Imitating Jonathan Edwards’ Godly Parenting
Words filled with biblical truth spoken into an air of uncertainty must be among the most agonizing parents can deliver to a child. Will children receive the Scriptures as foolishness or as the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18)? The answer is not always known.
As parents, if closeness with our children were the only aim when they approach us with their fears and pains, we might restrict our replies to: “God is near. He is with you” or “God aches with you.” I find momentous biblical truth about the character of God in each of these replies (Hebrews 13:5; Lamentations 3:32-33).
Yet, when in self-sacrificial love for our children we prioritize their relationships with God over and above their relationships with us, more biblical counsel emerges. This counsel potentially puts the parent-child relationship at risk for the sake of their good (Matthew 19:29) and sends us in prayer toward a God who draws people to himself.
Jonathan Edwards and His Daughter, Esther
Jonathan Edwards offered this kind of self-sacrificial love to his daughter, Esther. He wrote the following words to her when she was ill. His words meet the reality of the world’s sorrows:
I would not have you think that any strange thing has happened to you in this affliction: ‘Tis according to the course of things in this world, that after the world’s smiles, some great affliction soon comes.[1]
He counsels her to make the time of illness useful within her spirit:
God has now given you early and seasonable warning not at all to depend on worldly prosperity.
Having humility before God about her earthly illness would foster contentment in eternal rest. If she cannot improve her circumstance on this earth, Edwards advises she look to the eternal glory God might glean from her difficult season:
Therefore I would advise….if it pleases God to restore you, to lot upon no happiness here.
Labour while you live, to serve God and do what good you can, and endeavor to improve every dispensation to God’s glory and your own spiritual good, and be content to do and bear all that God calls you to in this wilderness, and never expect to find this world any thing better than a wilderness.
Lay your account to travel through it in weariness, painfulness, and trouble, and wait for your rest and your prosperity ‘till hereafter where they that die in the Lord rest from their labours, and enter into the joy of their Lord.
He encourages his daughter to give herself wholly to the Lord in suffering. He can deliver challenging, truth-focused counsel because he has already made the same commitment to the Lord in his life. As a loving parent, being at a distance from his child without hope for future visits would undoubtedly be painful.
But the exemplary nature of his contented commitment to God is on display when writing to his suffering daughter who is out of his reach, across many miles.
You are like to spend the rest of your life (if you should get over this illness) at a great distance from your parents, but care not much for that. If you lived near us, yet our breath and yours would soon go forth, and we should return to our dust, whither we are all hastening.
‘Tis of infinitely more importance to have the presence of an heavenly Father, and to make process towards an heavenly home. Let us all take care that we may meet there at last.[2]
He delivers world-denying hope in courageous words to a hurting child. First, by speaking challenging thoughts he risks that his words might be met with disagreement causing relational distance.
Second, he speaks words for the good of his child, without thought of himself. He advises his daughter to “care not much for” being near or far from him—so long as she remains near to the Lord. Edwards clearly has no greater joy than that his daughter would walk in the truth (3 John 1:4).
My Own Parenting
I do not want any less than what Edwards exemplifies. I would not ultimately want a pleasant-enough relationship with my daughter to the detriment of considering eternity—heaven and hell—together. Truth may be agonizing, at times, to convey—but these kinds of words are good; they are love. Speaking them is the kind of risk God asks me to take for the sake of Christ and the good of my daughter (Romans 10:14).
When my daughter is grown, I want her to see parents like Edwards. I want us to be rightfully content in the Lord so that our only request and hope is that she walk with the Lord to eternity. Edwards’ counsel is compelling, in part, because he is true to maintaining an eternal focus himself. To ask my daughter to follow me in contentment where I have never been would prove challenging!
Ultimately, Edwards and his daughter are brought closer together through this focus. Esther writes of their relationship:
Last eve I had some free discourse with My Father on the great things that concern my best interest—I opened my difficulties to him very freely and he as freely advised and directed.
The conversation has removed some distressing doubts that discouraged me much in my Christian warfare—He gave me some excellent directions to be observed in secret that tend to keep the soul near to God, as well as others to be observed in a more publick way—What a mercy that I have such a Father! Such a Guide![3]
Every decision of faith in the Lord is solely each individual’s to make. But, parents can aid their children’s individual decisions by refusing to create a relational dynamic intent on bringing us a sense of happiness and fulfillment.
Looking to Edwards and his Esther, as a type of Christ-exalting relationship, we can continue to aim higher, with prayerful hope, for the kind of rich comradery that flows when both parties, by God’s grace, love the truth and content themselves in the Lord alone.
This post was originally published at Unlocking the Bible.
