Reacting to Your Child's Sin (Part 2)

Rob Wilkerson continues with the second danger of reacting to your child's sin...

The second danger is as bad as the first: an underreaction. It is usually manifested in a failure to deal with the sin at all. This danger, if not avoided consistently, will teach our kids that sin isn't that important, and that it's no big deal to worry about it.

Perhaps your home reflects this danger more than the first. How often do your kids get away with sinful behavior? How much of it goes unnoticed? If you're answer to the first is that you don't see sinful behavior that often, it's time to spend more time at home, getting to know your kids. And if you are at home enough but don't notice the behavior, turn off the television or put down the magazine and again, get to know your kids.

There are parents like this who desperately want their kids to come to know Christ and to be saved. But perhaps no one has put two and two together for them. If that's what they want, then they have to be saved from something. That something is, of course, their sin. But if they don't have anyone pointing out their sin, then they will have no lense through which to view the Savior, and hence no desire for Him whatsoever.

This failure, like the first, also does not get at the heart of the child to identify and deal with the root problem of the sin. Underreaction also obscures the gospel from our kids.

If the first danger over emphasizes sin, the second danger ignores sin almost completely. So what's the balance? A reponse that deals with the sin in a gentle yet firm manner.

[Source]: Miscellanies of the Gospel