Heb 12:9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
Father of our flesh. Your father! Your birth father, your step father, your grandfather, the father figure in your life, barring that- your mother if it has only been a mother who has raised you. The people who raise you- fellow human beings- correct us.
Being raised as children by someone-- you are raised to learn right from wrong whatever your environment may be. When a child needs correction that means someone needs to correct them. Is it safe to say that EVERY child needs correcting? I think it is because we LEARN right from wrong. Many children have died because they don't learn right from wrong, they aren't taught right from wrong. We have children growing into young adults who act horribly because they've not learned right from wrong. Is it instinctive to always do right? No. It's not instinctive that we do good, that we do right. It'd be great if it were but living in a carnal world, a world given over to Satan, we are born into the carnal, the world of flesh that does not instinctively live in the spirit of God. I'm not talking general goodness- but God's goodness, God's righteousness. God's goodness goes far beyond us living day to day bothering no one, God's goodness goes far beyond our ability to be good on our own. Good on our own means nothing.
Being corrected is necessary. It's necessary as children to learn right from wrong, it's necessary as adults for the same reason. We never stop learning, never. All through life we are being taught lessons.
As children when we are corrected we don't like it, do we? We might pout and cry and throw little fits, and then we might learn not to throw fits and as time goes on we channel our anger and upset over being corrected in different ways. Sometimes however, as we are growing up we are able to look back and realize that the correction we were given was for our own good. I'm not talking about any abusive correction, but normal correction. We can look back and understand that our correctors corrected us so we'd learn right from wrong, we'd learn how to behave, how to treat others. As we gain this understand we start to respect our correctors. We understand why they corrected us. Still as we grow older we might understand even more because we become correctors ourselves and begin to teach our own children right from wrong hoping that one day they'll respect us for our correcting them.
Drawing from my own personal experience I have respect towards the way I was raised, I respect the correction given to me by my parents. I understand their correcting me.
Heb 12:9 Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?
Shall we NOT much RATHER be in subjection unto the FATHER of SPIRITS, and live?
Father of SPIRITS- God.
We are corrected, we are chastened by our parents and we learn to respect them but when we are corrected and chastened by our Spiritual parent do we learn to respect Him or are we like young children, like teenagers filled will rebellion, feeling anger at our heavenly Father? Do we feel the chastening of the Lord and throw a spiritual fit? Do we HONESTLY believe we can transgress against our Lord and not be chastised?! Not be punished?!
On a flesh level and not spiritual we don't let people get away with wrong doing, not if we can help it. When people do wrong we want them to be corrected- we've prisons FILLED with those we want to be corrected for their wrongs. Spiritual wrong doings need spiritual correction and our Savior strives to spiritually corrects us. We don't often see it that way though. We throw our spiritual fits, we cry out, God why?! We live our lives being corrected constantly in ways we don't even understand but if we TRUST in God and ask Him to help us learn from any and all chastening He brings our way, He will. We have to have faith. Faith- believing without understanding every thing.
Shall we NOT MUCH RATHER be in subjection to the FATHER of SPIRITS…and LIVE?
As children of God we need to be in subjection to our Heavenly Father. We need to allow ourselves to be in subjection to our Heavenly Father. We need to fall to our knees and learn from our Father. We need to stop kicking and screaming and fighting against God. We need to stop accusing Him of being hard on us and grow up realizing that God is chastising us for our own good. We need to be in subjection to God, to His plan. We need to trust that He has OUR GOOD in mind. He loves us, we need to love Him, we need to have faith in Him, we need to trust Him and LIVE.
By His Grace, His Mercy forever!
Amen
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