Equipping University

In the previous section of Scripture, the author explains "the secret" behind all the difficult times the readers had experienced and were currently experiencing. Their afflictions did not just come into their lives at the hands of fate and destiny. Instead, the author wants his readers to understand that God was and is behind all of it, including the affliction that was just now on the distant horizon. God ordains all the rough moments in a Christian's life but he does so for a divine purpose - the discipline of his precious children. Now, with this knowledge in hand, we must and can live our lives differently than in the past. The assumption of the author is that "knowing what God is up to in our suffering is the key to pressing on in the race of holy Christian living." Prior to understanding this truth, believers were often tempted to believe that God had abandoned them. When the affliction or persecution would begin, it seemed to the natural eye and mind that they were on their own. However, now armed with the truth that all the adversity we endure is part of God's sovereign design for our good and our holiness, believers know that God is using the current situations in their lives to accomplish a very good thing in their life: growth in holiness. Such knowledge is indeed transformative and should look like the following in the life of all believers.

The slow devolution of fatherhood in our popular media has surely had some effect on the viewers' understanding of the family in general and fatherhood in particular. Another fearful effect can be seen in the area of biblical interpretation. The Bible uses the image of the father consistently to reveal various aspects of the relationship between God and his people. As the popular image of fatherhood continues to devolve, certain characteristics of God will become less meaningful and even unintelligible to our children and grandchildren. The ability to comprehend and appreciate the biblical presentation of God as our Heavenly Father will become distorted or even lost completely. The passage we come to in our on-going study of Hebrews offers one such potential difficulty. The verses below speak of divine parental discipline - the biblical teaching that God chastises and trains his children by means of difficulties and hardships of life. This teaching is not popular or even desirous to hear among many. However, when the difficult times come in our lives, such words serves as a source of great encouragement as they help us to understand why things happen the way that they do. Just like us, the original readers were prone to thinking incorrectly about the troubles they were experiencing. To give encouragement and to motivate his readers to endure the difficulties of life, the author instructs them to persevere and hold fast to their faith.