We live in a perilous age. What Christian parents haven’t worried about the world they are sending their children into?

Depravity is widely praised and promoted. Moral order has been turned on its head. Many good customs and institutions, once taken for granted in our society, have crumbled into dust. We have to fight many times harder than our parents and grandparents to defend even the most basic of moral truths. Our increasingly secular society, however, should lead us not to despair, but to greater vigilance in how we raise our children.

Ephesians 6:4 gives us a command to shape all our attempts to form our children into those who love the Lord and desire to serve him all their days. Although I normally use the ESV, I think the King James Version is better here: “Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Consider how this brief charge shapes Christian parenting in an unchristian world.

Every Father’s Calling

First, note that the command is given to fathers. In Ephesians 6:4, Paul deliberately shifts from using the word parents (in Ephesians 6:1), or speaking of fathers and mothers together (in Ephesians 6:2). Fathers are the divinely appointed leaders of the household (1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:23; 1 Thessalonians 2:11–12; Hebrews 12:7–11) — which is not to downplay the vital role of mothers in the household, but simply to note that fathers are given the chief responsibility for the nurture and admonition of their children. And so, Paul calls fathers to rise to the challenge for the sake of their children’s spiritual well-being, even as mothers play their own indispensable role, both as a complement to the father, and as a support.

“Fathers are given the chief responsibility for the nurture and admonition of their children.”

Second, remember the first half of the verse. Fathers are commanded to bring their children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord rather than provoking them to wrath (sinful anger). There is a way of disciplining our children, in other words, that will actually lead to more rebellion and alienation. Such discipline is hard and unloving, driven by sinful anger and resentment: anger because our commands are not heeded; resentment because of the resulting unpleasantness; all of it driven by love for self rather than love for our children.

In contrast, godly discipline is driven by love for our children (Hebrews 12:7–11), by the recognition that the pathway of uncorrected error and rebellion is the pathway to death and hell (Proverbs 5:1–6). The world may tell us that we will alienate and embitter our children if we firmly and consistently discipline them, but we live by faith in God’s promise that “folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15; see also Proverbs 3:11–12; 13:24; 19:18; 23:13). Paul, therefore, calls us to raise our children in the “nurture and admonition” of the Lord.

Nurture and Admonition

Nurture is a word sometimes used positively, sometimes negatively in the New Testament. It has the positive sense of instruction and training in Paul’s words about the purpose of preaching in 2 Timothy 3:16, and the negative sense of chastisement or corrective discipline in Hebrews 12:5–11.

Admonition, on the other hand, has the sense of warning in both of its instances in the New Testament: in 1 Corinthians 10:11, the Old Testament’s “instruction” functions as a warning to the Corinthian church not to follow the example of Israel’s wilderness rebellion; in Titus 3:10, Paul commands the church’s leaders to “have nothing more to do” with the man “who stirs up division” after “warning him” twice. These uses make it more likely that nurture in Ephesians 6:4 should be taken positively: it is the positive counterpart to the admonitory warning.

To nurture, then, is to teach and show our children positively what the Lord requires of them: repentance, faith, and a humble life of obedient service. To admonish is to warn them of the spiritual peril that will necessarily result if they turn away from the Lord in unbelief and disobedience. In his book Parenting by God’s Promises, Joel Beeke captures both the overlapping and distinct qualities of these two words:

“Nurture” (paideia) is the general training of all parts of the child: instructing his mind, shaping his character, bending his will, awakening his conscience, enriching his soul, and building his body. “Admonition” (nouthesia) has to do with conduct: encouraging children to do what is right, rewarding good conduct, confronting them when they do what is wrong, and punishing their misconduct in an appropriate way. (80)

Our Twofold Responsibility

Both sides of the equation are indispensable. Our children must be taught to embrace Christ by faith, to love what is good and true, and they must also be shown the positive and negative consequences of unbelief and disobedience (see the similar positive-negative dynamic in Paul’s comment on preaching in 2 Timothy 3:16).

