Punishment

Brothers and sisters: In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. You have also forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children: My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him; for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges. Endure your trials as “discipline;” God treats you as his sons.  For what "son” is there whom his father does not discipline? At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it. 

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed. Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God, that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble, through which many may become defiled. (Hebrews 12:4-7, 11-15)

I think the author of Hebrews [wasn’t Paul; likely written later than 70] had it partially correct.  Hebrews. “For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines” runs counter to our Lord of love and mercy.  Fathers must not scourge their sons (or daughters) but love and understand them.

This emphasis on discipline portrays a punishing God that might have made sense for the Jews and early followers of Christ living towards the end of the first century needing strong encouragement in communities under pressure having to persevere and endure trials. 

This encouragement was valid then and is for us today: “strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed. Strive for peace with everyone.” Today’s very divided nation along political lines requires this encouragement.  If ignored, our nation will punish itself through continued moral and structural decay.

Deacon David Pierce