Christ Church

On Loving the Standard (Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #9)

Grace Sensing on

INTRODUCTION

The chances are pretty good that over the years you have heard me say something like this. You task as parents is not to get your kids to conform to the standard, but rather to get them to love the standard. This may seem straightforward and simple, but there are actually layers to it. As we pursue this, we turn to the greatest commandment in the Bible, which is where we find the authority to say things like “love the standard.”

THE TEXT

“Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that ye might do them in the land whither ye go to possess it: That thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life; and that thy days may be prolonged. Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee, in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6:1–9). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

This passage is where we find the greatest commandment in all of Scripture. We know this on the authority of the Lord Jesus Himself (Matt. 27:36-40). Now God gave Israel all His laws and statutes, in order that they might live them out in the land (v. 1). Doing this, they would fear the Lord, keep His word, from grandfather to grandson, through lengthened days (v. 2). Hear and do, O Israel, that you might prosper (v. 3). Then we come to the great Shema, hear, O Israel. The Lord your God is one (v. 4). You shall love the Lord your God with all that you have and are (v. 5). These words must be taken into the heart (v. 6). From the heart, you are to teach them diligently to your kids—all the time (v. 7). Bind these commandments to yourself (v. 8), and post them on your house and gates (v. 9).   

LOVE CAN BE TAUGHT

The first thing to take away from this passage is the understanding that love is a thing that can indeed be taught. But it cannot be taught by people who do not understand it themselves. Those who would teach this love to others must have it first themselves. Before you teach it to your children, you must be doing it yourself. Love the Lord your God with all your heart (v. 5). The words of His commandments must reside in your heart (v. 6). From the heart, it flows to the mouth, and from the mouth to the environment of the entire home. 

Religious instruction of children must not be pro forma or perfunctory. You are not ticking boxes, but rather nurturing souls, starting with your own.

COMMANDED TO LOVE

The fact that we are commanded to love does not take away from the nature of God’s grace. In his Confessions, Augustine once said, “Give what you command, and then command whatever you will.” Our obedience to this kind of requirement is entirely dependent upon the sovereign grace of God. 

“Therefore thou shalt love the Lord thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway” (Deuteronomy 11:1). 

“In that I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the Lord thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it” (Deuteronomy 30:16). 

The fruit of the Spirit, the working of His grace in our lives, maps very nicely onto the commands of God. What is the greatest command? Love (Dt. 6:4-9). What is the first fruit? Love (Gal. 5:22). It is the same thing all the way through—joy (Phil. 4:4; Gal. 5:22), peace (John 14:1; Gal. 5:22), longsuffering (Eph. 4:2; Gal. 5:22), gentleness (Tit. 3:2; Gal. 5:22), goodness (1 Tim. 6:18), faith (John 8:24; Gal. 5:22), meekness (1 Pet. 3:4; Gal. 5:23), and temperance (Tit. 2:2; Gal. 5:23). God gives us commands, and His Spirit grows obedience to those commands in us. Our responsibility is not to go obey Him on our own, and then bring that obedience back to Him, expecting some kind of a reward. No, we go in His grace, and we come back in His grace.

And we model for our children what this is like. As we walk along the road, we have them by the hand. 

Children learn by imitation primarily. “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children” (Ephesians 5:1). 

GOOD AND GODLY TEACHING

What does it mean to teach? It means to love your God, and the subject you are handling, in the presence of a student, whom you also love. It means to love God and your neighbor, and then to work out the problem together. 

This always brings us back to Jesus Christ. There is nothing worse, nothing more suffocating, than to be trapped in a Christless Christianity. Of course, this is not really Christianity at all, but there appears to be an abundant supply of this counterfeit nonetheless. A Christianity without Christ has no blood in it, no salt, no sap. 

But when Christ is present . . .? How would it be possible not to love the standard? “Great peace have they which love thy law: And nothing shall offend them” (Psalm 119:165; cf. 97,113, 163).

Read Full Article

Child Rearing and Checking Accounts (Biblical Child Discipline in an Age of Therapeutic Goo #7)


Grace Sensing on

INTRODUCTION

As with all checking accounts, it is important make deposits in the checking account of parental authority before attempting to write checks out of that account with an authoritative flourish in the signature. Like all checking accounts, there needs to be money in there. It is not reasonable to argue that you can’t be out of money because you still have some checks left.  

