Orland Evangelical Free Church | God Is Punishing You

My dad and grandpa sold manufactured homes in the 1970s and early 80s. It was lucrative enough until the 1982 recession, when interest rates hooked into their business and did a Kevorkian.

The real fun was sorting out what people said to them about their loss. Their banker wrapped up a dreary meeting by saying, “You’d still be in business if you weren’t so honest.” But at church someone counseled, “You must’ve done something wrong for God to be punishing you this way.”

Does God inflict suffering to teach us lessons?

At first, the Bible seems clear. Hebrews 12.5-6 gives a quotation from Proverbs: “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord . . . for those whom the Lord loves he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives.” Verse 9 seems to make the application pointed. “[W]e had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live?”

But it’s worth asking whether “discipline” in this passage equals punishment for doing wrong.

The kind of suffering addressed in Hebrews is persecution. Jewish Christians were under severe pressure because they followed Christ. In 12.4 the author says, “You have not yet resisted [hostility] to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” They weren’t being killed for their faith, but they were tempted to return to the shelter of Judaism (10.32-39).

The writer’s real application of the Proverbs quote comes not in 12.9 but in 12.7: “It is for discipline that you endure.” The Lord loves those he disciplines. He will turn the persecution into godliness. Therefore, endure your persecution for the sake of acquiring that discipline.

These believers do not suffer persecution for doing wrong, but doing right. The issue in Hebrews 12 is whether they will break in the crucible. They want relief from their pain and doing wrong – returning to Judaism – seems to offer that relief.

So the writer strengthens them by offering godly character as a motivation for endurance. They should not seek relief in sin, but should persevere in doing right. The writer concludes (12.11), “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”

Hebrews 12 teaches God’s approach to all trials in a believer’s life. He turns pain into righteousness.

Grandpa’s banker was wiser than his Christian brother. Dad and Grandpa were suffering for doing right, and the trial has never entirely gone away. Their investments of money and sweat were gone and the Lord never restored them. But they did not find relief from the pain in dishonesty.

The return on that investment is incalculable.