Parenting and Training, Discipling a Child's Heart

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise), “that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:1–4, ESV)

Parents must “Bring Up” their Children (v. 4b)

Paul gives a second command for parenting in verse 4, which moves from the restrictions God has place on parents to the responsibilities He has entrusted to them. Paul explains the positive side of parenting when he says parents are to “bring [their children] up.” A parent’s job is not to break their child, it is to build their child up—to edify not exasperate. Of course, when we speak of “building up” it does not mean you need to help your child grow in their self-confidence, as if kids need to think about themselves more than they already do. Building up a child means addressing the needs and weaknesses of a child so that they can be established in the ways of the Christ. Really, you are shepherding them to look away from themselves and to Jesus for the grace and strength they need. The word Paul uses here implies a tender and loving care for a child that meets the need presented by their immaturity. You will be tempted to respond to their immaturity with your own immaturity. Paul is saying that instead you must “feed and nourish” them, care for their needs, and provide them with whatever is necessary to bring them to maturity. If that seems somewhat vague, Paul specifies what this kind of parental care looks like in several practical areas.

Discipline

In order to nourish your kids in the ways of the Lord you must employ discipline in your parental ministry. Paul uses the the word paideia (παιδείᾳ) in this verse, which carries the idea of training a child for specific actions, habits, and disciplines of life. This is the kind of language employed to describe all types and manners of training, including the kind of training an apprentice or a disciple would receive. Thus, parental discipline is an ordered and authoritative discipleship relationship in the life of a child. God made sure that children would be discipled in their home by giving them a built-in disciplined relationship with their parents. This, by the way, will require self-discipline on the part of the parent (1 Tim 4:7). You can’t train your child in the ways of wisdom if you are not disciplining yourself to walk down the same path. As a parent you will need to be proactive and corrective in the way you train your children.

Proactively, parents have a duty to train their children in all kinds of practical and spiritual disciplines (Prov 3:11-12). God has made the home a training ground for life, and parents are the teachers. Your job is to prepare them for a strenuous life in a fallen world while pointing them to the hope of eternal life in Christ Jesus. This means that, more than just addressing when they don’t do something right, you need to prepare them to do what is right. If your only training interaction with your children is negative and punitive, you are missing the majority of your opportunities to disciple your children. In fact, it would provoke me to anger if I was constantly told what I did wrong but never taught how to do it right.

If you are wondering what proactive discipline looks like, consider some examples of proactive discipline:

• Train a child for self-control (sitting still, being quiet, waiting)

• Train a child to be thankful (eat what they have, say thank you)

• Train a child to be submissive (Can’t get up from table, can’t run around church)

• Train a child for endurance (don’t blame tiredness or hunger for sin)

• Train a child to trust the Lord (address unreasonable fear without coddling sinful anxiety)

• Train a child to prefer others (deal with selfishness, not sharing, shyness)

• Train a child to crucify the flesh (they don’t get what they want when they want it)

• Train a child to love the church (show up, teach them about the means of grace)

• Train a child to read Scripture (read with them, ask them what they are reading)

• Train a child to pray (pray with them, encourage and teach them to pray on their own,)

As you train your child in these areas, keep a couple of things in mind. First, try to use biblical language with your kids. For instance, don’t chide them for “tattling,” correct them for “gossip and slander” (both biblical terms). The more you can diagnose what is going on in their hearts with biblical language, the more you are teaching them to use the Bible as the interpretive grid for their inner-life. Additionally, as you seek to train your child according to Scripture, keep in mind that only the Spirit can produce these fruits in full, which means they must be born again unto faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ in order see the full bouquet of spiritual fruit in their lives. As a parent, you cannot regenerate your child, however, if you will train your child what it looks like to cultivate these fruits they will be prepared to reap a harvest when the Spirit does a work on them.

The majority of parental discipline should be proactive, but training a child for life and godliness will also require corrective discipline. Proactive discipline trains a child to do what is right, corrective discipline addresses when they don’t. There is a great deal of confusion and imbalance on the issue of corrective discipline, but what must be remembered is that corrective discipline is intended by God to be a means of grace to protect your child from wrath (1 Cor 11:32). It is a good thing. Our heavenly Father employs corrective discipline on His children because He loves them (Heb 12:7-11) and good earthly parents will follow the example of their heavenly Father.

This is an excerpt from The Christian Home: Principles for Managing and Maintaining a Godly Family. You can read more on the subject of parenting along with principles for marriage in The Christian Home.