God's children should not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord. If the Lord disciplines us, we have to pay attention to it. Everything the Lord measures to us has a purpose and meaning to it. He wants to build us up through our experiences and environment. All of His discipline is for the purpose of perfecting us and making us holy. All of His discipline works His nature into our nature. As a result, we become disciplined in our character. This is the purpose of the Lord's discipline. He does not discipline us without reason. He disciplines us for the purpose of making us vessels. The Lord does not allow suffering to come to His children without a cause. We do not suffer for the purpose of suffering. He does not give us tribulation simply to make us suffer. The purpose in all our suffering is that we would partake of God's holiness and nature. This is the goal of discipline.
Many children of God have been Christians for eight or ten years, yet they have never given serious consideration to God's discipline. They never say, "The Lord is disciplining me. He is dealing with me, chastising me, and molding me into a vessel." They do not see the purpose of God's chastisement, dealing, and carving work. They go through their experiences capriciously. They are not bothered by what they see today; they let it slip by. They are not bothered by what they see the next day; they are not concerned about what the Lord's will is, and they disregard it time after time. To them it is as if God purposelessly allows people to suffer. Please bear in mind that the first reaction of God's children should be to respect and honor God's discipline. The first thing we should do when we experience something is to find the meaning of our experience: Why have things happened this way? We must learn to respect and honor God's discipline. We should not regard it lightly. To regard it lightly is to be careless about it. It is to say that God can do whatever He wants to do and that we must simply go through these experiences mindlessly and aimlessly.
On the one hand, we should not regard the discipline lightly. On the other hand, we should not make too much of it. If the Christian life became nothing but a story of suffering and frustration, it would be too much of a discouragement to us. This is to make too much of our discipline. We must learn to accept the discipline of the Lord and to see that His discipline and reproach are always meaningful. At the same time, we must not be discouraged by discipline.
Verse 6 says, "`For whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.'" This is a quotation from Proverbs. It reveals the purpose of the Lord's discipline.
God does not have the spare time to deal with all the people of the world. He disciplines only those whom He loves. He disciplines us because He loves us. He disciplines us because He wants to make us vessels. God has no time to discipline everyone in the world, but He disciplines His own children because He loves them. Therefore, discipline is God's provision of love. Love arranges the environment that we should be in. We call this arrangement His discipline. Love measures everything that comes our way. It orders the things that we encounter in our daily life. This measurement is His discipline. Discipline is for our greatest profit and for bringing us to the loftiest goal in God's creation.
"And He scourges every son whom He receives." All those who are disciplined have the ground to say that they are received by God. Scourging is not a sign of God's rejection; it is a proof of His acceptance. I say again, God does not have the time to deal with everyone; He wants to spend His time on the sons whom He loves and receives.