12:8

But if you have not all shared in receiving this discipline: Paul now shifts the focus of his illustration. He explains that if the Hebrew Christians have not shared “in receiving [God’s] discipline,” they are really illegitimate children, and not sons. Paul is apparently referring to customs in the first-century C.E. Greco-Roman world. The Greek word rendered “illegitimate children” denoted someone born out of wedlock and therefore not enjoying certain legal rights and privileges. One reference work notes that they did “not belong, in the fullest sense, to a family.” Such illegitimate children rarely received fatherly direction, protection, and discipline. Paul uses this term to help the Hebrew Christians understand that if they were to refuse God’s discipline, they might, in effect, put themselves outside of God’s household and become like “illegitimate children” rather than sons.