Hebrews 12:10, commentary and pictures

Earthly parents discipline only briefly and according to their own judgment, but God disciplines for lasting benefit so that his children may share his holiness. He does not afflict willingly, yet he permits trials and trying positions to reveal hidden faults, remove impurity and roughness, and polish character as stones are prepared for the heavenly temple. Though grievous for the moment, this discipline afterward yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness, purifying and refining believers to fit them for heaven and immortal life. Received in faith with patience, endurance and prayer, even bitter sorrow becomes a blessing that turns eyes toward heaven, while murmuring and complaining hinder its purpose and require further trial. His loving purpose governs all permitted affliction, that his children may be partakers of his divine nature through daily sanctification and thus enter the fullness of joy in his presence.

Earthly and Heavenly Chastening

Earthly parents discipline only for a short time, for a few days, according to their own pleasure and human judgment, but God disciplines for profit, for the good of His children. Though grievous in the moment, His discipline comes from a Father's tender love and is meant to make those who accept it and are exercised by it partakers of His holiness. That afterward yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness and prepares for immortal life and fitness for heaven.

God does not willingly afflict or grieve people, and sorrow does not spring up by itself, but He permits trials and afflictions for good to discipline and wean from earthly things. Received in faith, even a trial that feels bitter and hard to bear becomes a blessing that turns the eyes toward heaven. The hard blow that destroys earthly joy leads to seeking comfort in Jesus, and many would never have known Him if sorrow had not led them to Him.

The trials and afflictions He permits are governed by a loving purpose: to make His children partakers of His holiness and thereby participants in the fullness of joy found in His presence. They do not mean He has forgotten them, for He watches over each person and is touched by human weakness. When misfortune or calamity comes, or when usefulness in some line is cut off, it is not neglect or cruelty but God working for good as part of His great plan. He is able to bring victory out of what looks like discomfiture and defeat, and under the rod of affliction the Christian can sometimes do more for the Master than when engaged in active service, as Paul's imprisonment resulted in the furtherance of the gospel. This calls for beholding by the eye of faith the things which are unseen instead of looking at the things which are seen, and for not charging God with neglect or cruelty.

His discipline brings present happiness as well as future benefit, serving a glorious purpose His children would choose if they could see the end from the beginning. He disciplines the human heart as a skillful gardener tends plants, not by violence or force but by tender, careful, patient, painstaking effort that makes the heart tender to receive the impressions of the Holy Spirit. He does not force holiness but seeks to rescue people from sin to share His holiness by having them imitate Christ's character and take its mold — true, pure, generous, and loving.

Holiness Through Trial

God corrects, disciplines, and permits trials and afflictions for the good of His children, so that they may share in His holiness. That holiness is His divine nature, imparted through a daily sanctification that runs through all His designs and plans for them. Unlike earthly parents whose discipline lasts only a short time and follows their own judgment, His discipline is directed by tender love toward forming holy character and preparing His people for immortal life. Received in faith, even bitter sorrow becomes a blessing that turns the eyes toward heaven and leads to seeking comfort in Jesus.

Trials painfully remove impurities and roughness from character, polishing believers like stones prepared for a place in the heavenly temple. When people pray for Christlikeness of character and fitness for the Lord's work, God may answer by leading them into trying positions and varied circumstances that reveal the evil, faults, and defects concealed from their own knowledge. Such painful, prolonged purification prepares them to receive the blessings they seek and to become like Christ by calling forth faith and Christian graces and purifying them as by fire. He does this because He reads hearts and knows character better than they know themselves, and sees powers and susceptibilities which rightly directed would advance His work, giving opportunity to correct defects and be fitted for His service.

In the fallen state, toil, self-denial, forethought, care, and faith form a wholesome discipline through which people are trained and developed, while their needs are supplied through personal labor. God disciplines His workers to prepare them for the places He appoints and to shape their minds to accord with His will, using tests and trials that for some include learning to value time and use it wisely. Through His Word and their experiences He develops their virtues and powers, deepens their consecration to His service, and prepares them for the higher life and the inheritance of the saints. When children and youth give themselves to His service and come under His discipline and control for their profit, their talents are improved through grace and a symmetrical, approved character is formed, securing life that measures with the life of God.

