Parenting by Grace
It’s done every day in Christian homes around the world. W
ell-meaning parents, zealous to see their children doing what is right, ask the law to do in the lives of their children what only grace can accomplish. They think that if they have the right set of rules, the right threat of punishment, and consistent enforcement, their children will be okay. In ways these parents fail to understand, they have reduced parenting to being a law-giver, a prosecutor, a jury, and a jailer… In their zeal to control behavior, they look to the tools of threat, manipulation, and guilt.
This way of thinking denies two significant
things that the Bible tells
us. The first is that before sin is a matter of behavior, it is always a matter of the heart. We sin because we are sinners… The second is that if threats, manipulation, and guilt could create lasting change in the life of another person, Jesus would not have had to come. (They) really do ask the law to do what only god in amazing grace is able to accomplish.
Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to our own power to change. He meets us with transforming grace and calls us to be tools of that grace in his redemptive hands. He lifts the burden of change off our shoulders and never calls us to do what only he can do. So we expose our children to God’s law and faithfully exercise authority while we seek to be tools of heart change in the hands of a God whose grace is greater than all of the sin we’re grappling with.
Paul David Tripp