October 12 – Proverbs 11:29; 22:6; 29:15, 17-18

Main Focus: Parenting

Paul Carter writes “Parenting is not ultimately about teaching right behaviours, it is about facilitating a right relationship. Your first job as a parent is to help your child relate to the God of the covenant through faith in Jesus Christ. Tell your kid that God is Holy. Tell her that she is a sinner and that she can be reconciled to God through the life and death of Jesus Christ. Tell her that she can be filled with the Holy Spirit, so that she can learn how to live before God and with others in love and peace. That is the first and most important thing you need to teach your kids.”

Psalm 127:3–5
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
when he speaks with his enemies in the gate

Children are a heritage from the LORD, they are to be viewed as blessing(s) and therefore a gift from God, and yet husband and wife must do something in bringing the children into the world and in raising them to be faithful members of God’s people. Here the stress falls on the children of one’s youth, now grown up and standing with their father when he speaks with his enemies in the gate (i.e., the place where justice was administered. It will be hard for the enemies (who are assumed to be unfaithful) to intimidate such a man.

Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

This proverb, founded on the covenant with Abraham, encourages parents to “train” their children in the way (i.e., the right moral orientation) by pointing to the kinds of conduct that please or displease the Lord, and to the normal outcome of each kind of conduct (on the matter of consequences). The training will include love and instruction as well as discipline.

Hebrews 12:7–11
It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

God is viewed as speaking through the proverb; God’s discipline proves that he considers followers of Jesus to be his sons, since God chastises every son whom he receives. Discipline was a common term for childrearing through instruction, training, and correction; however, here Hebrews focuses on the call for perseverance in the painful tests of life. These tests are to their benefit, prove their sonship, and require a response of perseverance. The readers, then, should not be discouraged.

This lesser-to-greater analogy from the readers’ own childhood training shows that it is appropriate for the heavenly Father to discipline, and it calls for a response of respect and submission; as a loving Father, the Lord always disciplines his children for their good.

Psalm 103:13
As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him

God is a father to his people as a whole, and to the particular faithful members. Of course many human fathers fail to embody this idea; this image assumes that biblically informed people have an intuition of what fathers ideally should be like. But it also serves as a goal for faithful fathers: they will seek more and more to be the kind of father who shows compassion to his children.