We grow up (mature) as Christians when we endure through suffering. Suffering is used by a loving God to train us into living righteously, to share in His holiness.
Another reason to endure through trials is that God has allowed these trials to happen to the Hebrews and He is trying to mature them. We should endure His discipline with the mindset that He is training us like a good Father teaching His children. Paul asks what son is there whom his father does not discipline? God disciplines all His children; He is a perfect Father. If anyone is without discipline, that means they are illegitimate children and not God’s child. That is because all of God’s children get discipline. This means that the presence of discipline in our lives is a sign of God’s fatherly love.
Paul points out that our earthly fathers disciplined us to grow us up, out of love. God is the Father of all life, who loves us far more than our earthly fathers ever could, and cares about our maturity. Our earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, following what they thought was right for the brief time they were responsible for us as children. God, who is perfect in all His ways, disciplines us for our good so that we can mature as sons throughout our entire lives.
This is all the more reason to respect and trust God in all trials, because of His infinite goodness and wisdom as our Heavenly Father. Paul acknowledges that discipline seems painful and sorrowful when we experience it, but with the perspective that it’s for our good, it benefits us. When we allow difficult times to train us and grow us up, the result is that we are changed to live more correctly in God’s will. We mature spiritually and enjoy the peaceful fruit of righteousness. We experience peace with our circumstances because we have a perspective that God is training us through our sufferings. This is all for the perfecting of our faith, the completion of what Christ began in us, saving us to bring many sons to glory (Hebrews 2:10). He restored our relationship with God so that we could become sanctified, mature, and share His reward of rulership over the coming kingdom.
Biblical Text:
7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 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.
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