Theology: Grace and Parenting

I'm going to do my best to combine a few things that have been flying around in my mind lately. I think there's a connection that I just came to this morning, and hopefully I can communicate it well to you all.

As we've seen already in Dug Down Deep, it's important that the things about God we claim to know and trust must be the right things--reality--or we're lost. We must get our thoughts about God right before we can step forward and live our lives based on those truths.

One of the greatest tenets of theology (knowledge of God) is God's grace. Without it, we're doomed in the face of another tenet of theology: God's holiness.

But what is the truth about the grace of God we should be holding on to? We talk about grace a lot at TFC but are you sure you know what it really means? Here are four quick things to keep in mind when pondering the grace of God:

1. The moral ill-desert of man. [We are] creatures fallen from God's image, rebels against God's rule, guilty and unclean in God's sight, fit only for God's condemnation, never enters their heads.

2. The retributive justice of God. God is the Judge of all the earth, and he will do right, vindicating the innocent, if such there be, but punishing (in the Bible phrase visiting their sins upon lawbreakers (see Gen 18:25). God is not true to himself [his holiness] unless he punishes sin.

3. The spiritual impotence of man. To mend our own relationship with God, regaining God's favor after having once lost it, is beyond the power of any one of us.

4. The sovereign freedom of God. Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated and of proceeding from One who was free not to be gracious. [It must be] seen that what decides each individual's destiny is whether or not God resolves to save him from his sins, and that this is a decision which God need not make in any single case.

(excerpts from Knowing God, J.I. Packer, pp. 129-132)

What does this have to do with parenting?

About a month ago, we had a parenting seminar here at TFC. One of the biggest things that stuck out to me were the "gospel centeredness" and "prayerful dependence" foundations of Biblical parenting. Tim Shorey defined them as such:

Gospel centeredness: Christian parents need the gospel as the covering for all their parenting failures and as the content for all their many parenting efforts.

Prayerful dependence: Christian parenting is not a formula or pill; it is a humble effort to teach, train, and raise our children by God's means in total, desperate, prayerful reliance on God's grace.

He went on to say that there is no other position resulting in so much guilt, suffering, condemnation, and failure as that of a parent. Thank God for the gospel which covers me with grace! And in the case of parenting, A+B (Christian parents using the Biblical method of parenting) does not equal C (Christian child). Only God's grace makes C.

If we had no correct concept of the grace of God, we would have no hope for our everyday shortcomings as parents. We would also have no hope for the everyday shortcomings of our children.

This morning I came to see that in the face of my son's and my own daily shortcomings, I need to be constantly reminded of the reality of the grace of God. How did I come to see this? Well, for no apparent reason (not teething, not sick), my son was up five times last night. Needless to say, last night I was not a happy mom, and honestly I don't think I was a kind mom. I did pray through it. And this morning when we got up to begin the day, God's grace covered my failures. I set last night aside. I did not harbor resentment towards him for the prior night's sleep--or lack thereof. My son is a child, and he will act like a child as long as he is one. There is grace in that. Only grace.

Thanks be to God that though we were willful rebels of his way with no ability to make amends, he chose to set the judgment that we deserved on his only Son so that he could then extend his grace to his chosen people.

Oh, that this might be the grace I remember.

What about you?