Your children need the law of God, but it can’t change their hearts.
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. It aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” We’re thankful that you have taken time to join us again. Today, I’m joined by special guest Bryan Nelson, affectionately known as Nelly around here. Not to be confused with Brian Frost. So also convenient, his wife is named Ellie, that rhymes, Nelly and Ellie, and she’s sitting beside him. So welcome Bryan and Ellie.
Ellie Nelson
Thanks for having us.
Bryan Nelson
Thanks for having us.
Andy
Glad you guys are here. You guys have a few children. Would you like to tell us a little about your family?
Ellie
We have four kids. Our oldest is Mary Evelyn, and she is 13. Margo is 11, Asher is nine, and our youngest, Annie, is five.
Andy
Well, grateful for you guys. Thank you for being here, and just thankful for your example of living out the gospel in your home. I’m encouraged by you and excited to talk about chapter three, “Law,” from Paul Tripp’s book, “Parenting,” with you today. So Bryan, what’s the point, law, what’s he talking about?
Bryan
He gets to the point at 48 and he asks a question, “What are you relying on in a sense to create change in your children?” And then he points toward the law. And I think what he’s hanging his hat on is, do we think that a set of expectations or rules are what’s going to change the hearts of our kids? And if so, then what we are showing is that we’re placing our hope and our confidence in the law. And that may sound great. That sounds good. I want certain behaviors from my kid-
Andy
We expect obedience, we have to stick by the rules.
Bryan
But the scriptures teach us that the reality of that is that the law is good because it exposes what is good and right. But it also shows us that we fall short of it. And so I think Tripp, in this chapter, is trying to help us to see that the law is not what will change the heart of our kids. And he says on page 49, “There’s thousands of well-meaning Christian parents that are asking the law to do in the lives of their children what only the powerful grace of God can accomplish.”
Andy
So is he saying, we don’t need the law, is he saying our kids don’t need the law?
Bryan
No, absolutely not. The law is good and right. It shows us what is holy. I mean, ultimately in the scripture, the law shows us who God is. And so, no, it points us toward wisdom, and he talks about that in this chapter, that there’s an idea that the law shows us what wisdom looks like. And so, no, we don’t ignore it.
Andy
He says that the grace of wisdom, the law shows us the way we should go. But then also the grace of conviction, it shows us that we don’t go that way, we go straight, we go our own way. And so you said it well, but the law exposes the sin in our kids’ hearts. And so the problem, according to Tripp, in this chapter, is not when we rightly use God’s law to help our kids see God is in authority in the world and that they are lawbreakers, that they have rebelled against his authority. The problem is when we expect that law and those rules to change their hearts.
Bryan
Because scripturally, if we think about the way the law was applied, even with the Old Testament, it could not ultimately make the people’s hearts righteous.
Andy
That’s right.
Bryan
Something else was missing, in a sense it was there. And that’s where grace comes in.
Andy
That’s right. Now, he talks about law replacement. What’s he getting at there? I think he’s talking about swapping out God’s law for another law.
Ellie
I think that he is honing the point that we often add to God’s law for our own conveniences. So instead of using the Lord’s law, we alter and add to rules and expectations of our children so as to modify their behavior so that we feel good.
Bryan
And so our desire is met. Whatever we want happens.
Andy
God’s holiness is not the standard or what’s driving it, it is-
Ellie
What we want.
Andy
My convenience, my comfort, my peace and quiet. So practically, in our home, what this regularly looks like is a multiplication of rules. Anytime something gets on my nerves, I say, “Stop doing that. You’re not allowed to say that anymore, you’re not allowed to make that face, you’re not allowed to make that noise.” And I’m basically multiplying rules for my convenience. You guys look at me like I’m…
Ellie
A fool. We have no idea what you are saying or talking about.
Bryan
Just this week, we’ve been faced with the reality, our children sing all the time. And that’s not a bad thing-
Andy
It’s neither a good thing.
Bryan
…Unless they’re all for singing something completely different at the same time, which is normally how it goes. So it turns into a plethora of throwing commands at them and laws to stop it. And this is at the heart of this, because what is happening in those moments is my peace is being broken. And so I create a rule, which is what you’re saying, and we add this up. I create a rule to serve what I want, my peace, my quiet. And so if that’s where it ends, if that’s how it ends, then we’ve created something to try and change behavior in our children for our own desire.
Andy
That’s right. And in that situation, Ellie, you mentioned earlier, we were talking about this situation that it may be right to say something, it may be right to address the situation-
Ellie
They need to be respecters of each other and the other people in our homes then.
Andy
In that moment, what we’re concerned about is them understanding God’s standards for them. “Hey, we want you to see that you have to consider others’ interests, not just your own.”
Bryan
It’s Philippians, right? “Consider the needs of others as greater than yourself.”
Ellie
But when it starts with, “I can’t take it anymore,” it’s usually going in the wrong direction.
