11/06/2022
As believers in Jesus Christ we are the children of God, and as such He loves us. As His children He has taken upon Himself the responsibility for our upbringing, and maintaining our wellbeing. This responsibility extends beyond simply clothing, feeding, and housing us… it includes our spiritual education, and discipline as well. God disciplines us to teach, and train us, which is different than punishing us which comes as a form of retribution. Discipline is administered to those we love, while punishment is put upon those who have harmed, or acted against us in some way. As believers we are disciplined by God our Father.
“Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.”
Revelation 3:19 ESV
God describes this difference in greater detail to us in these words…
“Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.”
Deuteronomy 7:9-10 ESV
So, not allowing Moses to enter the Promised Land was a form of discipline meant to teach him obedience, and to serve as instruction to us, but causing the parted waters of the Red Sea to close over the Egyptians and drown them was punishment. Can we see the difference?
Discipline:
“And the Lord said to me, ‘Enough from you; do not speak to me of this matter again. Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan. But charge Joshua, and encourage and strengthen him, for he shall go over at the head of this people, and he shall put them in possession of the land that you shall see.’”
Deuteronomy 3:26-28 ESV
Punishment:
“The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained.”
Exodus 14:28 ESV
When God disciplines us and we fail to recognize, or even look for the lesson in, His actions, then we can easily mistake His motive to be punishment. However, if we see the lesson, and we are zealous and repent, then our Father’s loving discipline is realized, rewarded, and we are strengthened in our faith, and made more righteous in our lives. When bad things happen to us, do we look for God in them? Do we ask for revelation in our prayers? Do we turn to the Holy Spirit for an understanding of God’s will?
“In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
1 Peter 1:6-7 ESV
God loves us, and just like we discipline our own children out of love, so He disciplines us. If the correction of our children is not done in love then it can easily become punishment, so it is always important that they understand our love for them. God tells us repeatedly, and emphatically, how much He loves us; do we do the same with our families? Do we make certain that they see discipline, and not punishment when we are correcting them and teaching them life lessons?
“In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
1 John 4:9-10 ESV
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the discipline you administer because you love us, and thank you for its outcome which is our transformation into a more perfect image of Jesus Christ. Help us lord to see your purposes in the midst of our trials, and to seek repentance, and forgiveness in our correction. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God who instructs us in all that is good, and who teaches us the ways of righteousness, and holiness. Praised be your name for every lesson we receive from you in faith, and for the mercy you pour out on us through them. Your grace abounds in Christ, and flows over us like living water through Him. Wash us in His blood Father that we might receive your forgiveness, and our lives be redeemed in eternity with you. Let every lesson and hardship we experience lead us closer to you.
“Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”
1 John 4:11-14 ESV
Rich Forbes