Run with Discipline: insights on spiritual growth and suffering from Hebrews 12

“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?” (Hebrews 12:7)

With these striking words, the writer of Hebrews radically reframes the suffering believers endure. The writer is not making light of suffering but inviting believers to see suffering in a different light. What is that light? It is to see suffering in light of our deep faith in God’s trustworthy work as a good Father.

There are two aspects of this perspective on suffering. The first is this: the race of faith requires enduring hardship as discipline.

Now everyone knows that if you want to run well, you have to train. As much as I would love to think that I could simply wake up one morning and run a marathon by simply changing my shoes and outfit, I know that would not work at all. So, the writer says, similar to an athlete who enters into training, we can begin to see our spiritual life as not only a race of faith but a training in faith. “Endure hardship,” the writer says, “as discipline.” When we hear the word “discipline” we may think of being punished for something, but that is not the sense in which the writer is utilizing the word here. The discipline mentioned here is the discipline of training. But here, we are not only working with a good trainer, but with a good Father who is helping to shape faith into our lives so we can run the race well. Such training is never easy, but we all know that, as in athletics, so too in life: no pain – no gain.

When we have that perspective on suffering, knowing that our trainer is also our good Father, we can then engage with the second aspect of suffering here in Hebrews 12. That second part of suffering is found in verse 9, which reads: “How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live!” (Hebrews 12:9). Amidst our suffering, we can submit to the goodness of God’s fatherly training.

Now there is a difference here that we need to grasp. It is the difference between submitting to suffering and submitting to God’s fatherly training amidst suffering. What the writer is not encouraging is for us to masochistically give ourselves over to suffering—letting it have its way with us. That is not helpful and will bring us great harm. What the write is encouraging believers to do is to give ourselves over to God amidst our suffering so that we can let God work out His ways with us. We still want to name wrong as wrong, injustice as injustice, sin as sin. We are not equating God with suffering. However, our experience of suffering can become different when we know we are dearly loved children of God who is with us, working in and through us amidst suffering. We can trust our Father to apply divine goodness to our lives even amidst situations we would never choose.

This is the sort of thing that the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 8:28, which is never trite, but deeply true that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

And so, in light of who we are as God’s dearly loved children, let us run the race of faith with discipline!