Andy
Exactly, exactly. That’s good. And to sum this up, on page 54, he says, “I propose that so much of what drives our responses to our kids is an unannounced set of laws that are more about what we want for ourselves and our lives than what God wants for and from our children. So Christian parent, be aware of multiplying rules and replacing God’s own law with a law of our own making for our own convenience.” But really, I think the main point of the chapter is we can’t trust the power of the law to change our children’s hearts for that. They need grace, they need the gospel. And when we say grace, are we talking about leniency, laxity?
Bryan
No, absolutely not.
Andy
What are we talking about then?
Bryan
What we’re talking about is the reality that there’s only one thing that can suffice for the fulfillment of that. It’s not ignoring the law, it’s coming to the reality that we’ve broken it and racing to the one who can actually overcome it and has on our behalf. I mean, it’s doing the hard work in those moments going beyond what is the broken law, what has been transgressed to the answer to that, which is Christ and the gospel, which is what…
Andy
God provides a redeemer.
Bryan
Yes.
Andy
Like Paul says in Romans eight, God has done by sending Christ, by condemning our sin in his flesh, on the cross he’s done what the law could not do, weakened as it was by the sinful flesh. And so, ultimately, the law is good at exposing sin in our kids’ hearts and in our own hearts. And that should drive us to preach the gospel. So one of our good friends from Turkey, he had a great matrix. He said, “We’ve always got to make sure we’re finding the right balance between gospel discipline and gospel grace.” Gospel discipline is not anger and impatience and frustration, enforcing rules and obedience on our kids, it’s lovingly helping our kids see when they’ve gone astray and helping them see that, therefore, they need redemption, they need God’s grace. And gospel grace, like you were saying, Bryan, is not just overlooking everything in leniency and just not caring about disobedience, it’s helping them see, “This is wrong, but I’m right there with you. I also am under the same sickness and guess what? There’s a physician who heals broken people like us.”
Bryan
And what’s remarkable, Andy, to me about all this is that the response that we have in those moments probably is revealing where our own heart is. If we forget what God has gifted us with in those moments, and what our calling is as parents, then we’re inconvenienced by this. We’re inconvenienced by the brokenness of our children in and of our own hearts. And we don’t get to the grace, because that’s not at the center of our own heart.
Andy
So that’s actually a good place to wrap this up, is he says in the last three or four pages, “You need to preach the gospel to your children, and you need to model the gospel of grace to your children.” Any thoughts on what this can look like practically? Preaching the gospel to our children and modeling it to our children.
Ellie
I think in the moments where discipline is necessary, it takes a lot of time, and modeling the gospel to your children has a lot to do with pointing out the heart behind their behavior. And often that takes just so much time in getting the child to calm down or to actually reveal what is in their heart, and for them to express it, and just taking that time is often more work than just delving out discipline. And so, the modeling comes in, in the patience and the sweetness of waiting for them to realize what their heart has done.
Andy
That’s good. Any other thoughts, Bryan, on preaching the gospel, modeling the gospel?
Bryan
Yeah. And I would say that’s in the midst of actually walking in those times when you are having to discipline your kid or deal with their brokenness. But I would say modeling also comes when we just show them by our own admission that we are imperfect, and we need a savior, to be quick to confess and to race to Christ in those moments. I think that’s another piece of modeling those things before our children.
Andy
And I think it really does. It’s rooted in what we talked about in the introduction, Phil and I, that gospel parenting is ambassadorial parenting. We have to recognize, “Hey, wait, I’m in this because I am entrusted by God with the opportunity and responsibility to introduce my kids to him as the God of grace.” And so, Ellie, you were talking about time, we’ve got to set aside time to invest in them and be willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of having these conversations. And they’re not always going to come at planned moments-
Bryan
Ever.
Ellie
Rarely.
Andy
Very rarely. And so, but I love how he talks about, any opportunity can be a gospel opportunity. It’s an opportunity to speak the gospel to them, it’s not like you’re doing a Sunday morning sermon, it’s constantly pointing them to the nearness and the faithfulness, and the power, and the provision of God in Christ. And when it comes to modeling, he just talks about the fact that regularly we contradict the words we’re saying by the ways we say them, by our actions. We yell at our kids not to yell. I whined at my kids not to whine, “Stop whining.” I’m the daddy whine. And so, I think what you were saying, Bryan, that in a sense, we’ve got to remember we’re more like them than we’re unlike them. We got to come near and sympathize with them of, “Hey, you know what? It’s a good thing that Jesus came to rescue us.” Any other final thoughts?
Ellie
Thanks for having us.
Andy
Glad you guys are here. A favorite quote of mine from John Bunyan, “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,” I think is where it comes from, that says, “Run John run, the law demands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. Better news, the gospel brings, it bids me fly and gives me wings.” Praise God for his rich grace in Jesus. And thanks, again, guys for joining today and thank you listeners for joining in. I hope to see you soon.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of “The Gospel Shaped Home” podcast produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.