How to Discipline Your Children (Study Outline)

Disciplining Your Children

 

1. Are children innocent of sin? No.

• Children are not innocent of sin. All of us have a tendency towards evil and foolishness in our nature “from childhood” (Proverbs 22:15, Genesis 8:21). 

  • We are born with a fallen nature that drives us towards sin, even from birth (Psalm 51:5, 58:3).

 

 

2. Can a child truly and knowingly “sin”? Yes. Children—even little children—are morally intelligent, even if they aren't intellectually intelligent.

• What is sin? Sin is not held against you if you don’t know right and wrong (law) (Romans 5:13). But once you do know whether an action is right or wrong, you have law, and you are capable of sin (1 John 3:4). 

• As soon as a child becomes aware of any form of right and wrong, he is now aware of the law in his conscience, and he is capable of sinning.

 

 

3. When is a child old enough to go to hell? / What is the age of accountability?

• As soon as you’re old enough to choose sin, you’re old enough to go to hell. Why? “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Whether you’ve sinned once or have had a lifetime of sin, without repentance, all people who have sin will be condemned for it. All who have sinned will die (Romans 5:12, Ezekiel 18:20).

 

 

4. Adam's fall proves that even basic disobedience deserves condemnation.

• Adam and Eve did not die (spiritually) for committing murder, for lying, for stealing…none of that. They died for a single act of basic disobedience (Romans 5:19). All they did was eat from a tree when God told them not to. To God, sin is as simple as an act of disobedience (doing anything He told you not to do). It doesn’t matter whether it’s as extreme as murder or as elementary as touching something you’re told not to touch. Disobedience is disobedience. 

  • If God had to condemn Adam for a single act of disobedience, then He certainly also has every right to condemn us for our disobedience. And since every child chooses disobedience—doing something mom and dad told him not to do—he is automatically condemned until he learns repentance. 

 

 

5. Just like adults, you can identify whether a child is saved or not based on their fruit (their actions) (Proverbs 20:11).

• Therefore, children are not automatically saved. If they can sin, until they have repentance, they’re unsaved and an unbeliever. You need to see your children as unbelievers who need salvation if you're ever going to be effective in bringing them to repentance.

 

 

 

 

6. Physical discipline bring a child to salvation fastest (Proverbs 22:15, 23:13-14).

• The way that you bring repentance to a child is with the rod of correction, which is a correction of physical pain. 

  • Physical discipline is great for teaching a child the way of obedience. Before a child is old and intelligent enough to grasp repentance on the basis of his own faith and understanding of the gospel, he can grasp how to repent on the basis of fear of the pain of physical discipline. If the fear of God (and the pain of hell) brings us to repent (Proverbs 16:6), then the fear of the rod brings repentance to a child. The rod of correction is the child's equivalent to the fear of God. 

  • What about the grace of God to save children? Grace is only relevant where there is the ability to have faith (Romans 5:2). Before children are old enough to put faith in Christ, they are protected through the discipline of the law. You cannot use principles of “grace through faith” for a child, as you would for an adult, because they are not old enough to understand faith. Until they're older, they only understand the fear of the rod—the law. (Galatians 3:23-25, 4:1-3).

    • Just as the discipline of Moses’ law kept the Israelites from sin enough for them to be preserved until Christ came with faith, so spanking will preserve a child and prepare them to receive Christ with faith. After faith, there is still discipline, but it won’t have to be as often because the Spirit will convict them for you.

 

 

7. You should spank your children more often than you think. So how often?

• Remember that you are not just bringing discipline to a child for immoral behavior, but for any kind of disobedience or any time your child does something they know is wrong. Every form of disobedience, whether small or big, deserves discipline (Hebrews 2:2, 2 Corinthians 10:6).

• Principles of the law that are applicable for a child:

• Read Numbers 15:28-30—Anytime a child knows that something is wrong and does it anyway, this is presumptuous sin, and it deserves discipline. If a child sins in ignorance, there is mercy. But once he’s informed of what he has done wrong, if he does it again, it is intentional and therefore must be punished.

• We should not treat any form of disobedience lightly, but punish it swiftly. If we love our children, we will discipline them without hesitation (Proverbs 13:24)..

 

 

 

Conclusion: You need to be diligent to discipline your children. This is how you’ll get them saved fastest. The rod of correction spares a child from condemnation. Sparing the rod of correction will easily keep a child under condemnation.