THE TEXT

“Train up a child in the way he should go: And when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6). 

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

There is debate over whether this verse is given to us as a general proverb, or as hard-and-fast promise to parents that if children are brought up right they will never stray, or if the verse is talking about finding the right vocation for your child, and not talking about spiritual condition at all. 

It is not my purpose to settle that question, at least when it comes to this passage. The truth I want us to take from this passage, whatever it is talking about, is the general truth that it is easier to bend the sapling than it is to bend the full-grown oak. And when you bend the sapling, the results of what you have done are lasting results. 

Whatever the course you set for the child, that course will remain with him. Child discipline matters, in other words. What you do with your growing family is not a random roll of the dice. 

STANDING ON THE PROMISES

Allowing for various interpretations of Proverbs 22:6 does not mean that we are backing away from what we have previously taught about how Christian parents are invited to trust the Lord for the salvation of their kids. This is just a quick reminder—and for those who want to do a deep dive, there is the book Standing on the Promises. The first thing is that none of this is by works. We believe the promises of grace by faith alone, and this of course results in parental works. It is not driven by parental works. Christian parents are to teach their children to honor their parents (Eph. 6), and this is a command with a promise attached to it. Christian elders are supposed to imitated by the saints (Heb. 13:7, 17), and it is possible (and required) for Christian leaders to manage their homes in such a way as that their children are not lost or reprobate (1 Tim. 3:4-5; Tit. 1:6).

“Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations” (Deuteronomy 7:9). 

THREE BASIC PRINCIPLES

A garden of yes: Remember the pattern that God established in the garden. He gave our first parents a world full of yes, and with one prohibited tree in the whole world. There was only one no in the garden of yes. Too many Christian parents function with a garden of no, and the occasional and very intermittent yes in the middle of all the negativity. 

With this, you are establishing a place of joy, peace and fellowship. When the fellowship is broken (as it is by sin), children who are accustomed to the harmony of ordinary life are eager to get back into fellowship. But if ordinary time is a time of dull chronic pain, punctuated by the occasional dramatic “scene,” causing acute pain, then this is not what you want. Your highest parental priority should be your defense of a climate of fellowship—which is only possible in and through Christ.   

Ascent to maturity: if you are applying the principle of our text, you bend the sapling when it is a sapling, and you don’t try to bend a trunk that is a foot in diameter. To change the illustration, you put training wheels on your child’s first bike. You don’t put training wheels on their mountain bike because “now they might really get hurt.”

Too many parents are indulgent when sin is little and sometimes even cute. But this is the time when you should be establishing your authority, storing that authority up when you will be needing to “write checks” on it. Do not indulge your little ones, and then panic when they move into secondary school with a decade of “little or no discipline” under their belt. Now they can wreck a car and kill somebody. Now they can get into dank porn. Now they can get pregnant, or get someone pregnant. Now they can seriously damage their prospects for life, and so the temptation is to rush in and put training wheels on their mountain bike.  

Child Rearing by Grace: We are saved by grace through faith, and not of works lest anyone should boast (Eph. 2:8-9). But while we are not saved by good works, we are most certainly saved to good works. This is the meaning of the next verse. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

Trusting God for your kids is not a matter of “pedaling harder.” Compare it to the promises of God concerning answered prayer. We are given a number of astonishing promises. But we know they are not vending machine promises, if for no other reason than the Lord’s prayer for deliverance in Gethsemane (Matt. 26:39). At the same time, the promises must mean something. “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Matt. 21:22). “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (John 15:7). This is a place where we are invited to step into a place of trust, and when God enables us to do so, we can look to Him expectantly. It is same with your children.  

CHRIST ALL THE WAY THROUGH

The very best thing you can do for your children in the Lord is to be an “all-in” Christian. How does He call us to live? And remember that everything He demands from us, He is willing to pour Himself out in order to provide us with it. He writes those promissory notes in His own blood, remember. The second best thing you can do for your children in the Lord is to be an “all-in” husband, or an “all-in” wife. These are the good works you are called to. These are the good works that invite you into the way of peace.

Read Full Article