Isaiah! It’s not about the mountains we face but whether
we will turn to God who is greater than every peak, every trial, and every hardship that comes
our way.
A word after
Here’s a tip every writer should know: you live and die on your headlines. As the copyeditor
says, “Headlines are the most important thing you’ll ever write.”
The article above originally was published with a lousy title and nobody read it. (It also
came out on a New Year’s Eve which didn’t help.) By any measure it was not one of E2R’s
Greatest Hits.
But this is my book and I think it needs to be read, so here it is. Did you like it?
Actually, a lady called Janet did read it and she responded with an absolute gem of a
comment. She wrote, “God cannot give you what he does not have and he doesn’t have sickness
and disease.” Janet must be a copywriter, for she said in sixteen words what I’ve been trying to
say for years.
25
7. Does God Scourge Us?
What comes to mind when you think of God? Perhaps you think he is distant, aloof, angry,
even terrifying. Maybe you see him with a whip in his hands:
For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. (Hebrews
12:6, NKJV)
Yet your heavenly Father is not like this. He is loving, gracious, and kind. Jesus said he was
about his Father’s business and that business is not the scourging business but the adoption
business. God loves you and wants to spend eternity with you.
So how does scourging fit into this picture? It doesn’t. It sticks out like a cobra in a
kindergarten. It shouldn’t be there. Yet there it is, in black and white in Hebrews 12. So does
God scourge his kids or doesn’t he?
What is scourging?
In our era of first-world problems, you may not be acquainted with the horrors of scourging.
But those who lived in New Testament times knew at least two types of scourging.
First, there was Jewish scourging which involved the application of a leather whip to your
shoulders and chest. This form of scourging was limited by Jewish law to 40 stripes. This is why
the Jews called it the “forty lashes minus one”—they didn’t want to risk breaking the law by
miscounting so they deliberately reduced the maximum number of lashes to 39! The law also
said that the actual number of lashes was supposed to be commensurate with the crime.
However, Paul got the “forty minus one” on at least five occasions even though he broke no law
(2 Corinthians 11:24).
Then there was Roman scourging which was worse. It was typically applied to criminals
before execution and there was no limit to the number of strokes. In fact, if you wanted to kill a
man at the whipping post, you could do it with a vicious tool called the flagellum. Since there
may be children reading this, I won’t describe what the Roman whip could do to a body of flesh
and blood, but if you have seen The Passion movie, you will know.
Regardless of whether you got the Jewish whip or the Roman one, scourging was torture.
Today it’s not the sort of thing civilized societies would inflict even on the worst criminals.
Yet apparently God does it to his kids.
26
ESCAPE TO REALITY – GREATEST HITS VOL. 4
Does God really scourge us?
“The Lord scourges every son he receives.” The original Greek word is the same word that
describes what Pilate had done to Jesus (John 19:1). So if you need a mental picture of God’s
scourging, you’ll be wanting the Roman flagellum with the bits of metal in the thongs and the
little hooks called scorpions at the end.
If this troubles you, I’m glad. It means you have a brain. It means you are struggling to
reconcile a good God with an evil whip. I’m here to tell you that our heavenly Father never,
ever, ever scourges his kids. Not ever! But before I give you my reasons, I have to be honest and admit that every single commentator I’ve read says that he does. They all say stuff like this:
Scourging is
we will turn to God who is greater than every peak, every trial, and every hardship that comes
our way.
A word after
Here’s a tip every writer should know: you live and die on your headlines. As the copyeditor
says, “Headlines are the most important thing you’ll ever write.”
The article above originally was published with a lousy title and nobody read it. (It also
came out on a New Year’s Eve which didn’t help.) By any measure it was not one of E2R’s
Greatest Hits.
But this is my book and I think it needs to be read, so here it is. Did you like it?
Actually, a lady called Janet did read it and she responded with an absolute gem of a
comment. She wrote, “God cannot give you what he does not have and he doesn’t have sickness
and disease.” Janet must be a copywriter, for she said in sixteen words what I’ve been trying to
say for years.
25
7. Does God Scourge Us?
What comes to mind when you think of God? Perhaps you think he is distant, aloof, angry,
even terrifying. Maybe you see him with a whip in his hands:
For whom the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives. (Hebrews
12:6, NKJV)
Yet your heavenly Father is not like this. He is loving, gracious, and kind. Jesus said he was
about his Father’s business and that business is not the scourging business but the adoption
business. God loves you and wants to spend eternity with you.
So how does scourging fit into this picture? It doesn’t. It sticks out like a cobra in a
kindergarten. It shouldn’t be there. Yet there it is, in black and white in Hebrews 12. So does
God scourge his kids or doesn’t he?
What is scourging?
In our era of first-world problems, you may not be acquainted with the horrors of scourging.
But those who lived in New Testament times knew at least two types of scourging.
First, there was Jewish scourging which involved the application of a leather whip to your
shoulders and chest. This form of scourging was limited by Jewish law to 40 stripes. This is why
the Jews called it the “forty lashes minus one”—they didn’t want to risk breaking the law by
miscounting so they deliberately reduced the maximum number of lashes to 39! The law also
said that the actual number of lashes was supposed to be commensurate with the crime.
However, Paul got the “forty minus one” on at least five occasions even though he broke no law
(2 Corinthians 11:24).
Then there was Roman scourging which was worse. It was typically applied to criminals
before execution and there was no limit to the number of strokes. In fact, if you wanted to kill a
man at the whipping post, you could do it with a vicious tool called the flagellum. Since there
may be children reading this, I won’t describe what the Roman whip could do to a body of flesh
and blood, but if you have seen The Passion movie, you will know.
Regardless of whether you got the Jewish whip or the Roman one, scourging was torture.
Today it’s not the sort of thing civilized societies would inflict even on the worst criminals.
Yet apparently God does it to his kids.
26
ESCAPE TO REALITY – GREATEST HITS VOL. 4
Does God really scourge us?
“The Lord scourges every son he receives.” The original Greek word is the same word that
describes what Pilate had done to Jesus (John 19:1). So if you need a mental picture of God’s
scourging, you’ll be wanting the Roman flagellum with the bits of metal in the thongs and the
little hooks called scorpions at the end.
If this troubles you, I’m glad. It means you have a brain. It means you are struggling to
reconcile a good God with an evil whip. I’m here to tell you that our heavenly Father never,
ever, ever scourges his kids. Not ever! But before I give you my reasons, I have to be honest and admit that every single commentator I’ve read says that he does. They all say stuff like this:
Scourging is
Similar Books
The Virgin's Secret
Abby Green
Running Home
T.A. Hardenbrook
Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire)
Amy Jo Cousins
Wolves
D. J. Molles
Mrs. Pargeter's Pound of Flesh
Simon Brett
You Cannot Be Serious
John McEnroe;James Kaplan
Dead Americans
Ben Peek
Darkmoor
Victoria Barry
The Year Without Summer
William K. Klingaman, Nicholas P. Klingaman
