ACC ~ Hebrews 12 v7 - 10

FATHERS DESPISE ILLEGITIMATE CHILDREN. THEODORET OF CYR: Fathers are in the habit of disciplining their true children, and if they see them caned by the teachers, they do not worry; they see the fruit coming from the discipline. But they despise illegitimate children and do not accord them equal attention. So if you also avoid discipline, you are of the number of the illegitimate. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 12.

FROM THIS SUFFERING YOU MAY BE CONFIDENT. CHRYSOSTOM: “You endure discipline,” he says, not for punishment or for vengeance or suffering. See, it is from these sufferings from which they supposed they had been deserted, he says, that they may be confident that they have not been deserted. It is as if he had said, “Because you have suffered so many evils, do you suppose that God has left you and hates you?” If you did not suffer, then it would be right to suppose this. For if “he chastises every son whom he receives,” then he who is not chastised perhaps is not a son. What then, you say, do not bad men suffer distress? They suffer indeed. How then? He did not say, “Every one who is chastised is a son” but “every son is chastised.” ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 29.2.

CORRECTED FROM SIN. AUGUSTINE: Here discipline is spoken of in reference to those evils that anyone suffers for his sins in order that he may be corrected. ON THE TRINITY 14.1.1.

DISCIPLINE THAT MAKES US PERFECT. OECUMENIUS: For human fathers do not always prevail to discipline us so that they can render us perfect, but God always disciplines us and makes us perfect. For the process of discipline stops when the father dies or the child comes of age. FRAGMENTS ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 12.9.

NOT FOR THEIR OWN INTERESTS. CHRYSOSTOM: He reasons from their own experiences, from what they themselves suffered. For, as he says above, “Recall the former days,” he says here also, “God is treating you as sons,” and you could not say, “We cannot bear it.” Yes, “as sons” tenderly beloved. For if they reverence their “fathers of the flesh,” how shall you not reverence your heavenly Father? However, the difference arises not from this alone, nor from the persons, but also from the cause itself, and from the fact. For it is not on the same grounds that he and they impose discipline. They did it with a view to “what seemed good to them,” that is, fulfilling their own pleasure oftentimes and not always looking to what was expedient. But here that cannot be said, for the Lord does this not for any interest of the Lord’s own but for you and for your benefit alone. They did it that you might be useful to themselves, often without reason; but here there is nothing of this kind. Do you see that this also brings consolation? For we are most closely attached to those when we see that they either command or advise us not for any interests of their own, when their earnestness is, wholly and solely, on our account. For this is genuine love, and love in reality, when we are beloved though we be of no use to the one who loves us—not so that one may receive but so that one may impart. God chastens, God does everything, God uses all diligence, that we may become capable of receiving God’s benefits. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 29.3.

TAKE AWAY WHAT IS SUPERFLUOUS. CHRYSOSTOM: Do you wish to nourish the body? Take away what is superfluous, and give what is sufficient, as much as can be digested. Do not load it, lest you overwhelm it. A sufficiency is both nourishment and pleasure. For nothing is so productive of pleasure as food well digested, nothing so productive of health, nothing so productive of acuteness of the faculties, nothing tends so much to keep away disease. For a sufficiency is nourishment, pleasure and health, but excess is injury, unpleasantness and disease. For what famine does, satiety does also—or rather more grievous evils. For the former indeed within a few days carries a person off and sets that one free; but the other, eating into and putrefying the body, gives it over to long disease and then to a most painful death. But we, while we account famine a thing greatly to be dreaded, yet run after satisfaction, which may be more distressing than famine. What is this disease? What this madness? I do not say that we should waste ourselves away but that we should eat as much food as also gives us pleasure that is really pleasure and can nourish the body and furnish it to us well ordered and adapted for the energies of the soul, well joined and fitted together. But when it comes to be waterlogged by luxury, it cannot in the flood wave keep fast the bolts themselves, one might say, and the joints which hold the frame together. For when the flood wave comes in, the whole breaks up and scatters. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 29.7.

Heb