limits – Disciplining With Gentle Firmness

Agape love is basically having unconditional love for all people. God loves us with agape love as He sacrificed Himself as Jesus for our sins. He also had to watch His Son suffer and die. Agape love is the best way to describe God since God is love (1 John 4:8).

But do Christians show agape love to others, especially their children? In my experience, they often do not. They insist on condemning others and punishing their children.

Don’t get me wrong, I am far from perfect. I struggle at times to love people how God wants me to do so. I get hurt, offended, and judgemental. Thankfully, God lovingly corrects me when I mess up. He loves me with agape love.

Sadly, most devotionals for children teach that they must be punished for their sins. So do the child-rearing books by popular “Christian child-rearing experts” such as James Dobson, Michael Pearl, Ted Tripp, and Roy Lessin. How is this teaching children about agape love that God has for them? Jesus took the punishment for all of our sins, including children!

Obviously, these Christian advocates of spanking do not understand God’s unconditional love for us. Due to adults’ sinful nature, we struggle with practicing agape love. Sometimes it is easier to condemn, spank/hit, yell, or ignore our children. But the Bible says:

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1, NASB).

This means getting up at 2am to care for the baby instead of letting him/her cry-it-out.

This means redirecting our toddlers for the 20th time away from something we don’t want them to play with and telling them what they can do rather than yelling at them and/or smacking their hand because they won’t listen and we’re sick of redirecting them.

This means sitting on the floor while our young children have a meltdown over a limit we’ve set and validating their feelings over the limit that they don’t like.

Finally, parenting with agape love means taking the time to truly listen to our children so that they will want to come to us when they are in trouble.

Yes, we will make mistakes, but when we do, agape love allows us to be humble and apologize to our children.

I am well aware that some Christians will read this and say, “Spanking is a part of what the Bible says about loving our children.” If this is you, please read these posts. And check out this book by theologian Samuel Martin. It’s free!

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes exactly what agape love is.

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (ESV).

There is nothing in the above verse that say spanking/hitting, using cry-it-out, or using other harsh punishment is a part of agape love. If anything, it points to gentle firmness as agape love.

It may not always be easy but by parenting with agape love, we can show children God’s true character and teach them how to love others unconditionally.

Romans 4:13-16:
“For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation.
For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.”

I often see Scripture applying to the parent-child relationship where most would not.

For example, this Scripture clearly states that living by grace and faith is what we ought to do as Christians because merely living by the Law brings wrath and voids faith. We all know that the reason Jesus came to die on the cross was to allow us to have an easier way to access God. People cannot successfully keep the Law of Moses. Because of Christ’s work on the cross, we now have grace and can live by faith in Jesus.

So, how come so many Christian parents tend to make their children live by the Law which brings about wrath?

Parenting by the Law means that parents set up rules by which their children cannot abide such as expecting a toddler or preschooler to sit quietly through an hour long church service. This is completely developmentally inappropriate for young children. Then when the child inevitably breaks this arbitrary rule, the child gets spanked/hit or otherwise punished by the parent. The Law brought wrath upon the child. The parent’s and child’s faith are void because neither is trusting God in that moment even if the parents think they are doing as God commands by punishing the child.

Therefore, when a parent spanks/hits a child, he/she is parenting under the Law and acts as a judge. The child commits an offense, the parent tries the child and decides a spanking is necessary, the parent doles out the punishment, then the child is free to go on since he/she paid the price.

Only, as Christians, the Law is no longer binding. If we want children to learn the grace, peace, love, and mercy of the Law of Christ, why do we parent under the Law of Moses?

We are supposed to be living by grace and faith.
“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).

Living and parenting by faith means we get to know Jesus and follow His example in our parenting. He set realistic limits for His disciples and gently corrected them.

We also need to understand child development in order to set realistic limits for our children. For example, instead of expecting toddlers or preschoolers to sit quietly through a church service, we either worship at home with them, bring crayons and let them color as we sit in the back of the sanctuary in case they need to leave, or allow them to go to children’s church.

Grace doesn’t punish. It doesn’t nullify faith. Grace sets appropriate limits and allows natural consequences when appropriate.

Let us parent our children through faith and grace.