In our last blog post, we talked about what correction of children is and touched on a few reasons why it is no longer common. This week, we’ll dig a little deeper into what biblical correction is as we seek answers to why this correction is so important.

We should begin with definitions. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the verb to correct means “to put something right.”₁ In the Greek, it is epanorthoso, meaning “to stand something up again.”₂ It is this idea of standing something up again or putting it right that is in view when we speak of correcting children in the biblical sense of the word. Consider this connection, it is epanorthosis, the noun form of the above referenced Greek verb, that Paul uses in his second letter to Timothy: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness…”₃

The Bible, the Holy Scriptures, is God’s word to His people. In it he reveals who He is—both his character and nature. Also, He reveals who man is—in his Edenic state, his fallen state, and his redeemed state. Finally, He reveals who redeemed man must become and how, by God’s grace alone, he is to go about doing it. These are the Scriptures that Paul tells us are “profitable…for correction.” Why, then, would the Christian correct himself or his children to any other standard than these Holy Scriptures?

God has given us His Word, His Holy Scriptures, by which we are saved and sanctified. It is in these Scriptures that we find the standard for Christian living. If we receive instruction from anywhere else for how we are to live, we had better make certain that instruction lines up with the Scriptures. If it doesn’t, we must turn our eyes and ears away from it completely and never go back to it. God’s Word is the only standard against which we must measure ourselves; therefore, it is also the only standard against which we must measure our children.

If correction means to put something right or stand it back up; then, when we correct our children according to the Scriptures, we are standing them back up to what God says they ought to be; we are putting them right with God. We are holding our children up in one hand, the Bible in the other, and saying, “These two things don’t match; an adjustment is in order.” It should be the same process that we use daily in our own lives. The difference is that we are adults and have learned to do the hard work of self-control or self-governance with the help of the Holy Spirit. Self-control, after all, is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, evidence of God working in our lives. Our children require years of training in order to own this for themselves at the level that we do; therefore, we have to provide that control or governance for them in the form of correction until they can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, do it for themselves. As we are correcting them, we are training them to do it for themselves.

Through character sketches, wisdom, principles, and absolute commands, God gives us through His word everything we need to know about how He wants us to conduct ourselves toward Him and toward each other. It is our job to live that way ourselves and then to bring our children “up in the training and admonition of the Lord.”₄ And that really is reason enough to correct our children, isn’t it? because God told us to? God was not silent in preparing children to receive correction either. He speaks directly to children in two places. First, in Exodus 20:12, He gives the Fifth Commandment: “Honor your father and your mother.” Again, in a revisiting of the Fifth Commandment, we find in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.”₄ There we have it: God has directed parents to correct and children to take that correction.

To recap, many parenting tactics are touted by purveyors of worldly wisdom, but none deals with the root of the problem (sin) the way God’s word does. Children do not have the same measure of self-control or self-governance that adults do simply because they are children; therefore, parents provide that for them through correction. Correction means standing something back up. The children of Christian parents must be corrected by those parents when they stray from what God’s Word says they ought to be—they must be stood back up so that both in word and deed, they match what God’s Word says they ought to be. Parents and children, alike, have a clear mandate from God to follow His model.

Next time, we’ll talk about the difficulties of correcting our children and why they may not love it as much as we wish they did.

_{The Oxford English Dictionary; Oxford University Press, Third Edition 2006; Ed. Sara Hawker}

_{2 Teach Them Diligently; Lou Priolo; Timeless Texts, 2000, ISBN 1-889032-20-4, pg. 51}

_{3 Holy Bible, New King James Version; 1982 Thomas Nelson Publishing; 2 Timothy 3:16.}

_{4 Holy Bible, New King James Version; 1982 Thomas Nelson Publishing; Exodus 20:12; Ephesians 6:4}