“…bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” – Ephesians 6:4b (ESV)
If children require discipline in the sense of training or being shown the way to live, then it stands to reason that they also need instruction from their parents. The word translated “instruction” here is also translated as “warning” in Titus 3:10, referring to a factious or divisive man. The word in the verbal form is always translated as “admonish” in the ESV.[1]
Children Need Instruction
Paul’s charge to fathers to instruct or admonish their children implies that children do not always make the right choices or think the right way. Of course, this is knowable from other passages, even within Ephesians, that make this point much more clearly and starkly.[2] Children are not born perfect. They are born imperfect. More than that, children are born already dead in sin. They are by nature inclined away from God and cannot make themselves turn toward him. Children’s loves are pointed in the wrong direction from the get-go.
Some parents seem to think otherwise. They have a love-believes-all-things sort of approach that assumes the best of their children. This is often grounded in the principle that we cannot see each other’s hearts. However, this supposed blindness is invalid. We cannot see each others’ hearts, but God can, and God tells us that we are all sinful by nature and from conception. We know that our children are born not loving God, not because we can see their hearts, but because God can, and He tells us their condition. We do not have to be able to see our children’s hearts to know that they do not love God or want to obey Him. I suspect, but do not know, that many parents fail to instruct or admonish their children because they simply do not know how to do it. A child-led approach to instruction indicates either that the parent does not believe what the Bible says about children, that the parents do not know how to instruct their children, or both.
Parents also often struggle with anger toward their children. The anger in their own hearts toward their children leads them to believe they are guilty themselves and that it would be shameful to instruct their children when they are not submitting to instruction and admonition in their own right. How can a parent admonish a child when the parent also needs to be admonished? For some parents, this is an unsolvable quandary, a moral dead-end that leaves parent and child trapped in a vicious cycle. We know that the child needs to be admonished, but we also intuitively recognize that we need to be admonished. Our consciences accuse us as we admonish our children, making the admonition more miserable for us than the children. Of course, the children have no idea of any of this at a young age.
The answer is for the parent to accept and respond to the admonition of his conscience before admonishing the child. Once again, a parent’s ability to admonish a child depends largely on his ability to discern and respond to the admonition of his own conscience.
The parents’ sin is no excuse for failing to instruct a child. Instead of seeing it as a reason that instruction would be hypocritical, it is better to see it as an opportunity to model repentance. If a parent does not regularly practice biblical repentance, it will be difficult or impossible for the parent to know wisely what to say to children. Instructing or admonishing a child is essentially a call to repentance. Repentance in the Old Testament is the same word for turning; in the New Testament, it is a word that refers to a change in thinking. In both cases, the practical effect is a change in the kinds of actions that a person performs and why. What is instruction or admonition intended to do if not to call a child to think and act differently?
Parents Need Moral Clarity
In short, what parents often lack is enough moral clarity to instruct or admonish their children. A parent who is not used to dealing with his own guilt and responding appropriately will be less prepared to help his child do the same. It makes sense that parents would sense a hypocrisy in expecting from children what they are not prepared to do themselves. In short, a parent who is unused to repenting will be more likely to hesitate to admonish their children.
Why is characteristic repentance important for parents who want to raise their children biblically? It is because admonishing a child is essentially equivalent to calling a child to repent. Repentance is changing the direction of a life and making changes in thinking that lead to a different way of living. Parents need to focus on developing a lifestyle or pattern of repentance of their own sin rather than of indulgence and special pleading.
Surely part of the reason so many parents are susceptible to the wheedling and whining of their children is that it reflects our attitudes toward our own sins and failings. On one hand, plenty of parents are ok with this double standard, freely admonishing their children and treating them too harshly while they coddle sins in their own lives. Part of the reason they are so harsh and strict with their children is likely because they are overcompensating for the lack of consistency and integrity in their own lives. Because they are irregular and inconsistent in their own hearts, they are unpracticed in the practice of appropriately calibrating their balance of mercy and justice with their children.
On the other hand, other parents cannot support the accusations of their own consciences. Rather than repenting of their sins, they choose to tolerate the same kinds of sins in their children as they do in themselves; these parents sleep better at night because they can console themselves with the fact that they are not hypocrites.
Parents who want to obey Paul’s command in Ephesians 6:4 will have to reckon with the obstacles that prevent them from doing so. Children are too precious and the responsibility is too important to excuse parents from being dissuaded from instructing or admonishing their children. One happy fact is that it is really rather simple: instructing children means recognizing when children are not living the way they ought to and showing them how. The process is made difficult, not by the complexity of the command, but by the blindness and faithlessness of our own hearts. The way parents instruct children is highly representative of the state of their own internal dialogue, for good or ill. Thankfully, the more a parent grows in personal godliness and characteristic repentance, the clearer these aspects of parenting will become.
[1] Acts 20:31; Romans 15:14; 1 Corinthians 4:14; Colossians 1:28; 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:12, 14; 2 Thessalonians 3:15.
[2] Cf. Ephesians 2:1-3.