Hebrews 12:10-11: “God disciplines us for our good …. it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”
John 8:31: Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.”
Isn’t it interesting that discipline and disciple are from the same root word? Discipline comes from discipulus, the Latin word for pupil, which also provided the source of the word disciple.
Raymond Edmond wrote, “Without discipline we are not disciples, even though we profess His Name and pass for a follower of the lowly Nazarene. In an undisciplined age when liberty and license have replaced law and loyalty, there is greater need than ever before that we be disciplined to be His disciples.”1
That quote was taken from a book published in 1948! If 1948 was an age when “liberty and license have replaced law and loyalty,” “How much more” is that so today.
It is apparent that God disciplines those He loves. He does it with the goal of making us more like Jesus, true disciples of His Beloved Son. He does it so that we might have a good witness and testimony. He does it so that righteousness and peace bear fruit in our lives.
Do we like it? Probably not. Should we like it? Yes, we should, because it produces the character of Christ in our lives. When we cry out, “I want to be more like Jesus!” we are inviting God to make us more like Jesus. And that often requires His discipline.
One final thought about discipline today … the faster we respond to it, the easier it is on us.
1Taken from V. Raymond Edman’s book, The Disciplines of Life, Van Kampen Press, Wheaton, IL, 1948
