The Duties of Parents: Parenting Your Children God's Way

by J.C. Ryle

We live in days when there is a mighty zeal for education in every corner of the world. We hear of new schools rising on all sides. We are told of new systems and new books for the young of every sort and description. And still, the vast majority of children are not trained in the way they should go, for when they reach adulthood, they do not walk with God.

How can we account for this state of things? The plain truth is that the Lord’s commandment in our text is not regarded, and therefore, the Lord’s promise in our text is not fulfilled. These things may well give rise to great searchings of heart. Pay attention, then, to a word of exhortation from a minister about the right training of children. Believe me, the subject is one that should touch every conscience and make everyone ask himself the question, “Am I doing what I can in this matter?”

Few can be found who could not influence some parent in the management of his family or affect the training of a child by suggestion or advice. All of us can do something here, either directly or indirectly, and I wish to stir everyone up to remember this.

Here, if anywhere, we need to question our own judgment. This too you would do well to bear in mind.[1]

Come now, and let me place before you a few hints about right training. May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit bless these suggestions and make them words in season to you all. Don’t reject them because they are blunt and simple; don’t despise them because they contain nothing new. Be very sure, if you want to train children for heaven, these are hints that should not to be lightly set aside.

Train them in the way they should go and not in the way they would go. Remember, children are born with a decided bias towards evil; therefore, if you let them choose fo...

It is natural for us to do wrong. Foolishness, says Solomon, is bound in the heart of a child (Proverbs 22:15). A child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother (Proverbs 29:15). Our hearts are like the earth on which we tread; leave it alone, and it is sure to bear weeds. If, then, you want to deal wisely with your child, you must not leave him to the guidance of his own will. Think for him, judge for him, and act for him as you would for any weak and blind person, but for pity’s sake, don’t abandon him to his own wayward tastes and inclinations. His pleasures and wishes must not determine his direction. He doesn’t know yet what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for his body. Don’t let him decide what he will eat, what he will drink, and what he will wear. Be consistent and deal with his mind in like manner. Train him in the way that is scriptural and right but not in the way that he fancies.

will is almost the first thing that appears in a child’s mind, and it must be your first step to resist it.

Train up your child with all tenderness, affection, and patience. I do not mean that you are to spoil him, but I do mean that you should let him see that you love him. Love should be the silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, forbearance, patience, and sympathy are the cords by which a child may be led most easily. Willingness to enter into childish troubles and a readiness to take part in childish joys are the clues you must follow if you want to find the way to his heart. Few people can be found, even among adults, who are not drawn easier than they are driven. Something in all our minds rises in arms against compulsion; we brace our backs and stiffen our necks at the very idea of a forced obedience. We are like young horses in the hand of a broncobuster. When he handles them with kindness and makes much of them, he can eventually guide them with a thread, but if he treats them roughly and violently, it will be many months before he gets the mastery of them. Children’s minds are cast in much the same mold as our own. Sternness and severity of manner chill them and set them back. It shuts up their hearts, and you will weary yourself to find the door. But let them see that you have an affectionate feeling towards them and that you really desire to make them happy and do them good, so that if you punish them, they know it is intended for their well-being. As they see that you, like the pelican, would give your heart’s blood t...

Train your children, for much depe...

Grace is the strongest of all principles. See what a revolution grace effects when it comes into the heart of an old sinner: it overturns the strongholds of Satan; it casts down mountains and fills up valleys; it makes crooked things straight and ...

But after nature and grace, undoubtedly, there is nothing more powerful than education. Early habits of God (if I may say so) are everything with us. We are made what we are by training. Our character takes the form of that mold into which our first years are spent.

All of this is one of God’s merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moldable moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the beginning of life to believe what you tell them, to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger’s. In short, He gives you a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity is not neglected and thrown away. Once it slips away, it is gone forever.

