Home  Articles  Site map

Grace and discipline

by Jacob Ninan

Grace is one of the most amazing things about God. Instead of handing us the punishment that His justice and righteousness demanded, He devised a way of meeting that demand by taking the punishment on Himself, and then offering us forgiveness and acceptance. Then He goes on to help us to overcome our sinful tendencies which brought us to deserve punishment in the first place. Grace gives us both mercy for forgiveness and help to overcome temptation (Heb.4:16).

But we will be greatly mistaken if we think of grace as a free pass into heaven, while we continue to be careless with sin here on earth, even after 'accepting Jesus' as our Saviour! Jesus came and suffered and died on the cross to 'save us from our sins' (Matt.1:21). This salvation is not just about forgiveness, but also about delivering us from the power of sin (Rom.6:14). This deliverance is not once for all, nor something God will just gift to us. We need to take a position that we don't want to sin in any way. That is the meaning of taking up our cross. Then when we are tempted to sin, we have to deny ourselves and follow Jesus (Lk.9:23). In order to be able to do this, we need to depend on the power of the Holy Spirit giving us grace to help us (Ro.8:13).

What happens if come to Jesus, get born again, but take sin lightly afterwards? God will speak to us through His word as we read it or listen to preachers and remind us that we ought to overcome sin. The Holy Spirit will convict us of our sins so that we can repent, humble ourselves and return to God. But then, if we ignore this, God warns us in a stronger manner by letting us face the natural consequences of our sins or getting us get caught. He may also send us special people in our life to warn us. If we don't turn back from sin even with such measures, God tries to catch our attention or to warn us severely by placing some calamity in our path that would give us a jolt.

In the Old Testament we find this principle in Leviticus chapter 26, where God has to deal with people who are not obeying His commandments. He increases in steps the severity of the chastening, hoping at each step that they would repent and that He does not have to go to the next step. We may think that this was Old Testament, but the same approach is what our loving Heavenly Father will take in case we are not paying heed to His warnings.

Remember, what we actually deserve for our sins is death (Rom.6:23). Anything less than that which we face is grace! What we need to be convinced under the new covenant is that God is entirely 'for us'. All that He does to us is for our good. That is why He is called 'Love' (1Jn.4:16). The greatest manifestation of His love for us is that He was willing to sacrifice His only Son for saving us from our sins (Jn.3:16). After having made that sacrifice, God is not going to sit there and watch us backslide and move away from Him. He tells us that He will never leave us or forsake us (Heb.13:5). He will do everything He can to warn, correct and even chasten us, to bring us back to Him. He wants us to remember that whatever method of discipline He uses, the heart behind it is love (Heb.12:5,6). We must be thankful to Him that He does not withhold what we we need to wake us up from our spiritual slumber. Thankfully, God's love towards us is genuine and not just a nice sentiment!

Did you notice the word God uses in Heb.12:6 – 'scourge'. If God's dealings with us come to that level, they are going to hurt us. That is when some people think that the God of grace cannot do this. But His intention is not to hurt us, but to bring us back to Him. When His earlier approaches to us were not enough to wake us up, He was forced to resort to tougher methods. It is actually our fault that He has to use such tough methods with us, not His. His intention is still full of love; He is not angry with us; He is only trying to catch our attention and to draw us back to Him. What we should do is to humble ourselves, repent from our sins and turn back to God.

This kind of discipline is not inconsistent with grace. If we understand it properly, it has everything to do with grace, mercy, compassion and love. God wants to bless us, and discipline is an unenjoyable but unavoidable step that He takes to bring us back to Him. That is why we should neither get angry with Him if He chastens us or get discouraged.

On the other hand, we should not imagine that every problem that comes up is God chastening us! That is a very wrong understanding of God. While we are living on this earth, so many things will go wrong, people will hurt us, we will face some unfair situations, we may become sick, etc. It would be wrong for us to think that all these things are coming from God! God is not the author of evil. We may do something wrong and then have to face the consequences, people may do wrong to us, or we may face many types of evil that are present in this world. We should not imagine that since God is in full control of everything, He is the one who has done these. No. He has only permitted us to face certain things because He knows that with His grace we can face them (1Cor.10:13). He also knows that if we take them in the right way, He can cause them to do something good for us (Rom.8:28).

So, if we face anything unusual in our life, we can go to our Father and ask Him if there is some purpose He has in mind for us. If there is something specific He has in mind, He will somehow bring that to our notice. If there are things we need to set right in our life, we need to deal with them. Then we can thank God for the extent of His love for us in that He did not hesitate to warn us of our wrong doing even though He knew it might hurt us temporarily.

Table of articles
Home page