The twofold call is much like the old adage about the training of inspectors of counterfeit dollar bills: they spend as much time studying real bills as they do counterfeit ones so that they will be able to tell the difference. In much the same way, our children cannot pursue faithfulness merely by being told what they have done wrong. They must also positively be shown the pathway of faith and obedience.

Nurturing our children also includes showing how pleased we are when they do well, and praising and encouraging them in their obedience, as our heavenly Father does with us: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17; see also Matthew 25:23; 1 Corinthians 7:32; 2 Corinthians 5:9; Colossians 3:20; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; 4:1; 1 John 3:22).

Ephesians 6:4 in Practice

What might obeying Ephesians 6:4 look like in practice? We can begin by reading the Scriptures with our children and encouraging them to do the same.

“Nurturing and admonishing our children for their eternal spiritual well-being is hard, slow work.”

We can also teach them what the Scriptures mean. Many parents will feel daunted by this calling, but there are many helps to be found. Chief among these are the great catechisms of historic Protestantism. Why reinvent the wheel when we have such wonderful teaching aids already at our fingertips? Family worship is also vital, which need not be complex or overlong. In addition, calling our children to faithfulness requires modeling faithfulness ourselves. What greater hindrance to a love for Christ could there be than for our children to hear it from our lips, but not see it in our lives?

Perhaps an example will be useful. Consider a command to an 8-year-old son to take out the trash, which he ignores. Nurture requires that we explain to him what he should have done, but also how he should have done it: the obedience God requires is immediate, complete, and without complaint. We explain to him that a truly obedient heart responds with respectful acknowledgment (“yes, sir,” or “yes, daddy,” for example), begins to obey immediately, and obeys without complaining.

Along the way, we exercise care not to “provoke our children” to anger (Colossians 3:21) with undue harshness and condemnation, or with unreasonable expectations that do not fit our children’s capacities, even as we train them toward complete obedience. To that end, as the New Testament commentator Andrew Lincoln puts it, we also treat all of our children with fairness, we do not seek to humiliate them, and we do not arbitrarily command them to do something just to show that we have power over them (Ephesians, 406). At the same time, however, we insist upon obedience, just as the Lord does with us.

Hard, Slow, Wonderful Work

All parents fall short of what God requires of us, and there is abundant grace in Christ for the forgiveness of our failures. And yet, grace does not teach us to lessen what God requires of us in any way, even though this is our natural tendency, a way of trying to cope with our parenting failures. God’s grace is sufficient to forgive us, and then strengthen us to strive after obedience to what he requires, not to find our hope by lowering the standard and congratulating ourselves in how we have met it.

Nurturing and admonishing our children for their eternal spiritual well-being is hard, slow work. As a vital aspect of our own holiness, it is an endurance race set before us (Hebrews 12:1). Our children’s spiritual growth will not occur overnight, but don’t be discouraged: we look for spiritual fruit, the fruit God promises, to develop over time as we patiently and prayerfully nurture and admonish our children to take hold of Christ and to follow him wherever he leads (John 10:27).

Audio Transcript

New week, new day, new mercies. Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. We are going to start the week talking about nicotine — pipe smoking, specifically. But I think this topic, and this question, is likely to open up a much broader conversation about other stimulants — caffeine, sugar, amphetamines, cannabis, and THC for some — substances that provoke the central nervous system.

The question is from a listener named Robert in Goldwater, Mississippi. “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast! Eighteen months ago, in APJ 1702, you published an episode titled ‘On Cigarettes, Vaping, and Nicotine.’ It proved helpful to me. But I have a follow-up question for you. Many years ago, when I chewed smokeless tobacco, I discovered that my concentration for reading was improved. Apparently, the nicotine did something to my mind and body to increase my focus. Today I am considering taking up pipe smoking, something like C.S. Lewis did. I would continue this only if it improved my concentration. Pastor John, would you address the use of nicotine for the purpose of improved concentration?”