I know that you cannot convert your child. I know that they who are born again are born not of the will of man but of God. But I also know that God says expressly, Train up a child in the way he should go, and He never gave a command that He did not give man grace to perform. And I know too that our duty is not to stand still and dispute but to go forward and obey. In the going forward, God will meet us. The path of obedience is the way in which He gives the blessing. We only have to do as the servants did at the marriage feast in Cana – fill the waterpots with water; then we may safely leave it to the Lord to turn that water into wine.

Train them knowing that the soul of your child is most important.

if you love them, think often of their souls. No interest should weigh on you so much as their eternal interests. No part of them should be as dear to you as that part which will never die.

But the spirit that dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so much, will outlive them all, and whether they live in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you. This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children. In every step you take for them – in every plan, scheme, and arrangement that concerns them – do not leave out that mighty question, “How will this affect their souls?” Soul love is the soul of all love. To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to and this life the only season for happiness, is not true love, but cruelty. It is treating him like some beast of the earth, which has but one world to enjoy and nothing after death. It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he should learn about from his very infancy – that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul. A true Christian must be no slave to fashion if he wants to train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world. He must not teach and instruct his children in certain ways merely because it is the usual way. He must not allow them to read books of a questionable sort merely because everybody else reads them or let them form habits of a doubtful tendency merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye on his children’s souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called narrow-minded and strange. Wha...

This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children. In every step you take for them – in every plan, scheme, and arrangement that concerns them – do not leave out that mighty question, “How will this affect their souls?”

A true Christian must be no slave to fashion if he wants to train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world. He must not teach and instruct his children in certain ways merely because it is the usual way. He must not allow them to read books of a questionable sort merely because everybody else reads them or let them form habits of a doubtful tendency merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye on his children’s souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called narrow-minded and strange. What if it is? The time is short; the fashion of this world passes away. He that has trained his children for heaven rather than for earth, for God rather than for man, is the parent who will be called wise in the end.

Train your child in a knowledge of the Bible.

You cannot make your children love the Bible, for none but the Holy Spirit can give us a heart to delight in the Word. But you can make your children acquainted with the Bible; to be sure, they cannot become acquainted with that blessed Book too soon or too well. A thorough knowledge of the Bible is the foundation of all clear views of religion. He that is well grounded in it will not generally waver; he will not be carried about by every wind of new doctrine. Any system of training that does not make knowle...

if you love your children, let the simple Bible be everything in the training of their souls and let all other books take second place. Don’t worry about your children being mighty in the catechism, but help them be mighty in the Scriptures. This is the training that God will honor. The psalmist says of Him, You have magnified Your word according to all Your name (Psalm 138:2), and I think that He gives a special blessing to all who try to magnify it among men. Be sure that your children read the Bible reverently. Train them to look on it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the Word of God, written by the Holy Spirit Himself – all true, all profitable, and able to make us wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. Be sure that they read it regularly. Train them to regard it as their soul’s daily food – as a thing essential to their soul’s daily health. I know that you cannot make this anything more than a habit, but there is no telling the amount of sin that a mere habit might indirectly restrain. Be sure that they read it all. You don’t need to shrink from bringing any doctrine before them. You don’t need to assume that the leading doctrines of Christianity are things that children cannot understand. Children understand far more of the Bible than we think possible. Tell them about sin, its guilt, its consequences, its power, and its vileness; you will find they can comprehend much of this.

Tell them of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work for our salvation – the atonement, the cross, the blood, the sacrifice, and the intercession. You will discover there is nothing beyond them in all this. Tell them about the work of the Holy Spirit in man’s heart, how He changes, renews, sanctifies, and purifies. You will soon see they can accept this in some measure. In short, I suspect we have no idea how much a little child can take in of the length and breadth of the glorious gospel. They see far more of these things than we suppose.[4] Fill their minds with Scripture. Let the Word dwell in them richly. Give them the Bible, the whole Bible, even while they are young.

Train them in a habit ...

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