“[Ye] fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:44And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4) JND). In the words, “The discipline of the Lord,” the primary meaning is “training, teaching or education,” but it is the Lord’s training and teaching which have to be administered. The simple statement of the fact throws a new light upon the families of Christians. What earnestness and zeal are often manifested to provide for a child’s vocation in this world, and the anxiety for the child’s success is often a burden upon many a parent’s heart. And it is readily admitted that our children must be trained for some occupation to enable them to pass through this world, but the chief end of a parent’s stewardship is to train them up for the Lord. If the Lord be thus exalted in the education of the children, His favor will rest both upon them and upon their parents, and He will be with the parents to sustain them in their object and to subdue the hearts of the children to His blessed will. But as with the Jewish parent, so with the Christian: There must be diligence in this work. Every opportunity must be employed — ”When thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” — to impress upon them the blessed character of their relationship to the Lord and of their subjection to His gracious government and authority.
Then, moreover, there is also the “admonition” of the Lord. Two or three thoughts lie in this word: It includes reminding, warning, and perhaps advising. We all know how prone children (and we ourselves also) are to forget what is due to the Lord. A seasonable reminder will often in such a case check the beginning of a course of disobedience, and then, if there be the least sign of stubbornness, warning will find its proper place, coupled with earnest advice. But it must always be remembered that the reminder, the warning, and the advice must not spring from human counsels of prudence, but from the Lord. It is HIS admonition. His word, therefore, must be often employed for such an education, and hence the children will need to be constantly under the parents’ supervision and care. The temptation may be to say that such a standard is too high, but it cannot be, if it is the Lord’s own standard; we should seek for it step by step. That many of us may have to own our failures as we read these lines is more than probable; yet let us not doubt that if we humbly own it and seek grace from the Lord Himself, He will strengthen us for our responsibility, sustain us daily in meeting it, and bless His discipline and admonition to the eternal welfare of our children.
C. H. Mackintosh