EPISODE 253 HEBREWS CHAPTER 12 Part 2 ""Child of God Training"

Welcome to Share the Word. This is episode 253. Pastor Paul Nitz closes out part two of chapter 12. The subject? Children. That's right, children.

And as children of God, he addresses the reason we face difficulties in our lives. Let's get started. Hebrews chapter 12, part 2: Child of God training. This is going to be one of the more practical lessons we've done on Share the Word. I hope that through it, I can help some of you who have started the race of the Christian life more recently than I did understand some of its nuances and be able to run it a lot better than I have. If you're jumping into this podcast, you need to back up at least one episode to understand fully the context of today's text.

At the beginning of chapter 12, the author of Hebrews compared the Christian life to an endurance race, like a marathon. He knows that some of his readers are faltering in their race, and he's trying to get them recommitted, remotivated, and back on track. He has urged them to get rid of unnecessary things that are weighing them down and certainly to cut out of their lives sinful habits that keep tripping them up, and to fix their eyes on Jesus, who ran his life's race so well, and on the prize at the end of the road, the experience of heaven, when all the things we've gone through here will be forgotten, swallowed up by the joys awaiting us there. I'm going to read you what he says next in verses 5 through 13, and then we'll break it down. This is from the Easy-to-Read New Living Translation. Listen.

Have you forgotten the encouraging words of God as he spoke to you as his children? He said, this is from Proverbs. My child, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't give up when he corrects you. For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child. As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as one of his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is not disciplined by his father?

If God doesn't discipline you, as he does all of his children, it means that you're illegitimate and are not really a child of his. Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn't we submit even more to the Father of our spirits and really live? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how, but God's discipline is always good for us, meaning our whole life through, so that we might share in his holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening; it's painful. But afterward, there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weakened knees.

Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall, but become stronger. I always want to be sure we understand key terms a Bible writer is using, and in this section he uses one word about ten times. It is the Greek word paideia, and the root is pais, which means child in Greek. Paideia is translated in most English versions by the word discipline. The only problem with that rendering is if your idea of discipline is too narrow. Paideia is a broad term that refers to all that is involved in training up a child.

It includes education, counseling, encouraging them toward the good and warning them against the evil, as well as corrective punishment when that's needed. All that would be included in a loving parent's efforts at taking a small human that's been entrusted to their care and over time shaping them into a well-adjusted, mature adult. What does that concept have to do with what's gone before in Hebrews about seeing our life as an endurance race? Well, I'm pretty sure the transition in the author's mind has to do with the fact that when we are faltering, not doing very well in our personal race of faith, that God, our Father, will do what He can, what He believes is necessary to get us back on track. When my son was little, he wanted to get involved in sports, and I was fully on board with that. I just felt there were so many valuable life lessons you learn from playing team sports.

On his end, he just wanted to be sure he was prepared for the inevitable day when he would play for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He was naturally good at football, but as time went on, he found out it wasn't always easy. Practice every day could become a drag. Physical injuries happened to him. The discouragement of losing games was hard on a kid who was very competitive. But for many years, I was right there teaching him, encouraging him, correcting him, motivating him to be his best.

Although the Steelers contract never came, many valuable life lessons did. If we are really God's children through faith in Christ, He also wants us to become our best and wants us to learn lessons important to Him. And He's doing the training that can, if we listen and learn, produce in us Christian maturity, produce in us the best version of ourselves with a character of Jesus who was, remember, a true champion at the race of life, the one we should always be looking to as the example. I'm calling this Child of God Training, or for short, CGT. There are a lot of concepts embedded in these verses that are both valuable for any parent rearing children, but also insightful for all of us who are really God's children. I'm going to focus on that second application more because that's the author's primary focus.

But there is certainly a lot of carryover for those of us who are moms and dads. Like the woman whose Facebook post I talked about last time, there were no doubt younger believers, when I use that description, I don't necessarily mean young in age, but just people who had not been Christians very long, who were discouraged and feeling like dropping out of the race because becoming a Christian was just not working out the way they expected. They were getting blowback from their families, maybe being shunned by their friends, and were fearful about the possibility of real persecution coming at them since it was right then heating up in the Roman Empire. Why are things getting harder and not easier? they're thinking. Why isn't God stepping in?

Well, whoever said it was supposed to be easy? No apostle of Jesus ever told them that, I'm sure. And Jesus' own example certainly didn't teach them that either. Here's the first lesson. Training to be a champion at the Christian life is not easy, and our Heavenly Father allows and uses difficulties as part of CGT, Child of God Training. How much do we learn during smooth sailing anyway?

It's a universally recognized truth that people learn and change for the better more through weathering difficulties than through their easy times, you know, when everything seems to be going well. Thinkers as different as Friedrich Nietzsche, Khalil Gibran, and C. S. Lewis all made now-famous observations about that fact. Nietzsche said, That which does not kill us makes us grow stronger. You knew that, right?

