God not only gives us His holiness as a gift, but He also wants us to partake of His holiness through His discipline. He wants us to be constituted with His holiness; He wants to wrought holiness into our being little by little. Carnal persons like us require years of discipline from God before His holy character and nature can become ours. We need all kinds of blows, situations, guidance, frustrations, urgings, and chastisement before we can partake of God's holy character. This is a great matter! God does not merely give us holiness as a gift. This holiness must be wrought into us. God has to constitute us with His holiness!
This is one distinctive feature of salvation in the New Testament. God first gives us something, and then He works the same thing into us. He constitutes us with the same thing little by little. When we have both aspects, we have full salvation. One is a gift from Christ, and the other is a constitution of the Holy Spirit. This is a distinctive feature of the New Testament. One is a gift, and the other is a constitution. Among all the crucial things in the New Testament, there is this clear statement: God is making us partakers of His holiness through His discipline.
Verse 11 says, "Now no discipline at the present time seems to be a matter of joy, but of grief; but afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised by it."
Here the apostle draws special attention to the words at the present time and afterward. It is a fact that one does not feel happy at the time of discipline, but grievous. Do not think that suffering is wrong when you experience God's discipline. Discipline is surely a suffering. The Bible does not say that the cross is a joy. It says rather that the cross is affliction. The cross brings us suffering. The Lord despised the shame for the joy set before Him. This is a fact. The Bible does not say that the cross is a joy; the cross is not a joy. It is always a suffering. It is not wrong to grieve and feel afflicted when we are disciplined.
But we must learn obedience. Only through obedience can we partake of God's holiness. Discipline indeed is not a matter of joy "at the present time." Instead, it is grief to us. This is not surprising; it is in fact quite normal for us to feel this way. Our Lord did not consider the trials a matter of joy when He passed through them. Of course, we can make it a matter of joy. Peter said that we can exult in various trials (1 Pet. 1:6). On the one hand, they are a suffering. On the other hand, we can reckon them to be a joy. How we feel is one thing, and how we reckon is another thing. We can feel grieved, but at the same time, we can reckon it to be a joy.
A child of God should fix his eyes not on the present but on the future. Pay attention to this sentence: "Now no discipline at the present time seems to be a matter of joy, but of grief; but afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised by it." Do not look at the suffering you are going through now. Instead, look at the resulting peaceable fruit of righteousness.