- Mar 4, 2005
- 27,905
- 7,990
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Faith
- Christian
- Marital Status
- Married
Will you explain Heb 12:5-11 to me then?
Firstly, Scripture needs to be read in context, not yanked out of it to try to prove a point - you can prove anything you want using that method.
A little background might help too.
David Pawson says in his commentary that the church to whom this letter was written were facing persecution. The church was made up of both Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians.
If faced with death for their faith, the Jewish Christians could have said, "no, we're Jews" and gone back to the Synagogue. But in order to be accepted by the Synagogues again, they would have had to denied that Jesus was the Messiah; claim they had made a mistake and followed a false Christ. They would have escaped persecution and death by denying their faith in Christ.
It seems that some were thinking of doing this. So the book of Hebrews was written - explaining how Jesus is greater than Moses, the perfect great High Priest and the sacrifice made once and all for sin. The author says in chapter 6 that if someone turns away from the faith and then tries to turn back, it is as though they are crucifying the Son of God all over again.
In chapter 12, just before the verses you quoted, the author tells them to fix their eyes on Jesus and persevere and that they have not yet resisted to the point of shedding their blood. He tells them (vv 5-11) to regard the hardship that they are going through as discipline, and in v 12 encourages them to be strong. In vv 14-29 he reminds them to be holy, to fear God and not disobey him.
All of this is very far from saying that God SENDS suffering in order to bless them.
Luke 13:4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them--do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?
I've no idea what your reason was for quoting that verse, but it certainly doesn't say that God sends sickness and suffering to be a blessing.
If the only reasons for sickness and suffering were to bless people and teach them about God, Jesus wouldn't have healed anyone. He would have said that they were blessed because they were being taught lessons about themselves and God and left them in that state. But he didn't. He healed the sick, and he didn't send sickness upon the healthy.
Upvote
0