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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadWilliam Burkitt Notes and Observations - Hebrews 12:7 - 12:7
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Observe, 1. He does not say, if ye be chastised, but if ye endure chastisements, God dealeth with you as with sons; if ye endure them with faith and patience, with submission and perseverance, so as not to faint under them.
Learn hence, That a patient endurance of chastisements is of great price in the sight of God, as well as of singular use and advantage unto us. Afflictions and chastisements are no pledges or assurances of our adoption, but when and where they are endured with patience.
Observe farther, from those words, What son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
1. That every one of God's sons, more or less, stands in need of his fatherly chastisements.
2. That God is very careful, as a wise and tender father, to correct and chasten all his children.
3. That God, in correcting of his children, dealeth with them as with sons: He is the world's sovereign but the believers father; as he is the governor of the world, he treats men righteously in his judgments; as he is the father of believers, he treats them graciously in afflictions.
Observe again from those words, If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, (that is, all sons are partakers.) That all true children are under God's fatherly discipline, are not his children, then are ye bastards and not sons.
Learn hence, 1. That God's family or visible church in this world, has some bastards in it; sons that may have gifts and outward enjoyments, but are not heirs, and have no right to the heavenly inheritance.
Learn, 2. That this is a great evidence of it, that they are not the genuine sons of God, because they go unchastised; not that they are altogether without affliction, for they are in trouble like other men, but they are not sensible of divine chastisement in their afflictions, they do not receive them, bear them, and improve them, as such, but are impaired by their afflictions, rather than improved by them; they come cankered out of the furnace, and leprous out of Jordan; affliction, that should refine them form their dross, and purify them from their filth, boils their scum and impurity more into them.
Learn, lastly, That a joyous state of freedom from affliction, is such as we ought to watch over with great jealousy and fear, lest it should be a leaving us out of the discipline of the family of God; not that we may desire afflictions as such, much less excruciate and torment our selves; but we may pray that we may not want any pledge of our adoption, leaving the ordering and disposal of all things to the will of God.