Know your own heart

Let him that would not enter into temptations labour to know his own heart, to be acquainted with his own spirit, his natural frame and temper, his lusts and corruptions, his natural, sinful, or spiritual weaknesses, that, finding where his weakness lies, he may be careful to keep at a distance from all occasions of sin. . . .

Seeing we have so little power over our hearts when one they meet with suitable provocations, we are to keep them asunder [apart], as a man would do fire and the combustible parts of the house wherein he dwells. (John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation pp 201, 203)

One of the great responsibilities and privileges of parenting is to help our children to know their own hearts in order that they may "keep a distance from all occasions of sin." It is not enough to merely correct, instruct and encourage (although these are essential). Unless we teach our children to recognize their own particular weaknesses for the purpose of avoiding temptation and actively trusting Christ to deliver them from evil, we will deal only with the fruit and never with the root. Not only that, but we will lead them into frustration, because they will not learn how to put sin to death by the Spirit.

This, I would say, is where 'good' (moral, upright, and, in a human sense, wise) parenting and gospel parenting part ways. I use the phrase 'gospel parenting' deliberately. 'Christian parenting' ought to be identical in meaning, but in my observation has come to be more associated with 'good parenting' than with truly Christian parenting that accords with the Gospel. Consequently, I choose to use the phrase 'gospel parenting' not because it is different from what Christian parenting ought to be, but because it makes explicit that Christian parenting, if it is truly Christian, must be rooted in the Gospel.

Good parenting can be firm, gentle, loving and have integrity. There are a great many things that 'good parenting' can do. It can teach a child how to manage sin, and and even how to avoid some temptation. Yet it cannot do what is truly needed: It cannot reconcile the child to God; nor can it enable the child to overcome sin. Owen makes clear what we need:

For the provision to be laid up . . . is that which is provided in the gospel for us. Gospel provisions will do this work; that is, keep the heart full of a sense of the love of God in Christ. This is the greatest preservative against the power of temptation in the world. . . . [S]tore the heart with a sense of the love of God in Christ, and his love in the shedding [spreading abroad] of it; get a relish of the privileges we have thereby - our adoption, justification, acceptance with God; fill the heart with thoughts of the beauty of his death - and you will, in an ordinary course of walking with God, have great peace and security as to the disturbance of temptations. (John Owen, Overcoming Sin and Temptation p204, emphasis mine)

Parents who have believed and received the Gospel must make it their business not only to fill their own hearts with a sense of the love of God in Christ, but to teach their children to do the same. This only is the way to forgiveness of sin, and freedom from it.