New Morning Mercies #306

Yes, God disciplines his children, but rest assured, the full penalty for your sin has been borne by Christ and won’t again be borne by you.

I’m a parent of four children, and I can honestly say that there weren’t many moments in my children’s lives when they seemed genuinely thankful for the faithful discipline of their parents. They tended to see discipline as vengeful, harsh, punitive, and unloving. (Sadly, human discipline often is like this.) Our children didn’t seem to understand that our discipline wasn’t a suspension of our love, but a result of it. They didn’t seem to get the fact that we disciplined them not because we were surprised that they did or said bad things, but in order to be part of God’s gracious work to transform them into people who delighted in doing good things. We didn’t discipline them because we were upset because we were stuck with them in our family, but because they were unshakably part of the family. We didn’t discipline them in order to remind them that they hadn’t quite yet been good enough to earn our love, but rather because they were the objects of our love.

I think we have the same difficulty with the loving disciplinary zeal of our heavenly Father. He disciplines us not to teach us how far we have to go to earn the right to be his children, but because we are his children. In his discipline, he is not making us pay the penalty for our sins, but delivering us from the sins for which Christ has already paid the penalty. His discipline, therefore, is never the result of his rejection, but the fruit of his acceptance. Since our penalty was fully and completely paid by Jesus on the cross, it needn’t be paid by us ever again!

Think with me for a moment. It is only when you understand the completeness of your justification (that your penalty has been paid and you have been made eternally right with God by the life and death of Jesus) that you are able to rest in the ongoing discipline of your sanctification. That discipline is not to make you right with God, but an expression of the fact that you have been made right with God, and because you have, you are now the object of his fatherly love. You can expect his discipline, but you do not have to fear his anger. You will experience his correction, but you will never face his rejection. He disciplines all his children in order to produce a harvest of righteousness, but he will never punish you for your sin. “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” (1 Pet. 3:18). Amen and amen!

For further study and encouragement: Psalm 106