Shepherding a Child's Heart

Appealing to the Conscience
Your children need heart change. Change in the heart begins with
conviction of sin. Conviction of sin comes through the conscience.
Your children need to be convicted that they have defected from God
and are covenant-breakers. They must come to the conviction that the
inner man, who relates to God, is an idolater—guilty before God. To
help them, you must appeal to the conscience.
As mentioned in chapter 12, we have a pattern for appeal to the
conscience, in the ministry of Jesus. He consistently dealt with the
conscience, forcing men to judge themselves and their motives.
Dealing with character issues requires learning how to appeal to the
conscience. If you wish to deal with character and not just with
behavior, you must deal with the child in a deep way that enables him
to see the implications of his behavior and to indict himself.
In Luke 10, a lawyer (an expert in the Hebrew Scriptures) came to
Christ and tested him by asking, “Teacher—What must I do to inherit
eternal life?” Jesus asked him how he understood the Law, and he
responded with the two great commandments: Love God and your

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neighbor. Jesus told him he had answered correctly and charged him
to obey God’s commands. The lawyer then sought to justify himself
by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” Christ’s challenge was to help
this man realize that at any point he was aware of a need, he had an
obligation to meet that need. If he failed to, he had broken the Law.
Jesus taught this through the story of the Good Samaritan. The story
disarmed the man and enabled him to understand how he’d failed.
Jesus appealed to his conscience at the end of the story by asking who
was a neighbor to the unfortunate traveler. The lawyer moved from
asking who his neighbor was to properly assessing who had been a
neighbor.
Christ’s response to Peter in Matthew 18 provides another
illustration of Christ’s use of appealing to the conscience. Peter asked
for the outer limits of forgiveness. “Lord, how many times shall I
forgive my brother when he sins against me?” (Matthew 18:21). Jesus
could have said simply, “Peter, if you can ask that question, you don’t
begin to understand anything about forgiveness.” Instead, Jesus told a
story that powerfully demonstrated the implication of being one who
is forgiven.
In Luke 7, a woman who had lived a sinful life anointed Jesus and
wiped his feet with her tears. Simon, a Pharisee, judged Jesus for his
lack of discernment. Simon was revolted by the sinful woman. Jesus,
knowing Simon’s thoughts, told him a story that appealed to his
conscience. In the story, there were two men and one money lender.
One had a great debt, the other a small debt. Both were forgiven.
“Which of them will love him more?” Jesus inquired.
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt
canceled.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.
Jesus used the story to indict Simon for his self-righteous
thoughts. The appeal was to Simon’s conscience. Simon judged
himself with his own words. The point of Jesus’ story was that this

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woman loved him more than self-righteous Simon.
You must apply the same methodology to your children’s needs.
You must get to the root issues by dealing with the conscience.
Romans 2:14–15 indicates that the conscience is your ally in teaching
your children to understand their sin. The conscience within man is
always either excusing or accusing. If you make your appeal there,
you avoid making correction a contest between you and your child.
Your child’s controversy is always with God.
Dealing with children in this way avoids giving them a keepable
standard so that they feel smug and righteous. They are faced with
God’s ways and how much they need the radical, renovating work of
Christ.
When your child has come (by the work of the Holy Spirit and the
exercise of the means God has ordained for nurturing children) to see
his sinfulness, you must point him to Jesus Christ, the only Savior of
humankind.
Strive to help your child, who is a selfish sinner, see his need of
Christ’s grace and mercy in the cross. Dealing with the child’s clamor
to have the toy first (especially if we have been willing to make “Who
had it first?” the issue) without addressing the selfish heart from
which it flows, will never lead him to the cross.
Dealing with the real issues of the heart opens the way continually
to the cross where forgiveness is found for twisted, warped, and sinful
boys and girls. Truly Christian responses cannot be produced
legalistically because they deal with attitudes, not just with the
external behavior.