Discipline, in the family

Parents' loving, corrective training of their children, by verbal instruction and punishments, so that they grow up in the way God wants.

Parents are to discipline their children

Hebrews 12:7 See also Deuteronomy 8:5; Hebrews 12:9–11

Endure suffering as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?

Parents discipline out of love for their children

Proverbs 13:24 See also Proverbs 3:12

He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

The means of parental discipline

Training

Proverbs 22:6 See also Genesis 18:19; Deuteronomy 6:7; Proverbs 29:17; Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

Correction

Proverbs 22:15 See also Proverbs 19:18, Proverbs 23:13–14, Proverbs 29:15

Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.

Verbal instruction

Ephesians 6:4 See also Deuteronomy 4:9, Deuteronomy 6:7, Deuteronomy 6:20–25, Deuteronomy 11:19, Deuteronomy 31:13; Psalm 78:5; Proverbs 1:8, Proverbs 6:20; 2 Timothy 3:15

Fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath; instead, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Punishment

Proverbs 23:13–14 See also Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 29:15

Do not withhold discipline from a child; although you strike him with a rod, he will not die. Strike him with a rod, and you will deliver his soul from Sheol.

The purpose of parental discipline is to impart wisdom

Proverbs 29:15 See also Proverbs 19:18, Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 29:17; Hebrews 12:9, Hebrews 12:11

A rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.

Examples of parents who neglected discipline

Eli

1 Samuel 3:13

I told him that I would judge his house forever for the iniquity of which he knows, because his sons blasphemed God and he did not restrain them.

David

1 Kings 1:5–6

At that time Adonijah, David’s son by Haggith, began to exalt himself, saying, “I will be king!” And he acquired chariots and horsemen and fifty men to run ahead of him. (His father had never once reprimanded him by saying, “Why do you act this way?” Adonijah was also very handsome, born next after Absalom.)