Gibran wrote, Out of suffering emerged the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. The Christian philosopher C. S. Lewis famously wrote, God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pain. They each recognize the positive things that can result from life's difficulties, but only the Christian perspective adds the dimension that it's on purpose, at least some of the time, that it may well be part of CGT, a process that never ends in the lives of God's children as long as we're in this world.

God's discipline is always good for us, the author wrote, so that we might share in His holiness. No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening, but if we learn what God is trying to teach us through it, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace. The holiness and righteousness he's talking about refer to becoming more like Jesus. That's God's objective in all our training. The peace is getting to the place when we trust God and His processes in our lives enough that every challenging circumstance that befalls us no longer throws us for a loop. We instead submit to it as, Okay, I guess God thinks I need a little more CGT.

This section at first might sound counterintuitive, far from suggesting that smooth sailing awaits those who become Christians, the author is saying, because God now cares about believers as His own dear children, we should expect to be subject to child of God training. In fact, he says, If we're not, if we do not experience the kind of challenges that stretch us and test us and give us the opportunity to grow in our faith, it's fair to ask, Am I really God's child? Because, he says, whoever heard of a child who is not disciplined by his father? If God doesn't discipline you, he says, as he does all of his children, it means that you're illegitimate and not a child of his at all. So another point is, CGT, whether we appreciate it or not, is potentially, depending on how we react to it, a very positive thing.

It demonstrates we are God's children and he is actively at work in our lives to make us better. Our heavenly Father deeply loves his own children, and that's the word agape there in verse six. So with the deepest kind of love, a third key idea to remember is, although he always deeply loves us, he doesn't always love what we do. Wow, what an important distinction. If you're a parent, I'm sure you relate to this. I've had four children.

Three were pretty usually compliant, you know, responsive to my training and guidance as a father. But one was pretty rebellious, and ultimately, that's why I have three children alive today. But man, did I love her, because she often did not listen and brought unnecessary pain into her life and to the rest of our lives does not mean in any way I loved her less. I loved her because she was mine. I always advise parents this way: be sure your kid never doubts your unconditional love for them, even if you don't love the stuff they're doing. Always maintain the emotional bond best you can.

That's how God loves each of his own children, those of us born into his family by faith in Christ, even more deeply, actually, than I could ever love mine or you could ever love yours. And then a fourth idea. Another aspect of child of God training is that when necessary, what the author calls chastening, God's corrective discipline, is part of CGT. But before we discuss that, I want to clarify something in all caps and in bold print. Be sure you understand this. Ready?

Christian sins and failures have already been fully paid for, once for all, at the cross of Jesus. There is now and never will be any condemnation, any punitive judgment for anyone who is in Christ Jesus, anyone who has been born into God's family by faith in Him. Full stop. But that's not to say that when needed, there will not be corrective discipline, chastening by our Heavenly Father. Chastening is when our Heavenly Father feels the need to spank us. The author asks in verse 7, What child is not disciplined by their father?

Like, that's a given. In his culture, it probably was too. Sadly, today that's not always the case, we know. But his point is, a father who cares about his kids is going to administer corrective discipline when that's called for. A father who will not do that does not really love his kids. To not set good boundaries for your children and be willing to punish them out of love if clearly violated is setting them up for failure and unnecessarily pain in their lives.

One of my daughters has lived in Italy for several years. She's studying over there, but also has had to work at the same time. She balances it all very well. But for a couple years, she had a job as a nanny slash tutor for a wealthy couple's two young kids. The parents wanted their young girls to learn English, and that's one reason they paid my daughter very well for this position. But they were hellacious brats.

Not their own fault. They just had parents who didn't practice any kind of discipline at all. And that would call me sometimes so frustrated by these little kids who talked back and challenged her and generally did whatever they wanted. The first time, I predictably said, Tell their dad. But she said, That won't do any good. They treat their parents the very same way they treat me.

So I said, Then crack their hineys and threaten them if they ever tell their parents about it. Of course, I was kidding. Sort of. We should never discipline other people's kids unless they have clearly delegated that authority to us. But our own kids? We absolutely must.

Of course, I'm talking about appropriate discipline based in love, not child abuse out of anger or drunkenness or very wrong things like that, which some children are victims of. There's a world of difference. I think we all know that. The author here says, Our heavenly Father, who loves us with agape love, will absolutely chasten His children when we get off course. Because He loves us, He wants to train us up to be the very best versions of ourselves we can be. He will not let us go on toward ruining our lives and hurting others in the process without administering some chastening to try to get us back on track.

He won't, because He loves us. Okay, now let me do my best to clarify the probably impossible to clarify. I'm sure some of the first readers of this epistle were struggling with this question, because I certainly have. Namely, how do I know if God is chastening me or if I am just experiencing negative things because I live in a messed up world where bad things randomly happen? Truth be told, not every negative thing that happens to us is a direct response to some disobedience in our lives by God, as some people wrongly imagine. How can we know that for sure?

