A Word To Parents # 1

A Word To Parents # 1

[The following is an excerpt from "The Rod and the Word, A Treatise on Afflictions"]

4. The fourth and last branch of exhortation is to PARENTS - to exhort them in the education of their children to imitate God, and that in three things:

(a). Afford your children the CORRECTION.

It is the counsel of the Holy Spirit, "Chasten your son while there is hope, and let not your soul spare for his crying" (Prov. 19:18). Behold, God counsels you who are parents to do with your children as he does with His - wisely to use the discipline of the rod, before vicious dispositions grow into habits, and folly is so deeply rooted that the rod of correction will not drive it out.

"Error and folly," says one very well, "are the cords of satan with which he ties sinners to the state to be burnt in hell!" These cords are easiest cut early. If you make the child hurt in the cutting of them, let it not cause you to withdraw your hand; for so it follows, "Chasten your son, and let not your soul spare for his crying." It is not only foolish, but cruel pity to forbear correction for a few childish tears; to cause your child to wail in hell for sin, rather than to shed a few tears for the preventing of it. Foolish fathers and mothers call this love, but the God calls it hatred: "He who spares the rod, hates his son!" (Prov. 13:24). Surely there is nothing so ill-spared, as that whereby the child is bettered. Such sparing is hatred; and because you hate your children in not correcting them - they may come afterwards to hate you for not correcting them.

But this is not all! The parent's leniency in disciplining, makes way for God's severity. Pity to the child is cruelty to the child's soul. So the Hebrew may be rendered, "Spare not to his destruction, or to cause him to die" - that is, to occasion his destruction. The foolish indulgence of the parent may be, and often is, the death of the child - eternal death.  Parents spare their children in folly - to the destruction both of body and soul!

And this may help us to expound that other parallel text, "Withhold not corrections from the child, for if you beat him with the rod he shall not die" (Prov. 23:13). The meaning may be either that correction will not kill him - the rod will break no bones. This reproves the silly and sinful soft-heartedness of parents, who think if they would correct their children, they would presently die from it.  They are as afraid to use the rod, as if it were a sword. Nay, but says the Holy Spirit, fear not correction, for behold, the strokes of the rod are not the strokes of death. It is but a rod - it is not a serpent. It may hurt - but it will not give a poisonous sting. To obviate the fear of parents in this case, God himself gives His word for it, "He shall not die".

This may be the meaning which I conceive - the words may be a motive drawn from the fruit of correction. "Withhold not correction from the child." Why? "He shall not die" - in other words discipline may be, and (through divine blessing accompanying it) is often a means to prevent death. It may prevent the first and second death, to which the child is exposed by the sinful indulgence of the parent.

The word used in this place, says one, seems to note an immortality; so that "He shall not die" - is all one as if the Holy Spirit had said, "He shall live forever," the rod on the flesh shall be a means to save the soul in the day of the Lord Jesus. "We are chastened that we should not be condemned with the world" (1 Cor. 11:32). "Such smitings," as David says in another case, "shall be kindness" (Psalm 141:5). And such rebukes are so far from breaking the head, that they shall be an excellent oil which shall cure, and give life. Even the philosopher could say, "Correction is a kind of medicine for children."

Alas, our children are sick, and cruel is that mercy which will allow them to die - yes eternally - rather than heal their palates with a little bitter medicine! They are monsters in the form of fathers and mothers - who thus hug their little ones to death! They are infanticides rather than parents; of whom we may say, as once the Roman emperor said of Herod, when he heard that he had murdered his own son among the rest of the infants in Bethlehem, so that he might be sure to destroy the King of the Jews, "Surely it is better to be such people's swine, than their sons!"

O hateful indulgence and merciless pity - to damn a child for lact of correction! Such parents throw both the rod and the child into the fire at once! This is not done like God, for "whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom he receives" (Heb. 12:6) - and so does every wise loving parent! "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him chastens him early (Prov. 13:24).

For lack of this disciplinary love - how have some children accused their parents on their death bed. And how many do and will curse their parents in hell! "The wicked fondness of our parents has brought us into these torments! Our fathers and mothers have been our murderers! Those who gave us our natural life, have deprived us of eternal life! Those who would not correct us with the rod, have occasioned us now to be tormented forever!" It is said of Eli, "His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not" (1 Sam. 3:13). The Hebrew has it, "He did not frown upon them." How sad - for lack of a frown, to destroy a soul!

I am much afraid, this unchristian, yes wicked indulgence of parents is the fountain of all that confusion under which our country at this time reels and staggers likea drunken man. And for this very sin (at least for this among others, yes, and for this above others) God is visiting all the families of the land, from the poorest cottage to the highest official. Such indulgent parents have laid the foundation of their own sorrows, their children's ruin, and the destruction of the nation, in withholding proper discipline from their children!

Therefore God crosses us in our righteous desires; we have walked even in this point, exceedingly contrary to God and to his discipline; and therefore God is walking contrary to us, and is punishing us seven times more for this iniquity. Oh, that parents would awaken themselves, to follow both the pattern and precept of their heavenly Father, who, as "he corrects those whom He loves," so he commands them to lovingly correct their children. "Withhold not correction from the child; for if you correct him with the rod he shall not die" (Prov. 23:13).

~Thomas Case~

(continued with # 2)