Parents and Children Motivated by the Gospel
Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. (Exodus 20:12)
God had miraculously brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt at the time when Israel received the Ten Commandments. God was setting them apart as a nation unto himself, a nation from which would one day come the Christ.
These commandments were later written on physical tablets by God. Yet, after receiving these tablets from God, Moses witnessed the same Israelites—who were not long before miraculously rescued by God—worship a golden calf fashioned by their own hands. According to Exodus 32:19, at that moment Moses “threw the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain.”
Later, after wandering—both physically and spiritually—God brought the Israelites to the land that he promised them—a promise that traced back generations, first given to Abraham (Genesis 12:1). God was faithful to his promises; his people would have an abundant place to call home.
On the brink of entering into this land, God re-states the Ten Commandments within a series of instructions to the nation. The promises associated with obedience to these commandments are abundant: possession of a land from the hand of God that is “a land flowing with milk and honey,” (Deuteronomy 11:9) and “a land for which God cares” (Deuteronomy 11:12).
Parents Motivated by God’s Greatness
When speaking to the Israelites about the rewards of obedience, as well as about the consequences of disobedience, God says, “I am not speaking with your sons who have not known and who have not seen the discipline of the Lord your God—his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 11:2).
Notably, when talking about the benefits of obedience and the consequences of disobedience, God is speaking to fathers—not sons.
Giving children what they want and what makes them happy can come oh-so-easily to the heart of a parent; yet, the better goal—the way God steers our hearts as parents—is through the reminder that there are eternal blessings with loving the Lord and real warnings that accompany unbelief. Each day, we as parents are a witness to our children in words and actions of the abundance we have in Christ and the truth he is.
Not many verses prior to reminding the Israelites about rewards and consequences is the Shema, which are focal verses in the Old Testament. Shema literally means “hear.” Israel, be attentive to this!
Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to you sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).
Christian, hear this. Love the Lord! Be diligent in teaching those who come after you about him! We are a witness to our children of the abundance of Christ because we have seen great things—greater things than Israel.
We have not seen God part the Red Sea. We have not seen God send manna from heaven. We have not seen God part the river Jordan so that we can take possession of a promised land. But what we have participated in is even greater.
After all, which is easier—for God to part the Red Sea, or for him to say that our sins are forgiven (Matthew 9:5)? What we have to tell our children is what the Israelites longed to know (1 Peter 1:10-11). The risen Christ washes our sins away, and he is our bread of life from heaven through whom we never go hungry.
Our parenting is motivated by the greatness of our God in Christ.
Children Honoring God by Honoring Our Parents
God designed that parents would tell their children about him and how to please him: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exodus 20:12). The Israelites were to honor their parents because their possession of the land was conditional:
Beware that your hearts are not deceived, and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them. Or the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you, and he will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you. (Deuteronomy 11:16-17).
In God’s design, honoring our parents would be equivalent to honoring him and his ways; honoring their parents as Israelites would be equivalent to enjoying the blessings of the promised land. Ideally, when we honor our parents, it is equivalent to honoring what God has taught.
When Fathers and Sons Are Calf-Worshippers
But, sometimes, we as people are calf-worshippers. Sometimes, we have not been made a priority by our parents in our past. Or sometimes, we are fatherless or motherless. Or sometimes, children do not honor their parents who are godly. Or sometimes, children resent the gospel. Or sometimes, we don’t give the best examples to follow. Or sometimes, we don’t see our children for the priorities they are. And sometimes, though we try and pray, we do not get parenting right.
How do we move forward when God’s commandments are effectively shattered—as Moses symbolized when he shattered those tablets?
We remember this: Who gives our abundance, but Christ? “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you” (Exodus 20:12, emphasis mine).
He always gives. He gives our deliverance. He gives our forgiveness. He gives us teachings that help us know how to honor him. He gives us care. He fulfills his promises. He rescues us from our sin. He gives us hearts that love him. He gives us Christ. Even when Christ’s abundance imperfectly comes through our natural parents—or does not come at all—the Lord our God gives us perfect abundance. And because of his greatness in our lives, we see our role in the lives of our children as great because of the God we tell them about.
When life does not unfold according to the design of God, we ask him to rewrite his ways into our lives so that we can do what is unnatural for us. We can honor our fathers and mothers, noting the significance of who they are to us as children, by extending compassion regardless of their actions. We can continue to bear witness to our children about the abundance of Christ through our words and actions, regardless of their responses. We can accept God’s grace and mercy in order to again seek to make God great in our children’s eyes, regardless of yesterday’s parenting failures.
We continue to care because, as Pastor Colin taught, “that’s what God is like.” We think about how God gives, and we can give—continually seeking and asking that he rewrite what’s been shattered.
This post was originally published at Unlocking the Bible.