TRAINING CHILDREN

TRAINING CHILDREN

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6

What is that ideal  in the training of the child? That the child shall realize Jesus Christ's estimate of greatness. By realize it I do not mean theoretically merely, but practically. What is Jesus Christ's estimate of greatness? Christ was constantly instructed by His father (John 12:49-50) and this instruction brought life that was eternal in its makeup. He was the apple of His eye and His most beloved Son. That a man is great in proportion as his character is what it ought to be. In the great Manifesto of the King, that wonderful enunciation of the ethic of the Kingdom of God, never a single blessing is pronounced upon having, never a blessing pronounced upon doing. All the blessings are upon being (Matt. 5:3-11). The word "blessed" essentially means "happy or born-again." And the true ideal toward which we are to move, and for which we are to train our children, must be the realization of the character upon which Jesus Christ has set the sevenfold chaplet of His benediction and by which He exhibited while here on earth. These are all fruits of the Spirit and can only be attained that way (Gal. 5:22). That the boy may be a Godly man that the girl may be one of the King's daughters all glorious within, that first, everything after, but that first. To neglect that as the ultimate, to lose sight of that as the goal is to ruin our children by love which is false love, is to harm them by the very method in which we attempt to serve. Love is the fruit of the Spirit and then its component parts are listed in the rest of the verse. The way they go without Christ is in vs. 15, the way of foolishness; it is in the heart until cleansed. Cleansing leads to perfection (Matt. 5:48) and is the characteristic of the Father's children, first seen in Christ.