“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?” (Hebrews 12:7).
How many children grew up with a real distaste for the word “discipline?” Like 2-year-old James, who, when his father announced that he would have to be disciplined for misbehaving chirped, “Discipline—that’s bad stuff!”
Question: Does the Bible differentiate between discipline and punishment? Yes, clearly it does. The New Testament word paideuo, usually translated “to discipline” in the New Testament, is much different from the word paio which means “to strike, hit, or wound.” The latter word was used of Jesus Christ when He was scourged by the Roman soldiers. The former word, which also was translated “to instruct, train, correct, or give guidance to,” was used of a father’s guidance of his son, or even an instructor’s correction of a student.
When a child misbehaves, should he be punished or disciplined? This is not just an argument over words, for there is a huge difference between the two. When a person commits a crime, people are incensed! They cry for justice. The focus is on the past—what happened. The general public isn’t so much concerned about what this person does in the future as they are in his paying the price of his wrongdoing.
But the issue of a child that needs correction is totally different. The whole focus is not what happened in the past, which was wrong, but what needs to be trained and developed in the child’s character for the future. The emotion generating punishment is anger, while the emotion prompting discipline is love. Parents, God doesn’t deal with our sin in anger. He gives us grace, in love, and arranges just the circumstances that we need in our life, to grow.
“If Jesus took all the punishment for you and me, He also took all of it for our children,” says Chip Ingram. “I don’t want to teach my kids that I need to pay them back for the bad things they’ve done. I want them to understand that the only way to make right what they did is to trust that when Jesus died on the cross, He paid for their sins. It makes no sense for me to fellowship with God on the basis of mercy and with my children on the basis of judgment. Since Jesus took the punishment, my role as a parent is not to punish them. My role is to provide appropriate consequences and instruction to help them see how their behavior displeases God and to teach them how to cooperate with God’s work in their lives. The Bible calls this discipline.”[1]
Punishment produces anger, guilt, shame and bitterness. It produces what is called a “prohibitive conscience,” which is a conscience that keeps a child from doing something wrong solely to avoid pain, having nothing to do with obedience or a love of what is right. Discipline, on the other hand, produces regulation of self, self-respect and ultimately, security. No successful person ever makes it to the top without learning the value and importance of knowing how to discipline himself or herself, something which needs to be learned early in life, and the earlier the better.
Discipline begins with parents who fully realize what God has done for them and who convey the importance of that to their kids. The Bible is clear that God disciplines those whom He loves, setting us on a forward-facing path. The godly parent who loves his child and disciplines him or her models this great truth. Yes, discipline takes much more creativity and thought than punishment does. It may require you to seek some counsel and training. God deliver us from punishment, but may He give parents enough love to learn to discipline.
Resource reading: Hebrews 12:1-15
[1] Ingram, Chip. “Punishment Versus Discipline.” Focus on the Family, August 8, 2019. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/punishment-versus-discipline/.
