It produces what is called a “prohibitive conscience,” which is a conscience that keeps a child from doing something wrong solely to avoid pain, having nothing to do with obedience or a love of what is right. Punishment produces anger, guilt, shame and bitterness. My role is to provide appropriate consequences and instruction to help them see how their behavior displeases God and to teach them how to cooperate with God’s work in their lives. I want them to understand that the only way to make right what they did is to trust that when Jesus died on the cross, He paid for their sins. It makes no sense for me to fellowship with God on the basis of mercy and with my children on the basis of judgment. Since Jesus took the punishment, my role as a parent is not to punish them. “I don’t want to teach my kids that I need to pay them back for the bad things they’ve done. “If Jesus took all the punishment for you and me, He also took all of it for our children,” says Chip Ingram.

He gives us grace, in love, and arranges just the circumstances that we need in our life, to grow. Parents, God doesn’t deal with our sin in anger. The emotion generating punishment is anger, while the emotion prompting discipline is love. The whole focus is not what happened in the past, which was wrong, but what needs to be trained and developed in the child’s character for the future.

The general public isn’t so much concerned about what this person does in the future as they are in his paying the price of his wrongdoing.īut the issue of a child that needs correction is totally different. When a person commits a crime, people are incensed! They cry for justice. When a child misbehaves, should he be punished or disciplined? This is not just an argument over words, for there is a huge difference between the two. The former word, which also was translated “to instruct, train, correct, or give guidance to,” was used of a father’s guidance of his son, or even an instructor’s correction of a student. The New Testament word paideuo, usually translated “to discipline” in the New Testament, is much different from the word paio which means “to strike, hit, or wound.” The latter word was used of Jesus Christ when He was scourged by the Roman soldiers.

Question: Does the Bible differentiate between discipline and punishment? Yes, clearly it does. How many children grew up with a real distaste for the word “discipline?” Like 2-year-old James, who, when his father announced that he would have to be disciplined for misbehaving chirped, “Discipline-that’s bad stuff!” For what son is not disciplined by his father?” (Hebrews 12:7). Speaker: Bonnie Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | “Endure hardship as discipline God is treating you as sons.

Chip ingram enjoying the difference