Well, I come into a question like this basically in the same category as everybody else. I am simply not an expert in all the possible effects — medically, socially, psychologically — that nicotine or other drugs might have on the human person. I have to do my simple research online just like everybody else does. That’s how I get ready for this podcast. I do what everybody else can do. I look for definitions and I go to Wikipedia. I go to medical websites and I try to get up to speed. So don’t put me on any kind of pedestal here like I’ve got some authority on how to answer a question like this. I’ve got my Bible; you’ve got your Bible. I’ve got Wikipedia; you’ve got Wikipedia. Here we go.

But here’s what I can do. What I can do is highlight some possible outcomes — just like anybody else can — of the use of various drugs, and I can point to some biblical guidelines and then pray that God’s people, myself included, would have great wisdom, and great self-control, and great passion for holiness and purity, and great love for others as we make our way through these days when more and more natural and artificial stimulants are available.

Beyond Nicotine

As I think about this question that he’s asking — about nicotine in particular — I’m going to broaden it out, because here in Minnesota a far more urgent question concerns cannabis (the constituent of marijuana) and the relatively recent upsurge of cannabis-infused drinks on sale for anybody wherever they have them. And they’re increasingly available, with all different percentages of cannabis.

The marijuana-like substance that goes into these drinks is called THC, which is short for an unpronounceable, long scientific word, which you can see in Wikipedia. That’s the psychoactive constituent of cannabis, and that’s what’s getting infused into all kinds of drinks and foods. If you read about the effects of THC, what you read is that there is a wide range of possible effects, from heightened sensory perception — I think that’s what Robert’s talking about — to relaxation, sleepiness, dizziness, dry mouth, euphoria, depersonalization, derealization, hallucination, paranoia, decreased or increased anxiety.

Now, the difference between smoking marijuana and drinking THC-infused drinks is that, when the drug is inhaled into the lungs, it passes quickly into the bloodstream, peaking in about ten minutes and wearing off in a couple of hours, while cannabis-infused foods and drinks may take hours to digest, and their effects may peak after two or three hours and persist for up to six hours. So says Wikipedia. You think I know things — I don’t know anything. This is just all learned for this podcast.

Tobacco’s Downsides

Of course, cannabis and nicotine are just two of many psychoactive stimulants, including sugar, caffeine, alcohol, opioids, betel nut, and not to mention the hard drugs that are illegal. Now, Robert says he used to use chewing tobacco as a way of getting better concentration, and he’s thinking about taking up pipe smoking if it works for the same reason. And what’s surprising in his question to me is that he didn’t raise any of the downsides of tobacco.

I mean, if you go to the Health and Social Services website online and just ask about that, here’s what you read:

Chewing tobacco can cause many types of cancer, including cancer of the mouth, tongue, gums, stomach, esophagus, and bladder. Heavy users might also notice that their teeth can start to get worn down and stained by the chewing tobacco, which can also cause the gums to recede. Regular chewing-tobacco use is linked to higher heart attack risks too, since it is known to raise blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

And there are similar warnings for pipe smoking. So, for example, “Cigar and pipe smokers are more likely to develop heart disease, stroke, and lung diseases than those who do not smoke.” So you can do your own simple research, just like I do on sugar (I mean, how serious is that?) or caffeine or alcohol or various preservatives in drugs and foods — all kinds of things that worry people these days.

Eight New Testament Guidelines

The New Testament does not solve these ethical problems of what we should eat, what we should drink — how much or not at all — by giving us a list of foods and drinks that are lawful. It couldn’t. It didn’t even foresee what was coming down the pike. The New Testament writers weren’t given that kind of prescience.

It addresses these things much more profoundly than by giving us a list of foods that we should avoid or drinks that we should avoid. It deals with the nature of what goes into the body or comes out of the body, the nature of who we are as Christians, the nature of our body and our soul, the nature of our calling as Christians and what life in the body is for, and how we personally relate to other people in regard to what we eat or drink.

“It isn’t foods that defile. It’s the motives and aims that come out of the heart.”

So here’s my summary of biblical realities in the form of eight guidelines. Now, I’ve never listed them like this before; this was all fresh for me as I thought about getting ready for this particular question, and I found breaking them out like this was helpful for me. I hope it will be for others. I’ll state it simply and give you the place that I get it from the Bible.

