Most of us don’t want the kind of God that would allow human hardship. We want the kind of God C. S. Lewis described in The Problem of Pain:
C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1996), 30-31.
I’m a father and now a grandfather, and I understand what C. S. Lewis is saying. I’m totally different with my grandchildren than I was with my children. As a grandfather, I let my grandchildren get away with things I never would have let my children get away with. As a father, I was with them all the time and it was my job to train them. God is a Father in heaven, not a grandfather. It is His job to train us, His children, in godliness—and His loving discipline is part of that process.
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Why does God discipline us? God disciplines us to punish us (Psalm 89:30-32), to protect us (2 Corinthians 12:7), and by far the main reason for His discipline—to purify us (Hebrews 12:10). Let’s examine each of these a little closer.
1. God Disciplines Us to Punish Us (Psalm 89:30-32)
God made it clear to Israel that they would be punished if they failed to walk in His statutes:
“Then I will punish their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes” (verse 32). And the Old Testament is full of examples.
King David committed sins of adultery, complicity in murder, and deceit in his affair with Bathsheba. His punishment was that “the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10). The child born to David and Bathsheba died, and his house was plagued by the rebellion of his sons. God got David’s attention, for sure—and continued to bless him in spite of his sin and punishment.
2. God Disciplines Us to Protect Us (2 Corinthians 12:7)
God always uses discomfort to protect us. The apostle Paul was given a “thorn in the flesh” to keep him humble so he wouldn’t become prideful over the divine revelations he had received from God. Paul asked that it be removed, and God gave him grace to endure it instead. So Paul was disciplined not for something he had done, but to keep him from doing something he shouldn’t do.
3. God Disciplines Us to Purify Us (Hebrews 12:10)
By far, the main reason God disciplines us is to purify us—the reason at the heart of the most detailed passage in the New Testament devoted to this subject: Hebrews 12:5-11.
The key word in the passage (in noun and verb forms) is “chastening,” occurring seven times. The word translates the Greek verb paideuo and the noun paideia, both of which usually refer to the training or discipline given to children. (They are based on pais, a primitive Greek word for child, boy, or youth.) Obviously, the goal of training a child is that he or she might become a mature adult, and the spiritual connotation is the same: progress toward spiritual maturity.
The British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge, in a conversation with William F. Buckley, said,
Cited in Gordon MacDonald, The Life God Blesses (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 25-26.
That’s a powerful observation with which I agree. God teaches us things in all periods of life, of course, but it seems the deepest things come during the hardest time. If you look back over the years of your life, I believe you will agree. God’s goal is to make us like Christ (Romans 8:29) and He uses everything in our life to accomplish that goal (Romans 8:28)—especially the difficult times. If Jesus Christ “learned obedience by the things which He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8), then it’s likely we will learn it the same way.
