Jerry Bridges says that God disciplines Christians by grace. It may
strike us as an oxymoronic statement that discipline is grace, that it
may be done out of grace. After all, “Discipline suggests restraint and
legalism, rules and regulations, and a God who frowns on anyone who has
fun. Grace, on the other hand, seems to mean freedom from any rules,
spontaneous and unstructured living, and most of all, a God who loves us
unconditionally regardless of our sinful behavior.” But Bridges wants
to push back. “Such thinking reflects a misunderstanding of both grace
and discipline. In fact, … the same grace that brings salvation also
disciplines us as believers.”
This is the heart of one of the chapters of The Discipline of Grace, that God disciplines us in grace and by
grace. Now this is not necessarily discipline as punishment, but
discipline as “all instruction, all reproof and correction, and all
providentially directed hardships in our lives that are aimed at
cultivating spiritual growth and godly character.” Discipline is simply
whatever God chooses to use to help us grow in godliness. God
disciplines us much as a parent disciplines his children, but with one
important difference: “Though in the physical realm children eventually
reach adulthood and are no longer under the discipline of their parents,
in the spiritual realm we remain under God’s parental discipline as
long as we live.” Continue at Tim Challies
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