Guideline 1

Foods or drink, material things that go into the body, are not in themselves spiritually contaminating. It is the motives and the aims and the effects that make food and drink become morally significant.

Jesus said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.” (Mark 7:18–20)

That’s principle number 1. It isn’t foods that defile. It’s the motives and aims that come out of the heart.

Guideline 2

Therefore, food and drink are God’s good creation and are meant to be enjoyed as an occasion of thanksgiving to God.

[False teachers] require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Timothy 4:3–5)

Guideline 3

The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We should let that have a very profound effect on us. Keep the temple holy because it’s inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Keep the body properly set apart for God’s habitation. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Guideline 4

Your body is a member of Christ. Our bodies are part of Christ’s body. So we not only are inhabited by the Holy Spirit; we’re part of Christ. We bring him into every habit we form with our bodies. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 6:15).

Guideline 5

Christians don’t use their freedom just because they have it; they ask about what is helpful for their faith and the faith of others. “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Guideline 6

Christians don’t just use their freedom because they have it; they seek to avoid freely walking into a habit that enslaves. That happens. People really do use their freedom to get enslaved. Don’t do that. “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be [enslaved] by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Guideline 7

Your body does not belong to you. God bought it with the blood of Christ. God owns your body — it’s his. His purpose is that you make your choices about your body in order to make God look valuable, beautiful, satisfying. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Guideline 8

Christians don’t make food and drink and stimulant decisions in isolation. They walk in love and take into account how their habits will help or hurt others. “Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:13).

By the Spirit, Not Lists

So this is the way God wants us to live: not by lists, but by the Spirit. Paul put it like this in Romans 7:6: “Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” And the new way of the Spirit is to let these passages inspired by the Spirit shape the way we see God, the way we see Christ, the way we see the Holy Spirit, the way we see our bodies, the way we see food and drugs, the way we see freedom, and the way we see love and the good of other people. The new way of the Spirit is a whole new conception of God and Christ and Spirit and life and body and love, and that’s how Christians live.

So may the Lord take Robert and me and all of us deep into his word and Spirit, and may he be your teacher so that you and I and we would all walk in freedom, in joy, in holiness, for the glory of God.

Audio Transcript

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone! Thank you for joining us on the podcast. Pastor John, in the last episode I shared a clip from you preaching on Christmas 1981 — forty years ago, at the youthful age of just 35. The clip is older than you were when you preached it! It’s amazing to hear your voice as a rookie pastor.

But we’re now zoomed into real time in the studio. You are 75 now, and Christmas 2021 is tomorrow. For a lot of Christmases, you’ve been thinking about the implications of Christ’s coming. Over these past several weeks, I know you’ve been giving a lot of thought to the holiday this year in particular. Tell us why. And what’s on your mind this Christmas Eve?

I learned back in October that I’d be preaching at my own church — at Bethlehem — the Sunday before Christmas. From that time in October until now, the wonder of Christmas that has taken hold of me in a fresh and powerful way is the amazing reality that the personal, infinite, eternal, holy Creator of the universe sent his Son into this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth in order to be condemned to death in my place.

Sometimes we just have to do what Psalm 46:10 says: “Be still, and know that I am God.” In other words, we have to just pause and let staggering reality sink in. Christmas Eve is a really good time, I think, to do this.

“The Creator of the universe sent his Son to this tiny speck called Earth to be condemned to death in my place.”

So what reality do we need to let sink in today? Reality like this: reality before, above, and outside of all created reality, reality outside of the entire scope of the universe, with its countless light-years of expanse. Outside of all that, there is and always has been a personal, infinite, eternal, holy God. He is absolute reality. He is the most real. The most ultimate thing he ever said was, “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). He is simply there. He’s there, like Francis Schaeffer said. He’s the God who is there — above, before, outside all reality.

Think of it. Eternal reality could have been a gas. Nothing could have existed before the original reality to make it what it was. It just was. Only we discover it’s not an “it.” Ultimate reality is a Person. This is just mind-boggling.

“I am who I am,” he says (Exodus 3:14). In other words, we don’t create him; we don’t define him; we don’t counsel, help, enrich, or initiate anything with him. He reveals himself. As Hebrews 1:1–2 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” We must be still today, it seems to me, and let this sink in.

