The Discipline and Admonition of the Lord
• 1 min. read • grade level: 8
“Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The words employed are most significant. More exactly, it is discipline and admonition (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). Discipline will apply to the whole course of training or education; admonition implies constant watchfulness in order to warn against dangers, forgetfulness or departure from the path into which they are being led. Nor should the exact meaning of “bring them up” pass unnoticed. It is “to rear,” and hence goes back, in regard to children, to earliest infancy. It is important to notice this, because many parents fall into the mistake of supposing that they must wait for their children’s conversion before they seek to carry out this injunction; hence the sad spectacle is often presented of Christian parents permitting their children all kinds of worldly ways, dress and amusements, under the plea that they are not yet the Lord’s. This is to miss the whole point of the teaching of these scriptures, as well as to forget the special place into which the children of believers are brought. The Spirit of God does not say, Wait and pray for your children’s conversion; but He says, Rear him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. You are thus to take God at His word, counting upon Him for the blessing contained in the promise, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:66Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)).K
E. Dennett