I know God disciplines me because the Bible tells me so, but Pastor John, how do I know when I'm personally experiencing God's discipline? Here's one of the most remarkable things about God's ordaining hard things in our lives in a disciplinary way. Jesus was disciplined and never sinned. Notice what I mean.

Hebrews 5.8, it says Jesus learned obedience from what he suffered. Now a lot of people read that and say, "Whoa, learned obedience. You mean like he stopped being disobedient and became obedient and thus sinned?" No, that's not what it says and that's not what it means. When it says he learned obedience, he means he moved as he grew from one degree of obedience to another.

Here comes a new challenge and he becomes obedient again. Here comes a new kind of challenge and he becomes obedient again. He's learning at each stage the actual implementation of his obedient heart in acts of obedience and he's doing it through what he suffered, which means that God ordained suffering in the life of Jesus to bring him to the fullest expression of obedience.

Now the reason that's important is because we, I think, forget that God's hand of discipline may be on us not simply to spank us because we've been bad, but to stretch us and broaden us in what we're doing well. Job, remember, was described in the very first verse as being an upright man and blameless.

And God gives Satan permission to beat up on him. And it wasn't because Job was acting in any overt, sinful way that needed discipline, but it did turn out in the end that Job had some sediment of pride at the bottom of his life that got jostled up into that beaker of life.

That's my picture. He's got the sediment at the bottom and then you shake the glass and whoa, there it comes. And at the end in chapter 42, he says, "I've got to repent in dust and ashes. I've said things I shouldn't have said." And so God is always, I think, always disciplining us.

Here's another factor. In Romans 2, 4, it says, "Don't you know that the kindness of God is meant to lead you to repentance?" So now here you have God using another strategy besides spanking, besides suffering, to bring us to repentance. So we're doing something we shouldn't be doing. He sees something defective in our life.

And what does he do? He makes the sun shine. I mean, I'll give you an illustration. I one time got really mad at Noelle because I found a whole crate of rotten pears in the garage. This is about 35 years ago and we were still teaching. And she had forgotten these fruits she bought and it just rotted in the garage.

And I went into her and said, "What's with the pears?" "Oh, I forgot them." A whole crate of pears just rotted in the garage. I'm just getting down on her like I've never done anything like that. And she kind of went back to her bedroom. She's hurt and I'm mad as all get out.

To kill time, I pick up the garbage and I take it outside to put it by the street because it's garbage pick up day. And when I got on the driveway, the sun was as bright as glorious could be. The sky was blue. A sweet breeze was blowing on my face.

And I stopped and cried. I just cried because God was kissing me on the cheek after that rotten attitude. And it broke me like no... He could have caused a car to careen over the curb and smack me smack into the hospital and he would have been absolutely right to do so.

But instead, he smiled upon me. So the point there is God is always disciplining us. He's always doing things good, hard, and gentle to us. And so what we need to remember is that we're always loved. Hebrews 12, 6, he disciplines those whom he loves. For God's children, no spanking is ever anything but love.

And there are people I know who have a very hard time feeling loved by God. Their dad treat them in such a way that they never felt affirmed. They never felt delighted in. They never felt accepted. They could never measure up. He's always on their case, spank and criticize and speak ugly words.

So when I say to them that God disciplines us in love, that's very hard for them to feel. The difference between a dad like that and our God who disciplines us in love is that God never, never feels contemptuous of us. In other words, a dad often in his sinful meanness will say, "You're such an idiot.

You always do that," and maybe hit them. And his words are contemptuous. They're despising. God never says, "You always did that. You're just an idiot. You never do anything right." God never loses control like that. If he spanks, if he brings any kind of hardship into our life, it's with measured, careful, wise, loving application of his wisdom and his grace to our situation.

And so he's calling for us to have greater faith and greater humility. And I think my final underlying answer to the person who asks, "Well, then how do I know if I'm being disciplined?" I think what they're really asking is, "How do I know if I've sinned?" And the answer to that is, "Read your Bible." Don't base your conclusion about whether you've done something wrong on how God is treating you, because that's going to be very confusing, because sometimes he treats you way better than you deserve, and sometimes he spanks you in order to bring it to your attention, but you can't tell which it is.

And so you need to decide, "Am I sinning by looking at the Word of God and discerning what was my behavior like?" Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your Bible questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can find thousands of other free resources online from John Piper at DesiringGod.org.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. 1. Are you a sinner? 2. Is it a good thing to sin? 3. Is it a bad thing to sin? 4. Is it a good thing to be a sinner? 5.