When God Sent God

From all eternity, the infinite, eternal, personal, holy Creator has existed as Father and Son and Holy Spirit. What could that possibly mean? It means that God has always had a Son. This is the kind of mystery that makes Christmas breathtaking. God has a Son. He has had a Son forever. The Son never came into being. He is not created. There never was a time in the infinite eternity past when he did not exist.

“This is the kind of mystery that makes Christmas breathtaking. God has a Son. He has had a Son forever.”

The apostle John helps us as our mouths are agape with astonishment. He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The Word was with God, and the Word was God. So God was with God. And the God who was with God — the Word — was the Son of God.

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). We mark this moment when God sent God into the world with a celebration called Christmas.

We have one day a year to be still and know that, from all eternity, God had a perfect image of himself — a perfect radiance of his glory, a perfect essence of his nature. This God who was with God was the Word and was the Son. And as Paul says in Galatians 4:4, when the time was full and perfect to accomplish all God’s eternal purposes for humanity, God sent God the Word, God the Son, to this tiny speck of human habitation called Earth, and the foundations of Christmas were laid.

Why God Sent God

Now the question is, Why? The answer God himself gives — the one that I have been so sweetly captivated by since October — is Romans 8:3: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son . . .” — that’s Christmas. Romans 8:3 is Christmas.

Here’s the rest of the verse: “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin” — and here it comes — “he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). God sent God as the God-man, the flesh-God, to be condemned in his mortal flesh, and the one who condemned God was God. God condemned sin in the death of the God-man, Jesus Christ. And Jesus didn’t have any sin. Jesus was the one person in the world who didn’t deserve to be condemned. The rest of us did.

John Piper has accumulated almost 76 years of sins — thousands upon thousands of sins, any one of which is offensive enough against a holy God to plunge me into eternal ruin. I don’t stand a chance on my own to be acquitted before a God of justice. I am under condemnation, and justly so. The righteous law of God that I have broken hangs over my head like a curse.

What hope is there then for me? In a very short time, John Piper, aged 75 now, will stand before God to give an account of his life. So what hope do I have? My hope is this: “Be still, and know the meaning of Christmas.”

God has done what the law, hanging over me like a curse, could not do. The law can’t pay for my breaking the law. So from all eternity, God planned to send God the Son, the God-man, so that in his mortal flesh — without any sins of his own at all — he might bear the condemnation I deserve. “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Or to paraphrase Paul in Galatians 3:13: “Christ became a curse for John Piper.”

How Christmas Feels

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and the king’s son steps forward, takes the rope off my neck, puts it on his own, looks me in the eye, and — just before he drops to his own death in my place — says, “I love you. I love you. Go show what I’m like now to the world.”

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like a man drowning in the icy Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic, desperate to be taken into a lifeboat, but being refused. Why? There’s no room in the lifeboat. It’s full. And a man — the wealthiest, healthiest, most influential man on that ship — pulls me in as he jumps overboard to make room for me. He looks up as I float away in safety and says, “I love you.”

What does Christmas feel like for me? It feels like I’m in a courtroom where my life hangs in the balance. The prosecuting attorney is the unassailable law of God, and the defense attorney does not exist. There is no defense. It is manifest to everyone in the courtroom that all evidence is against me, and the judge, the son of the king of the realm, brings down the gavel: “Guilty.” I’m sentenced to execution and everlasting ruin. And as they leave the courtroom with me in bonds, the son-judge follows me out, pulls me aside, and says, “I’m going to take your condemnation. You go now, and show the wonder of this moment to the world. I love you.”

So that’s where I’ve been during these months leading to this moment on Christmas Eve. I have been in Romans 8:3: “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son [that’s Christmas] in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned [my] sin in the flesh.”

What Christmas stands for is infinitely precious. It is. I would simply plead with all our listeners: Come to Jesus Christ this Christmas. If you will embrace Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as your precious Savior, all that God is for you in Christ will be yours in him. You will have no condemnation ever. And it will be a very merry Christmas.