It's a complaint widely recognized as ac­curate: discipline upon disobedience has seen better days. Ours is a society where laws require judges to impose upon delinquent juveniles no greater punishment for their crimes than a rap over the knuckles. Educators have learned to respect the rights of the child, and so be careful lest they mishandle an offending student. In the homes of Australia also the trend is to belittle the administration of discipline upon the dis­obedient child.

This development does not pass the church by. From what I see and hear, I can only conclude that in too many homes parents per­mit children to get away with far more than ought; in fact, in too many homes discipline is down-right weak. This development is most disturbing since in the words of JC Ryle — "you must not wonder that men refuse to obey their Father which is in heaven, if you allow them, when children, to disobey their father who is upon earth" (Training of Children, pg 21).

I do not wish in this article to discuss mat­ters as the psychology of child rearing, do not wish either to discuss the emotions one struggles with when one's child refuses to cooperate. I realize that many parents honestly struggle with the rebellious nature of their children, imploring God also for the strength and wisdom needed to train their children. I wish now instead to draw atten­tion to a couple of points the Lord has revealed in His Word, points that have a direct bearing on the matter of discipline.

It pleases the Lord to entrust His covenant children into the care of believing parents. These covenant children receive from God very rich promises; God Almighty promises to be their Father in Jesus Christ, and so care for their needs, granting also the gifts of forgiveness of sins and life eternal.

Not every covenant child, however, neces­sarily receives the content of these promises. Esau, for example, was just as much a covenant child as Jacob, but he did not receive the gifts of forgiveness and life (cf Romans 9:13). For God made every person, every covenant child included, responsible to answer to the demands of the covenant.

Are the children God has granted us of them­selves able to answer positively to the demands of the covenant God established with them? God tells us in His Word that they can not. Says God of every person alive in the days of Noah, adult and child alike: "every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). We should note that this is a radical statement: every imagination without exception was only evil continually. Nor was this radical depravity valid only of the generation destroyed by the flood. For after the flood when only the believer Noah and his family lived upon the earth — God uttered this general truth: "the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21). The psalmist repeats this truth about the children of men: "they have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one;" none seeks after God (Psalms 14:20). So David can say elsewhere:

I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.Psalms 51:5

The Church echoes this revelation in the Canons of Dort: through the fall of Paradise, man "brought upon himself blindness, horrible darkness, vanity, and perverseness of judgment in his mind; malice, rebelliousness, and stubbornness in his will and heart; and impurity in all his affections." Again: "since after the fall man became corrupt, he as a corrupt father brought forth corrupt children. Thus the cor­ruption has spread from Adam to all his des­cendants" (III/IV, Art if). Parents and children alike, then, are "totally unable to do any good and inclined to all evil" (LD 3). So it is that when we as parents bring our covenant children to the baptism font, we state before God and His congregation our conviction that "our children ... (are) con­ceived and born in sin, and therefore (are) subject to all sorts of misery, even to condemnation" (Form for Baptism, pg 586f).

This truth of Scripture echoed by each Free Reformed parent in Confession and Liturgi­cal Form has consequences for the way in which we approach the children God has granted us. The children we receive, though they be covenant children a hundred times over, are not of themselves inherently good and obedient, will not of themselves find the way of salvation either. Says Solomon to Is­rael (that nation of parents who received covenant children!): "a child left to himself brings shame to his mother" (Proverbs 29:15), and "folly is bound up in the heart of a child." His inspired advice on how to get rid of that folly? "The rod of discipline drives it far from him" (Proverbs 22:15). Indeed: "he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (Proverbs 13:24). Stronger: "if you beat him with a rod you will save his life from Sheol" (Proverbs 23:14).

Here is revealed that Scriptural truth that the Lord is pleased to use believing parents to teach His depraved covenant children how to obey and fear the Lord. To enable parents to carry out this God-given responsibility, God in His wisdom has laid in their hands the rod of discipline. It is no accident that today's depreciation of discipline occurs at the same time as the conviction that children are not inherently corrupt, and need not be taught to love God either. The Church knows and confesses differently, and hence parents who love the Lord are not to be afraid to administer the discipline daily needed by the children God has entrusted into their care.

I might add: covenant children do not cease being corrupt when they become, say, 10 or 14 years old. Nor do parents' responsibility to their children cease when the child turns 17. As long as they are not mature, they need the disciplining hand of godly parents. Otherwise — humanly speaking — they shall not answer to the demands of the covenant, and so not receive its promises either.