The Father's Chastening of His Sons

The Father's Chastening of His Sons

Read Hebrews 12:5-8

"If ye endure chastening," wrote the apostle to the Hebrews - and that word "chastening" means child-discipline"  for purposes of training - "If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is be whom the father chasteneth not: But if ye be without chastisement (or discipline), whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons" (Hebrews 12:7, 8).

If I should turn to the commentaries of Matthew Henry, Adam Clark, Jamieson, Fawcett, and Brown, or others, I should probably find some wise and useful comments on these verses. But life itself will furnish the best and most instructive comment to the man with opened eyes, who observes, meditates, thinks, and remembers the chastenings of his own youth.

For some days I have been amused and a deeply interested observer of the chastening or discipline of one of my little grandsons who is not yet a year old. He is almost bursting with energy. He simply bubbles over with life. One of his chief joys is to get into his bath. It is perfectly delicious to watch him as he kicks and coos and gurgles and splashed water all over himself and any one who comes near, and blinks when water pops into his eyes, and revels in one of the chief joys of his young life. But how the little ignoramus does loath being undressed and redressed before and following his bath! He kicks and flourishes his arms in impatient protest, cries and objects in all manner of baby ways, while his insistent mother ignores all his objections, not asking what he likes, putting on him such clothes as she thinks best, plumps him into his baby-carriage, and wheels the rosy little rogue out to the porch for his morning nap in the sunshine and soft spring winds.

All this to him is chastening, discipline, training. It is not severe, it is gentle and wise, but to him much of it is grievous. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, writes the apostle, "but grievous, nevertheless afterward" - let us note this "nevertheless afterward" and give thanks and be humble - "nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby." The baby will learn slowly, but surely through this unwavering process that he must submit to rightful authority and superior wisdom, and that not that which is at present pleasant, but that which is right and good must come first; then some day he will discover that all this "grievous" insistence of his unyielding mother was but the expression of wise, thoughtful, sacrificial love.

"God dealeth with you as with sons." When the Lord loveth He chasteneth," "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: For He maketh sore, and bindeth up; He woundeth, and His hands make whole' (Job 5:17, 18).

If his father and mother are wise, their chastening, or discipline, will grow with the growth and unfold with the unfolding of this baby boy. They will probably often find themselves sorely perplexed, their hearts will be searched, and they will discover that their own minds and spirits are being disciplined, chastened, in ways that to them are for the present "grievous". But if they are humble and prayerful and patient and trustful, and always putting the right and the good first, they will find that while they discipline the child, God in love is training them, and bringing them into intimate, understanding fellowship with Himself in His great and sore travail to save and train a fallen race that wants its own way and prefers pleasure to righteousness. And, if they are wise, will note that God is just as insistent in disciplining them as they are in disciplining their baby boy, and for the same reason - for their good.

But the child that will not be so guided should be taught by sterner ways. It is not true love that withholds proper discipline from the child.

Happy shall we be when we come to look upon the perplexing, painful, and harassing things of life, the grievous things, as well as the plain and pleasant things, as instruments in the hands of our heavenly Father for the chastening, polishing, perfecting of our character and the widening of our influence.

John Bunyan's enemies offered to release him from prison if he would preach no more, but he replied that he would let moss grow over his eyes before he would make such a promise,so they kept him in that filthy Bedford prison among the vilest criminals for twelve weary years. They thought to stop his ministry, but they only made his ministry age long and world-wide, for during those years he meditated, dreamed, rejoiced, and wrote his undying "Pilgrim's Progress."

The limitation imposed upon him in prison by man was God's opportunity to liberate his mental and spiritual powers.

Paul would have been lost and unknown to us in the dimness of antiquity, were it not for his letters written from prison. Nero put him in chains, and shut his body up in a dungeon, and through this limitation God liberated his influence for all time and for the whole race. It is a law that liberation comes by limitation. We die to live, we are buried to be resurrected, we are chastened to be perfected.

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out."

~Samuel Logan Brengle~

(The End)