Our love for our children must establish friendship between us and them. This is what we must aim at and work for. This is the effect of the Godly love of believing parents, by the grace of the Holy Spirit. We are, and must be, our children’s friends. Life in a Reformed home must be friendship.

Within this friendship, all of the rearing must take place— the teaching, the discipline, even the exercise of parental authority. If there is no friend­ship, the teaching, the discipline, and the exercise of authority lose their Christian character and their power for effective rearing. Only as my child’s friend can I be his teacher, his disciplinarian, and his lord.

This basic truth for child-rearing is learned from God’s Fatherhood towards us. God’s love for us establishes the bond of friendship with us—the covenant. God is our Friend; and He gives us the privilege of being His friends. This is not incidental; but it is the very essence of our life with God. Within the covenant, He teaches, disciplines, and is our Sovereign. His teaching, discipline, and sovereignty are covenantal teaching, discipline, and sovereignty. Take away the Divine friend­ship; and the teaching, discipline, and sovereignty are radically changed. Indeed, they become fruitless.

Just as the covenant of grace with us is established and maintained by God alone, so the friendship in the home is the responsibility of the parents. God calls us to see to it that the relationship between us and our children reflects that between Him and His children. He calls us to guard against a family-life that is nothing but casual contact, or that is merely a cold, formal arrangement, or (worst of all) that is an oppressive subjection of cowering underlings by harsh overlords.

This is the truth portrayed in Psalm 128:3: “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” It is not an idyllic picture of family-life among the farmer-folk of old Israel; but it is the teaching that the family-life of the people of God is to be friendship. This is the “atmosphere” of the home; and the “atmosphere” of the home is vitally important. Jan Waterink writes: As a rule, the manner in which the family lives in relation to God finds expression in the behavior of the child. The family atmosphere is often a more powerful means to bring lasting impressions to the child’s mind than many talks and nice stories. (Leading Little Ones to Jesus, p. 20) Waterink refers particularly to the threat to the friendship of parents and children: If there is one danger that threatens the very foundations of our spiritual existence, it is the estrangement between parents and children. It is really a tragic situation that the older children are more frequently referred to with complaint than with commen­dation. (p.96)

The power that creates this friendship is the Word of God. It is the gospel that creates the covenant between God and us; and it is the gospel that creates the covenant between believers and their children. Therefore, it is essential for Reformed child-rearing that the parents raise their children in a true church that faithfully preaches the pure Word of God. This is essential for creating the friend­ship that is the sine qua non of all rearing. Family-life flourishes in the church, as Psalm 128 indicates, when it goes on to say to the believing husband and father, concerning the promise of family happi­ness, “The LORD shall bless thee out of Zion . . .” (v. 5).

The friendship between parents and children, thus established, will have certain characteristics, patterned after the covenant of God. We parents will give ourselves to our children and will be receptive to them: we will speak with them, listen to them, and share our life with them. For this, we will see to it that we have time for them and actually live with them. Certain evils need to be purged from our lives: mothers holding jobs outside the home, or jobs in the home that harm the friendship; fathers not being home when they could and should, on account of a desire for wealth, or recreation, or even too many church- duties; permitting teenage children to live their entire, non-sleeping life outside the home; the takeover of the few, precious hours that the family has by television; putting the little children outside the home at younger and younger ages. Fundamental to the life of friendship is that we all be together—the wife as a fruitful vine on the inside (such is the meaning of Psalm 128:3) of the house (where the husband dwells), and the children round about the table (where the father is sitting).

Only if we have time for them and live with them can we know them, personally, individually, and thoroughly, so as to be able to teach them. Parents must teach their children the Word of God. God rears His children to spiritual maturity by teaching them His Word; accordingly, earthly parents are called to bring up their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). It is not enough that we see to it that pastors teach them the Bible in the church and that schoolteachers teach them in the light of the Bible in good Christian schools; but it is also necessary that we ourselves teach them. Parents must teach their children the stories of the Bible; they must read and explain the Bible to the children; they must go over the catechism with them. But they can, and must teach their children the Word in less formal ways, when the opportunities arise in the natural life of the family. Their duty is nothing less than to teach the children to live wisely in the world, in all of life—to fear the Lord; not to love money; not to envy; to honor the teacher, even though the child may not like him; to live chastely as regards sex.

The main truth that parents must teach their children is God’s redemption of them from their sins by the cross of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ blood, received and enjoyed through believing on Him. Every father and mother must be able and ready, having perceived the distress of the child and having carefully drawn out the confession of the sin that burdens the child, to speak the gospel of grace to the child’s troubled heart.