Give Them Grace
NOVEMBER 9, 2024
by Elyse Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson
Christians know the gospel is a message unbelievers need to hear. We tell them they can’t earn their way into heaven and they have to trust in Jesus alone for their goodness. But then something odd happens when we start training the miniature unbelievers in our own homes. We forget everything we know about the deadliness of relying on our own goodness and teach them that Christianity is all about their behavior and whether on any given day God is pleased or displeased with them. It’s no wonder that so many children from Christian homes are lost as they seek meaning in life, basing their identity in anything other than God and rejecting the faith they were raised in.
There is no easy way to say it, but it must be said: parents and churches are not passing on a robust Christian faith and an accompanying commitment to the church. Christian parents and churches need to ask the hard question, What is it about our faith commitment that does not find root in the lives of our children?
Let’s face it: most of our children believe God is happy if they’re “good for goodness’ sake.” We’ve transformed the holy, awesome, magnificent, and loving God of the Bible into Santa and his elves. And instead of transmitting the gloriously liberating and life-changing truths of the gospel, we’ve taught our children that what God wants from them is primarily their happiness, polite-ness, and a shallow form of morality. We’ve told them being good and feeling good (at least outwardly) are the be-all and end-all of their faith. This isn’t the gospel; we’re not handing down Christianity.
When we change the story of the Bible from the gospel of grace to a book of moralistic teachings like Aesop’s fables, all sorts of things go wrong. Good manners have been elevated to the level of Christian righteousness. Some parents discipline their kids until they reveal a prescribed form of contrition, and others work hard at keeping their children away from the wickedness in the world, assuming the brokenness within their children has been handled because they prayed a prayer one time at Bible club, youth camp, or VBS.
Instead of the gospel of grace, we’ve given them daily baths in a “sea of narcissistic moralism,” and they respond to such rules and moralism the same way we do they run for the closest exit as soon as they can.
Moralistic parenting occurs because most of us have a wrong view of the Bible. The story of the Bible isn’t a story about making good little boys and girls better.
Grace, or the free favor that has been lavished on us through Christ, ought to make our parenting radically different from what unbelievers do. That’s because the good news of God’s grace is meant to permeate and transform every relationship we have, including our relationships with our children. At the deepest level of what we do as parents, we should hear the heartbeat of a loving, grace-giving Father who freely adopts rebels and transforms them into loving sons and daughters. If this is not the message your children hear from you, if the message you send them on a daily basis is about being good so that you won’t be disappointed, then the gospel needs to transform your parenting too.
Although we long to be faithful parents, we also rest in the truth that our faithfulness is not what will save our children. Giving grace to our children is not another formula that guarantees their salvation or obedience. Grace parenting is not another law for you to master to perfect your parenting or your children. Your children will be saved only through the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit who works at the direction of our heavenly Father. He’s the powerful, soul-transforming One. Yes, he may use parents as means to accomplish his purpose, but salvation is entirely of the Lord (Jonah 2:9).