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We are living in an age of shortcuts. Through the wonder drugs, the crisis stage in many sicknesses is drastically shortened, thus saving many lives. In war and in peace, new methods are being devised to shorten the time it takes to achieve an objective. Even in the learning of languages and the acquisition of skill in playing musical instruments, all sorts of courses are on the market guaranteeing success in six easy lessons.
But there can be no short cuts successfully employed in the exacting task of bringing the children to Christ. We have shown in previous articles that we are under obligation to the children’s Savior to bring them unto Him. We have seen that this must be done just because they are sinners like their elders. And we have seen that the methods of modern, adult evangelism are bound to be ineffective. In a word, they must be transplanted from the seed bed of the world into the seed bed of Christ’s visible church in order that, through the sovereign working of His Spirit, they might be born again. And this is not the work of an hour or a day. This work of evangelizing is most briefly summed up in the words of Paul to fathers (and to mothers as well - compare verses 1 & 2 preceding our text) in Ephesians 6:4. “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
(1) Parents are here commanded to bring their children up, that is, “to nourish them up to maturity.” The period of nurture and admonition is as long as childhood. It is absolutely hazardous to seek to shorten this period if you want to see results!
(2) They are to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I take these three words to mean that parental prerogatives used in nurture and admonition are of divine origin, that parents are God’s agents, His vice-regents to train and rule these children for Him who is their only rightful Lord and King. Anything that goes beyond those limits imposed by Christ is not “of the Lord” and is sinful usurpation.
(3) Nurture means “the whole training and education of children (which relates to the cultivation of mind and morals and employs for this purpose now commands and admonitions, now reproof and punishment)” (Thayer’s Lexicon). From this word in the Greek we get our word, pedagogy. Admonition has nearly the same meaning—exhortation toward that which is good and away from that which is evil. Together these words embrace the whole scope of moral and spiritual education including that which is taught by word and example, by exhortation and restraint.
In short, it is such day-to-day training of the children whom God has given us to raise for Him over a protracted period. This is the work of children’s evangelism laid down for us in the Scriptures. This is the ideal, not only for our own, but for all our efforts to evangelize those children who should come under the scope of our influence. By all means at our avail we should seek to give them, through directly evangelizing their parents such nurture and admonition. And let it be said right here that, although God in His free mercy often uses less than this to the salvation of children it is sinfully presumptuous for us to expect Him to give them new hearts while we have the opportunity and yet fail to provide that full-blown nurture beginning at the cradle and continuing so long as they remain under the parental roof. How foolish to suppose that God will honor “a lick and a promise” type of evangelism which thinks to have done all that God requires in a single hour or a week!
Judging from the text we have been considering, there is no substitute for the Christian home. It is to parents first of all that this command is issued. They are God’s first-line evangelists. It .is to this end that parents are required to take this or a like vow when presenting their children for baptism: “Do you promise to instruct your children the principles of our holy religion as revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and as summarized in the Confession of Faith and Catechisms of this church’ and do you promise to pray with and for your child, to set an example of piety and godliness before him, and endeavor by all the means of God’s appointment to bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?”
The key to evangelizing children is in the hands of their parents. For this reason God holds them responsible for the total nurture of their children throughout their childhood years. Time was when parents were capable of giving their children an education adequate to the demands of their times with very little outside aid. That time has long since past. But though parents must send their children to schools for “secular” education, they are still answerable directly to God for the nature of that education which forms so large a part of the total nurture required. And if the fear of God is the beginning (or chief part) of both wisdom and knowledge, as the Scriptures teach, then all education should be God-centered “For of Him and through Him, and to Him are all things” (Romans 11: 36), including the three r’s and history and geography and science. And just as it is a poor substitute to apply salt to foods after cooking (to make up for having forgotten to season them before cooking), so it is a poor substitute to seek to instill the knowledge of God into the understanding our children gather of the world God has made after the learning process has been completed. Things being as they are, total Christian nurture requires Christian education in the school as well as in the home For those who are not persuaded of the validity of this argument, let me say but one thing more. Do not decide whether to cast your lot with Christian schools or secular schools by trying to weigh the results. This will not give you a true picture for the reason that the results are not all in as yet. The results belong to God; what belongs to us is to do the will of God, however hard and drastic that will may be. “The things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words. of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
As the training of the children in both home and school is in the hands of their parents, so their membership and participation in the visible church is also in those same hands. Parents must decide which church they and their children should attend (for children are hardly capable of such discernment). So must parents see to it that they and their children find their places in the house of God from sabbath to sabbath at the stated hours of worship. It is up to parents to see to it (and this is quite a rask! ) that church going becomes for their children, not an irksome chore, but a delightful season of refreshing. It is up to them to attend upon the preaching of the Word and other forms of Christian instruction (to seek private counsel when necessary) that they may in turn teach their children the ways of the Lord. It is up to the parents to see to it that their children receive catechetical instruction provided for them by the church. As a pastor I know whereof I speak when I say to you parents that, aside from daily intercession on their behalf, the church can do no more for your children than by your cooperative efforts you make it possible for it to do.
Rev. Lawrence R. Eyres was a founding member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1936. He graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 1937 and was ordained to the ministry in 1938. For the next fifty-five years he served eight OPC congregations. In 1951, Rev. Eyres was elected moderator of the General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. His book The Elders of the Church was published in 1975 and remains in print. Rev. Eyres went to be with the Lord on January 23, 2003.
This article originally appeared in the Presbyterian Guardian, Volume 24, No 3, March 15, 1955. The OPC Committee for the Historian has made the archives of the Presbyterian Guardian available online!
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