We are in Lent, and the historic disciplines of the Christian church are being practiced and encouraged all over the world. Fasting and almsgiving, prayer and meditation are all part and parcel of this blessed holy season and have been for nearly two thousand years. We experience a period of thoughtful contrition during Lent. Sermons center around Christ’s temptation in the wilderness and his suffering and death. We hear about his perfect life for us and all that he suffered at the hands of men. Lent recenters our focus back on Jesus Christ; not on manna, worldly success, or on the next shiny new object which always seems to distract us from his word. All of this makes Lent a very important season for the Christian. We cannot participate in any Lenten activity without employing some type of discipline (self-discipline or self-control) within ourselves. We certainly cannot fast without it, we cannot sacrifice our money without it, and we cannot pray or meditate on God’s word without it. During the season of Lent, we therefore embrace discipline within the Christian community as a positive thing, lauding its virtue and explaining the benefits of it.
Lent is a time where we can be turned back to Christ and our dependence upon him, like a weak compass might be re-oriented back to true north when brought near a strong magnetic field. We desire to continue in that reorientation during the rest of the church year, turning our eyes to Christ and listening to what he has said to us. What he has said impacts everything we do (our choices, relationships, parenting, and even our free time) and is a lamp to our feet and light to our path, showing us the way we should go (Ps. 119:105, Ps. 143:8). Although we experience sin and failings as we travel this path, we employ self-discipline to continue on it, strengthened and empowered by God himself in order to do so. Peter writes, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers” (1 Pet. 4:7). And he also says, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (see 2 Pet. 1:5–9 and Prov. 25:28). We know that self-control and self-discipline are essential to the Christian life, but what about other types of discipline?
“Discipline” has become a dirty word. It has a certain tone and indication today which stands in stark contrast to the Lenten viewpoint. In broader culture, discipline is a word treated as almost synonymous with regimented narcissism at best (and blatant abuse at worst). It’s hardly ever used in conversation. It’s as though the word is inherently negative or evil. We don’t speak of the government having the power to “discipline” those who break the law; the church rarely (if ever) speaks of the gracious and restorative purpose of disciplining someone who has strayed, and Christian parents tend to shy away from talking about disciplining their children. Self-discipline is the only kind of discipline that seems to have survived, and that may be because it can be associated so readily with self-righteousness and self-help.
The church’s truly biblical and Christian practices of Lenten discipline push back on these cultural trends. Are we then supposed to stop these with the end of Lent? Is Easter the point at which we can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to eating and drinking too much, crude speech, missing our daily Bible reading, losing our tempers, wasting our time doomscrolling instead of serving others, and accumulating money just to spend it on ourselves? Of course not. These things which have been historically practiced during Lent are not just for the Lenten season or for the church bodies which continue to practice Lenten traditions. These practices of self-discipline pertain to all believers at all times, spreading across all denominations and reaching individuals who attend church bodies where traditional Lenten practices are not a congregational exercise. This is because the practices themselves originated in the Bible and were encouraged by the apostles and the early church. As a matter of fact, it is thought that Lent was already being celebrated by the second century A.D. and we know it was formally recognized by the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. These historic practices can and should be done on an individual basis.
The church would do well to remind us more often that God disciplines all of us for our good. If we are not disciplined, and God says we all are, then we are “illegitimate sons and not heirs” (Heb. 12:8, Prov. 3:11–12). If the church reminded us more of this gracious discipline and God’s fatherly intentions in it, I think we would balk less at the mere mention of the word and take less afront at any discussion surrounding it outside of a Lenten framework. Discipline found outside of ourselves is not to be feared but rather received as a blessing and treated as a gift, because we acknowledge the reality that without it, we would stray and never come back.
As I alluded to a moment ago, the world’s almost entirely negative view of discipline has greatly impacted not only the church but the Christian family. As Christian individuals we have a responsibility to accept God’s discipline of us, and when Christian couples marry and have children, they take on a dual responsibility of also disciplining their children as God’s representatives to them. Parents should allow godly discipline the rightful place in their parenting—setting it as a pillar of raising Christian children. Sin impacts the heart greatly and demands addressing since it strives to tear us away from God. We cannot raise children to follow the Lord without it. Children will not continue in the faith if they have learned by habit to indulge in every kind of impurity and lust of their flesh (Eph. 4:19), meaning if they have not been taught through careful discipline, self-control, and self-discipline. Children will not enjoy this process, and neither do we. The author of Hebrews writes, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it” (Heb. 12:11). We desire this harvest of righteousness and peace, both in our own lives and in our children’s lives.
The world has decided against discipline entirely, just as it has decided against all virtues, and has found new and more acceptable terms to take the place of discipline within the family. In the parenting world, we find replacement words like “positive reinforcement,” “gentle parenting,” and “permissive parenting”—or perhaps the most popular approach of all, avoiding the topic as much as possible both in word and in deed. The result is catastrophic. While we might teach them the right words to say in church and phrases to confess in confirmation, we have not targeted the area most in need of the Lord’s gracious attention: their wicked and sinful hearts that need to repent and believe (Jer. 17:9–10). Sometimes I suspect the world aims at undermining Christian parental discipline primarily because destroying this foundation within the home will make it that much harder for other types of discipline to mature and bear fruit.
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One of the best things Christian parents can do is to remember how interconnected parental discipline is with self-discipline and all the disciplines within the one body of Christ. None of these live in a vacuum. None of them can be practiced while forsaking the others. We can tease out the different disciplines if we like, and speak about the benefits of each in turn, but to do so we must pull them apart with just as much care as a surgeon might gently lift an injured tendon to examine it, knowing that tendon must then be returned to its place in the body where it will be integrated with the rest of the tendons, ligaments, and bones to serve its purpose. By itself, it makes little sense and would do little good. Discipline is a structural element within the body of Christ. Self-discipline, God’s discipline towards us as his children, and parents’ discipline with their children—these are all brought back into focus in this Lenten season, and we are reminded that they are a part of the Christian life in every season.
And yet we know that while discipline takes our eyes off our selfish desires and the world’s enticements, it only benefits us if the result is to then train our sight on the cross. Discipline is a part of the Christian life, but it is not our Life. Our Life is found only in Jesus, the author and preserver of our faith, without whom we could do nothing. As David writes in the Psalms, “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me” (Ps. 28:7). Through the grace of discipline, he does indeed help us, encourage us, and as his beloved children, brings us safely home. May we rest in that peace during this Lenten season and always.
