“…bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” – Ephesians 6:4b 

The focus of this article is the discipline in which parents ought to raise their children. The next article will focus on instruction. 

What is meant by “discipline?” The word is the root for English words like “pediatrician,” referring to a doctor who treats children. The King James Version translates this word as “nurture,” but “discipline” better captures the sense of difficulty that is involved. The other places the word is used include 2 Timothy 3:16, where the phrase is “training in righteousness,” and the rest are all in Hebrews 12 (verses 5, 7, 8, and 11), where the context is about God’s discipline of believers as His children. 

A core idea behind the word “discipline” is that children need to be trained. They need to learn. They need to be formed and shaped. This is in contrast to some who view children as only needing the freedom to express themselves and everything is ok. That view is incorrect, but so is the polar opposite. The opposite view, which is also incorrect, is to view children as blank canvasses who will become whatever they are trained to become. Children are neither naturally good nor completely moldable. So, what are they? 

Children are fellow human beings made in the image of God, just like us. They are made of the same stuff and share the same nature as their parents. For parents to understand their children, they can get a huge head start by understanding themselves. An enormous mistake is made when parents who fail to understand themselves seek to understand their children using theories that have no basis in reality because they begin with wrong assumptions about what people are. 

Often, parents do not know how to discipline their children because they do not understand them, and they do not understand their children because they do not understand themselves. Think about it very simply: if a parent is not self-disciplined, how can he or she hope to discipline the child effectively and wisely? 

It may be surprising to parents to hear that one of the most important factors in knowing how to discipline children well is in knowing their own hearts. When the apostle Paul mentions training, there is the implication that children need help to get from where they start to where they need to go, what they need to become. This means that parents must have an idea of what children are and what they need to become.  

Do parents know what children are and what they need to become? It is likely that many do not. There are many ideas in the world about what children are, but the Bible gives plenty of insight. There are plenty of ideas of what children should become, or should be allowed to become, but the definitive answer is found in Scripture.  

Parents may discipline their children with many different kinds of goals in mind. They may raise children to be high achievers, or athletes, or unthinkingly submissive, or popular, or polite. Parents may discipline children from a desire for convenience and comfort, being guided more by their own selfish desires for rest than by biblical love for the children God has given them. Obviously, although all parents will fail to perfectly pursue the biblical goals of discipline, parents must strive to put away unbiblical goals and inappropriate priorities in favor of putting into practice what God says. 

What does God say is the goal of discipline? It may be found and explained from all over Scripture, but Ephesians 6:4 describes it in terms of the discipline of the Lord.¹ That means that the discipline which parents apply to children is not their own, but the Lord’s. This means that Christian fathers and mothers have no right to choose what is right in their own eyes what the goals for their children are. The latitude and flexibility that parents have in the way that they raise their children are limited to what counts as the discipline of the Lord.  

What does “the discipline of the Lord” or “the Lord’s discipline” mean? The only interpretation that makes sense is that it is a discipline that is sourced in or determined by Christ. The discipline or training in which parents are engaged with their children is from Christ and for Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Lord of parental discipline. It is not fatherly whims or motherly caprice. It is the Lord’s righteousness, goodness, truth, and virtue that give shape to our discipline of our children. 

If parents are going to discipline their children in the Lord, then their training must be toward the Lord. This means that parents should be most concerned in their training of their children with what most concerns Christ, i.e., love to God and neighbor, obedience, righteousness, virtue, humility. Ultimately, parents want to train their children as much as depends on them to follow the Lord like they do. This means that parents must know their children truly. They cannot settle for outward conformity.  

Parents are often tempted to parent a child to the point of submission to them, which has many benefits to the parents. But mere submission is not the goal, or the child may learn to submit to the wrong things later. Parents should want their children to follow Christ independently and not as a function of subservience to parents. 

Many parents are also afraid of their children. They are afraid of what their children think of them and how their parenting is affecting them. They want their children to be their friends above all or they are afraid of causing a kind of lasting damage, but this makes the training aspect of parenting highly difficult, even impossible, because the demands are often opposed to the demands of training and discipline. Parents are often subject to fears that produce impossible parenting standards, but the fears are based in ignorance of what God tells us children are and how God both commands and models that we raise them. 

One of the main things that parents may miss is the focus that needs to be on their children’s minds. There is a stockpiling of information and experiences the first 12 years that results in material to work with in the young adult years. Parents often treat children as though they cannot be disciplined for some reason. They do not respect their child’s ability to learn and understand. Parents sometimes blame their own poor discipline on their child’s poor learning ability. However, parents can discipline their children, and they should take it seriously.