Tender Discipline

All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. –Hebrews 12:11

Discipline by definition and of necessity comes with a decided order. There can be no discipline without authority, and there can be no authority unless it has been established; ordered from top to bottom.

How often it happens that, rather than being subject to authorities that are higher, the flesh prefers authorities that are equal, lower, or non-existent. We may attribute this to the natural inclination to avoid pain, yet pain, by all accounts, is what comes with true and proper discipline.

Athletes train. Professionals develop their skills. Each in his vocation strives to do better. This we may attribute to self-control, but not to discipline in the strict sense (although we use the word discipline to describe such efforts, and such discipline may indeed involve pain).

Discipline of the kind referenced here is generated from the rub between holiness and sinfulness. It grates upon the subject so unpleasantly that it is far from joyful. It is sorrowful. It brings tears of sadness. Because your Father in Heaven has so clearly revealed His law, it grates upon the Old Adam severely, often to the extent you would rather run and hide than face it.

But rather than let you go undisciplined, your Father in Heaven sought you ought through the holy, incarnate Son of God, who was disciplined with the sorrowful discipline of being stricken, smitten, afflicted, and abandoned by God, so that you may share not only in this discipline through Holy Baptism and the Supper, but also share the peaceful fruit of righteousness.

Once your entire inclination was to kick against the divine order of authority that metes out discipline, but now your heart has been turned by the Holy Spirit so that you accept fully what is both your position under the law, and your station in life both temporal and eternal under the Gospel.

This is the Lord’s doing, and because the source is true, good, and proper, the peaceful fruit of righteousness springs up as does fruit from a plant well-watered, pruned, and tended by its owner.
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