Discipline

“Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” – Proverbs 13:24

The question I get asked most frequently as a parent is: how do you discipline your children? Most people seem to be looking for technique, several kinds of which we’ve used. This verse is quoted with some controversy in the context of spanking: some claim the word for “rod,” shebet, refers to the kind of wooden stick used for physical punishment; others point out that it is the same word used in Psalm 23:4 of the comforting shepherd’s rod. Regardless, the main point is that disciplining our children is such an important part of how we love them that to avoid it is akin to an act of hatred. And most of the time, when discipline fails, it’s not a matter of improper technique as much as how we use them.

The word for “love” here, ahab, is the same word that describes how God loves us (Deuteronomy 6:5). We must always exercise discipline in a way that represents God: in the life of our children, we are the look of God’s face, we are the touch of His hand, we are the tone of His voice. Think for a moment about the glory of God’s utter faithfulness in how he reveals his authority and law to his children: that is how we are to discipline our children. Never inconsistently or affected by our own emotion or mood. Never selfishly or affected by how they make us feel or look. Never impatiently. Never with demeaning or condemning words.

In other words, before we discipline our children, we must discipline ourselves. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, “When you are disciplining a child, you should have first controlled yourself… What right have you to say to your child that he needs discipline when you obviously need it yourself? Self-control, the control of temper, is an essential prerequisite in the control of others.” It does no good to have the perfect technique down if you use it sometimes but not others, or if you use it in anger. As we ask God to bring us into greater submission before Him, to help us overcome our own anger and frustration, we allow Him to reveal in us any sinful or selfish ways we view our children. The more we open ourselves to receiving His correction in our lives, the more we can rightly love our children through the correction we offer them. 

The word for “diligent” here is shachar, which means “to break forth as light, as the dawn,” which one lexicon describes as “a word altogether poetic.” It reminds me of when Zechariah speaks of “the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high” (Luke 1:78). We are to earnestly seek the dawning of the good news of Jesus into our lives. To look for the breaking in of God’s mercy. To diligently orient all our discipline so that it points to the gospel.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of discipline as opportunities God gives me to allow the Holy Spirit to work His conviction and grace in my children’s lives. God has given me authority over my children, but He has not given me the power to change them. I can’t fix them; it’s not up to me. Only the gospel has that power. If I operate on the assumption that I can change my children, then I see every misbehavior as failure, and I become over-focused on the behavior itself. But if I realize that only God can change my children, I look diligently for every opportunity to open their hearts to the work of the Holy Spirit: and discipline moments are exactly those kinds of opportunities. Nothing reveals the heart condition of my children like their misbehavior does, and if I modify their behavior but miss their hearts, I don’t really change them for the long-term, anyway. 

Orienting discipline towards the gospel means coupling any discipline technique with instruction, typically a brief conversation that helps them understand the heart struggle behind their behavior, presents the gospel in some form, and opens space for confession and grace. Most of the time, nothing seems to happen, and that’s normal. But sometimes His grace really does break through. It was during a discipline moment that Eric accepted Jesus as his savior. He has been our most difficult child to discipline, and it was an episode like any other, but somehow that day, when I explained that Jesus died not only to free him from the consequence of his sin but the power it held in his life, something clicked. I don’t know how many conversations after difficult discipline moments I’d had with him before that day—very many—and I’ve never had an experience quite like that with the other children—but I thank God I can look back now and see that it is always worth it. Being diligent in our discipline is one of the most important ways we love our children, even though it’s one of the hardest things we do.