Though grievous at the moment, discipline afterward yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those exercised by it. His reproof refines, removes sin and wickedness, purifies believers to fit them for heaven and immortal life, and prepares them for exaltation. Present sorrows and afflictions serve as discipline for that higher life, and God knows the suffering and gives grace to endure so faith will not fail. Patience, endurance, and prayer make the bitter experience fruitful to His honor, while murmuring and complaining make the trial harder, hinder its purpose, and require further trials until the heart is changed.

Chastening gives ground for hope against selfishness mingled with motives, which human eyes may not discover but the person himself knows, marring and debasing mind, soul, and body and becoming part of character through all his works. Vain struggles against this current of evil end in yielding to its slavish power, and only virtue coming from Christ alone can purify, refine, and ennoble life and character so the chastening fulfills its purpose. Even disappointment and suffering are made a means of sanctification that elevates and purifies the soul to work out God's will. As believers declare by faith and works that God is their wisdom, sanctification, and righteousness and draw near to Him, they come nearer to harmony, unity, and holiness and learn to be of one mind and one judgment under His law of love to God and to man. Taking God at His word means believing He will do just as He has said in making His people partakers of holiness, bearing living testimony to simple faith and showing others their duty and privilege of growing in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Receiving and Giving Discipline

Received in faith, even bitter sorrow becomes a blessing that turns the eyes toward heaven and leads to seeking comfort in Jesus, and the hard blow that destroys earthly joy leads many to know Jesus whom they otherwise would never have known. Patience, endurance, and prayer make the bitter experience fruitful to God's honor, while murmuring and complaining make the trial harder, hinder its purpose, and require further trials until the heart is changed. God's discipline brings faults to light to teach and correct what is wrong, calling for gratitude and willingness to change. God's discipline calls for full obedience even when He gives no reason and for submitting judgment to Him and remaining under His discipline, and continuing in one's own way refuses submission, while those entrusted with responsibility must themselves be sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Coming under God's discipline means repenting and being converted, it is not too late to make wrongs right, and God will show His power to those who do so. The verse belongs to guidance for enduring conflict and persecution by choosing through faith affliction with God's people rather than the temporary pleasure of sin. Being called to pass through trials means God is striving to lead to know Him and trust Him with present happiness and future good, and even when the way is dark, friends seem forsaken, circumstances oppose, hereditary wrong strives for mastery, and discouragement threatens, the tried are not forsaken but regarded with compassion, and are called to take hold of His strength and make peace with Him. Discipline is for the child's good to yield to God and submit to Christ's Spirit, children taught to yield their will to parents more readily accept God's word, and training to bring them into faithful obedience for life in God's family must be patient and forbearing, since scolding, passionate reproof, and parental loss of temper do not reform but teach wrong ways.

Fathers and mothers who correct children are themselves under God's discipline, which forbids hasty words, anger, sharpness, hardness of heart, harshness, unreasonableness, severity, cruelty, and unjust use of power and requires patience, gentleness, sorrow, pity, kindness, and love with sanctified hearts showing true religion in the home, winning love and respect and fitting children for church fellowship. A man under evil control with uncontrolled passions, envy, jealousy, anger, and evil surmising becomes a demon in his home and needs to be taken in hand and disciplined like a rebellious child because he is ruining himself and going downward. Painful discipline can draw people to God through bereavement, as when the deaths of two children softened an intemperate man and his worldly-minded wife to desire change, and affliction such as sickness can bring a person right with God and teach victory over impatience through growing trust, love, and communion. Severe chastening can correct those neglecting spiritual life for wealth, luxury, feasting, and superfluities, and calamities can be God's correction to save a person from his own harmful course and call him to heed God for lasting good.