Well, Jesus suffered a lot of unfair, wrong, and painful things, none of which were a result of His own failures. I made the point last time from earlier in this chapter, one reason he did, endured it all to finish his race, is to show his followers how to do the same thing. He didn't suffer and die to somehow protect us from all the negative stuff, but to show us an example of how by faith we can endure it, and to illustrate that doing so will be worthwhile, the joy that is ahead. Remember, God will make it more than worthwhile when we get to glory, if not in this lifetime. And it's not just with Jesus. We see several clear examples in the Bible of people who suffered very significantly, and it definitely was not because they were off course.

Job was almost faultless and yet suffered from crazy attacks by Satan, which God allowed. The Apostle Paul was the most dedicated Christian at running the Christian life I can imagine, but as we saw in Acts, he experienced tons of difficulties and pain, and none of it was because of failures on his part. But at the same time, we know from this passage and from other biblical passages that chastening, heavenly spankings, are real and a significant part of child of God training. How about what happened to Jonah when he tried to run from his assignment to preach to the city of Nineveh? In this very passage, the author mentions Esau, who made one of the dumbest, most short-sighted life decisions of all time and paid dearly for it, even though he later tried to rescind his terrible choices.

What we can learn from that is that sometimes the consequences of our sin and bad life choices do not disappear even after we become followers of Christ. But back to the hard question. It's not always easy for us to discern, much less for nosy onlookers like Job's quote-unquote friends to discern. Judge when we are getting a lot of negative things dropped on us, whether it is God chastening us, or just random bad stuff that happens because we are in a messed up world. Or, that's not enough to puzzle over, let's throw in another monkey wrench. Sometimes, when we feel like we are being deprived or experiencing what feels like unwarranted trouble in our lives, it may in fact be our Heavenly Father protecting us from something yet unseen, redirecting us through difficult circumstances to something better.

Maybe God is using physical problems, or barriers, or lack of success, or whatever He has to, to try to steer us towards something better and more valuable in our future. Isn't Joseph's whole story in the Old Testament like that? If you don't know his story, it starts at Genesis 37. You'll have to take my word for it, but all during his life, God used a lot of negative factors that seemed just plain wrong, unjust, to train Joseph for a bigger role and get him into a position to be a blessing to many, many people. Huh. But let's be frank.

I believe most of the time we Christians are fully aware when we have gotten off course. The Holy Spirit will convict us if that's the case. And when He does, we need to be wise enough to make things right, whatever it is, both with God and with others who have been affected. Don't just keep plowing ahead. As it says here, don't make light of the Lord's discipline, like don't blow it off. Don't make Esau's mistake and get caught going so far in the wrong direction you can never fully make it right again.

Because then, potentially, the whole course of your life and even others you influence will be negatively impacted. In case, however, you honestly don't know if God may be chastening you, the best I can advise is to prayerfully reevaluate things. Is there ongoing unconfessed sin in your life? You'd also benefit probably from talking things out with someone who knows you very well and who you trust. If nothing comes to light from such an honest evaluation, then accept that God's ways are sometimes past finding out. That's not an easy answer from our perspective, sometimes.

About 30 chapters in the book of Job attest to that. So, in such cases, we should endure the trouble that comes our way with patience and perseverance, keeping Jesus' example in view, who did the same. Trust that your heavenly Father has a purpose in it, and allow it to purify your faith and build your character as you keep running your life of faith journey, running it with endurance. That's what the apostle James urged when he wrote, Whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance, let perseverance finish its work in you so that you may become mature and complete. Getting frustrated and feeling sorry for yourself will produce nothing of value. Remember, as we've said, nobody grows and changes things that need to be changed during times of smooth sailing.

Accept in faith. Submit to the idea that God may well be using the pressure and difficult circumstances you are going through to further His divine goals for your life. So, what's a recap show? It shows that whether you realized it before or not, if your faith in Christ is real, you are enrolled in child of God training. So how's it going? Are you moving toward more personal holiness and more spiritual maturity?

Do you think you are more like Christ now than you were, say, last year or certainly a few years ago? If the answer is honestly no, and you've been faltering, the author's challenge to you is, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees, because child of God, your race is not over yet. Thanks, Paul. Whoever told us that life was going to be easy anyway? You know, this episode brought back a hard memory for me. It was a memory when I told my children that the moment that I stop disciplining you is the moment that I stop caring about you.

And you should have seen their faces. As harsh as that statement was, I remember it made more of an impact than all of the times that I disciplined them. I know that God always loves us unconditionally, no matter what we do. And for me, I stopped complaining of all of the challenges. As a matter of fact, I challenge you to change your perspective and look at the challenges, the pain, the difficulties that we face in our lives, like an athlete does as part of their training, because it all serves towards our personal, mental, and physical growth. And with God, we grow spiritually as well.

God's purpose is beyond our understanding. But the most impactful point for me was, be sure your kids never doubt your unconditional love for them.