Why Children Matter

by Douglas Wilson

God is the God of new beginnings, and He blesses to a thousand generations. When God says He visits iniquity to three and four generations, that is not a dire threat, but an act of mercy. This is because God is limiting the cascading effects of sin.

Imitation is absolutely crucial for childrearing. You do not want your children imitating you unless you are imitating God.

Ironically, when parents bring up their children with a godly, biblical independence in view, their children actually want to spend time with them when they are grown up.

Your purpose as parents is ultimately to be the instrument of your children’s salvation. You are not the ground of their salvation, but you are commanded to imitate the One who is the ground of their salvation.

It is the same with marriage. Husbands cannot offer themselves as a vicarious, substitutionary atonement for their wives. The only One who can do that is Jesus. However, husbands ar...

Parents, you are not able to save your children. You cannot just press a button or make a decision and be the ground of your children’s salvation. You obviously cannot be their saving grace, but you are commanded to imitate that saving grace and ...

So, the sacrifices that you will make for your children should be something you can sing over. If there is not a song in it, it is not a biblical sacrifice.

Imitate that. The environment of your home should be full of grace. When you have a home filled with grace, it is not without standards. You are not introducing moral anarchy. Grace is not an amorphous, gelatinous mass. Grace has a backbone. However, when the standards are broken, the heaviest sacrifices in the work of restoration are made by the guardians of grace, not by enforcers of law, finger-pointers, parental accusers, or people who correct in a nasal tone of self-pity.

A garden of grace can contain a tree of law. A garden of law cannot contain a tree of grace. If your garden is all law, and there is a tree of grace in the middle of it, it is not really grace. It is a tree of merit, and you are going to have kids that are just good for the sake of the reward: “I was good, can I have my treat now?”

We should correct children for their sakes, not for our own.

With legalism, strictness becomes the central standard. License happens when parents realize that legalism involves a lot of work.

Liberty is not moderate legalism or moderated license. Liberty is stricter than legalism, and liberty is freer than license.

He is not telling them to be moderate Pharisees but to surpass the Pharisees.

The righteousness of liberty outdoes the legalist, and the joy of liberty outdoes the libertine.

Living with an environment of grace that encompasses law is something that only the Spirit of God can give you. If you sing over your children as you delight in imitating God, your children will pick up on it. That’s how the world works.

God is after a lineage, and He’s been after a lineage from the very beginning. Why did God make them one? He was seeking a “godly seed” (Mal. 2:15). That’s why children matter.

Justification establishes the fact of this relationship, while sanctification determines the direction of the relationship. The fact of this relationship is that you are a child of God by the free gift of God’s grace. Sanctification is the process of God communicating to us what He wants us to be as we grow up in His family.

God does not spank the neighbors’ children: He spanks His own. The pains of sanctification bear witness to the fact that we are His children. There is no such thing as sanctification without direction, and direction means discipline.

Discipline is painful, but not everything that is painful is discipline.

First, discipline is not punishment. Discipline has correction in view, while punishment has justice and retribution in view.

The civil magistrate is assigned the sword (Rom. 13), not the spanking spoon.

Second, make sure that you discipline not with many rules but rather with a few principles.

His three principles were 1) No disobedience, 2) No lying, and 3) No disrespecting your mother. Now, what is not covered by that?

Remember that God gave Adam and Eve a perfect garden: there was a world full of yes, and there was only one no. Minimize the number of no’s in your home.

You are not teaching the child to be a good version of what they are. You are rather teaching them to be what they are becoming.

Secret sin can be imitated also.

You need to move from exoskeletal discipline in the early years to the internalization of the standards when the kids are in their teen years, and the way you do that is by allowing real life consequences as opposed to artificial consequences.

When they are twelve to eighteen, you are phasing them into real world consequences.

If you are fine with corporal punishment for juvenile delinquents or for rowdies or hoodlums, how much more will you accept a judicious application of a mini-rod to a mini-person?

Always remember that boys and girls run on different kinds of fuel. Certain things work for both of them, but boys run on respect-fuel and girls run on love-fuel.

Little girls flirt and manipulate; little boys brag. If a boy says “Look at me” before he jumps off the diving board, he’s clamoring for respect.

When boys are young, be sure to praise them rather than pulling back from them. Show them respect now so that they aren’t constantly craving it later.

“I will be here for you, I will sacrifice for you, I’m connected to you, and I’m going to display that every chance I get.”