Shepherding a Child's Heart

Correcting with a Central Focus on Redemption
The central focus of childrearing is to bring children to a sober
assessment of themselves as sinners. They must understand the mercy
of God, who offered Christ as a sacrifice for sinners. How is that
accomplished? You must address the heart as the fountain of
behavior, and the conscience as the God-given judge of right and
wrong. The cross of Christ must be the central focus of your
childrearing.
You want to see your child live a life that is embedded in the rich
soil of Christ’s gracious work. The focal point of your discipline and
correction must be your children seeing their utter inability to do the
things that God requires unless they know the help and strength of
God. Your correction must hold the standard of righteousness as high
as God holds it. God’s standard is correct behavior flowing from a
heart that loves God and has God’s glory as the sole purpose of life.
This is not native to your children (nor to their parents).
Discipline exposes your child’s inability to love his sister from his
heart, or genuinely to prefer others before himself. Discipline leads to
the cross of Christ where sinful people are forgiven. Sinners who
come to Jesus in repentance and faith find grace and mercy. Jesus’
redemptive work entails forgiveness, internal transformation, and
empowerment to live new lives.
The alternative is to reduce the standard to what may be fairly
expected of your children without the grace of God. The alternative is
to give them a law they can keep. The alternative is a lesser standard

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that does not require grace and does not cast them on Christ, but
rather on their own resources.
Many parents get confused at this point. They realize their
children are unable to love others from the heart without salvation
and new birth. So they conclude that, since it is not possible, the
standard must be lowered. They set a standard that is in keeping with
their children’s resources.
Dependence on their own resources moves them away from the
cross. It moves them away from any self-assessment that would force
them to conclude that they desperately need Jesus’ forgiveness and
power.
I have spoken to many parents who feared they were producing
little hypocrites who were proud and self-righteous. Hypocrisy and
self-righteousness is the result of giving children a keepable law and
telling them to be good. To the extent they are successful, they
become like the Pharisees, people whose exterior is clean, while
inside they are full of dirt and filth. The genius of Phariseeism was
that it reduced the law to a keepable standard of externals that any
self-disciplined person could do. In their pride and self-righteousness,
they rejected Christ.
Correction and shepherding must focus on Christ. It is only in
Christ that the child who has strayed and has experienced conviction
of sin may find hope, forgiveness, salvation, and power to live.