Does God Promise to Save My Children?
Encouragement for those of us with unbelieving or rebellious
children:
A summary from an interview with John Piper.
QUESTION: Does God promise to save my children?
I don’t see the nature of Proverbs or the rest of the Bible
suggesting that this is an absolute guarantee of believing children to
believing and faithful parents.
3 Bible contexts to support this:
In Isaiah 1:2 God says, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has spoken: ‘Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me.’” Now, if it were true that good parenting always resulted in faithful children, that would be a very strange thing for God Almighty, who is the perfect parent, to say.
I’m reading right now this long, sorry history of the kings of Israel — with bad kings being followed by sons who turned out to be good kings, and good kings who were followed by sons who turned out to be bad kings. It is a simply stunning mixture of good and evil and gives me great pause not to make quick and easy assumptions that the bad always produce bad kids and the good always produce good kids. It’s simply not true. It’s not so simple — not in the Bible.
The third is the most important for me. Jesus said about family relations and the effect his gospel has on them,
“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” (Luke 12:51-53)
Even more strikingly, Mathew 10:21: “Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.”
Therefore, I don’t think the Bible gives any absolute promise to
parents that faithful parenting will result in faithful children. It’s likely
to produce faithful children — and we should pray and hope that it will.
QUESTION: What do I do in the midst of horrific discouragement as I watch my
child choose a life of rebellion and sin?
The first thing I would say is that none of us can pass final
judgment on our own parenting, and neither can our children. Their memories and
our memories are fallible. Situations are very complex. We can know for sure
that there will always be some sins against our children that should be
confessed to God, confessed to them, and made right as far as they will allow
us to make it right. But that is no final judgment about how we did. That will
only come to light at the last day, and that’s true for our children in their
assessment as well as our own assessment.
This means that the possibilities of peace, joy, hope, and love in
the present moment cannot depend decisively on our assessment, or how we did as
parents.
We all did less than we could. None of us prayed as much as we
could. None of us fasted as much as we could. Did you fast at all? None of us
humbled ourselves as much as we could. None of us was consistent in our life as
we could have been. None of us was faithful to the word of God as we could have
been. None of us in exhortation, kindness, meekness, or gentleness was as good
as we could have been. It is hopeless to base our present peace and joy on the
assurance that we did a good job as parents. That is building a house on sand.
But there is HOPE!
Our hope in the present moment to survive emotionally and even
thrive amid the profound, gut-wrenching disappointments of life is the fact
that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners — to save parents from
their sins and to save children from their sins.
We must build our present lives on the gospel and not on parenting
successes. We must not be undone by parenting failures. We must hand over our
souls and the souls of our children to the sovereign goodness and wisdom of God
and forsake anxiety.
Paul describes the peace of God as a “peace that surpasses all
understanding.” It isn’t based on rational deduction. The peace of God in these
kinds of situation — painful situations — that peace is a miracle. It is a
gift. It cannot be produced by the natural reasoning mind.
May the Lord give us grace to live in this kind of peace in spite
of all our troubles, so that our children can see it, because that’s what they
need more than anything.
Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-79)
Like a river glorious is God's perfect peace,
over all victorious in its bright increase:
perfect, yet still flowing fuller every day;
perfect, yet still growing deeper all the way.
Trusting in the Father, hearts are fully blest,
finding, as he promised, perfect peace and rest.
_________________
H. W. Baker (1821-1877)
O God of love, O King of peace!
Whom shall we trust but you, O Lord?
Where rest but on your faithful word?
None ever called on you in vain.
Give peace, O God, give peace again.
Remember, Lord, your works of old,
The wonders that your people told;
Remember not our sins' deep stain.
Give peace, O God, give peace again.
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