which is not good. It’s a sin. But, nevertheless, she is learning from his sinfulness because the Holy Spirit, under the direction of the Father, is disciplining her to become more virtuous, and one way to do that is maybe seeking peace with her husband.