Sonship and Suffering

Hebrews 5:8

"Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." Suffering is one of the birthmarks, which are found upon all who are born of God. Our heavenly Father had one Son, and only one, without sin. He has none without sorrow.

The Father's Rod

Our heavenly Father’s discipline is the pledge of our adoption and the badge of our sonship. God chastens none but his own; but he chastens all who are his own. And all who are God’s look upon his loving rod of discipline as a marked token of his grace, knowing that “we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32). How we ought to thank God that he does not leave us to ourselves! Painful as it is to feel the rod, let us kiss the hand of our loving Father for laying it upon our stubborn backs.

“`Tis my happiness below Not to live without the cross,

But my Savior’s power to know, Sanctifying every loss.—

Trials must and will befall; But with humble faith to see

Love inscribed upon them all – This is happiness to me.

God in Israel sows the seeds Of affliction, pain, and toil.

These spring up and choke the weeds Which would else o’erspread the soil.

Trials make the promise sweet. Trials give new life to prayer.

Trials bring me to His feet, Lay me low, and keep me there.

Did I meet no trials here, No chastisements by the way,

Might I not with reason fear I should prove a castaway?

Bastards may escape the rod; Sunk in earthly, vain delight;

But the true born child of God Must not, would not, if he might.” -- William Cowper

Spurgeon once said, “ I bear my willing witness that I owe more to the fire, and the hammer, and the file, than to anything else in my Lord’s workshop. I sometimes question whether I have ever learned anything except through the rod. When my school-room is darkened, I see most.”

Obedience Learned

"Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered." Though our Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he was not exempt from suffering. If he would redeem us from our sins and from the wrath of God, he must suffer all that we deserve as sinners to the full satisfaction of divine justice (Rom. 8:32). Though the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, he could not execute a perfect righteousness, to the full extent that the law and justice of God demand, without a perfect suffering (Luke 24:44-47).

If these things were true of him, how much more so must we expect to experience the same in this world? None of the children of God are exempt. Why does the experience of heartache, sorrow, pain, and trouble surprise us? One of the very last things our Master said to his disciples before he left this world was this: -- "In the world ye shall have tribulation" (John 16:33). As our Savior learned obedience by the things he suffered in this world, so we must learn obedience by the things we suffer. Obedience is learned in no other school.