Example Is More Effectual Than Precept: The Reformed Catholic Family, J. Merle D’Aubigne (free ebook)

This is a powerful excerpt from a short book, “Family Worship” by the Swiss minister and historian, J. Merle D’Aubigne (1794–1872). This book is available at the link below for free from our friends at Chapel Library. The book explores the proper motives for family worship and provides sound guidance for the venerable practice:

Parents! If your children do not meet with a spirit of piety in your houses; if, on the contrary, your pride consists in surrounding them with external gifts, introducing them into worldly society, indulging all their whims, letting them follow their own course, you will see them grow vain, proud, idle, disobedient, impudent, and extravagant!

They will treat you with contempt; and the more your hearts are wrapped up in them, the less they will think of you. This is seen but too often to be the case. But ask yourselves if you are not responsible for their bad habits and practices; and your conscience will reply that you are; that you are now eating the bread of bitterness that you have prepared for yourself. May you learn thereby how great has been your sin against God in neglecting the means which were in your power for influencing their hearts. And may others take warning from your misfortune, and bring up their children in the Lord!

Nothing is more effectual in doing this than an example of domestic piety. Public worship is often too vague and general for children, and does not sufficiently interest them. As to the worship of the closet, they do not yet understand it. A lesson learned by rote, if unaccompanied by anything else, may lead them to look upon religion as a study like those of foreign languages or history. Here, as everywhere, and more than elsewhere, example is more effectual than precept.

They are not merely to be taught out of some elementary book that they must love God, but you must show them God is loved. If they observe that no worship is paid to that God of Whom they hear, the very best instruction will prove useless. But by means of family worship, these young plants will grow “like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither” (Psa 1:3). Your children may leave the parental roof, but they will remember in foreign lands the prayers of the parental roof, and those prayers will protect them.

Free ebook “Family Worship” from Chapel Library:

Free ebook link

Training Your Children in the Covenant

Proverbs 22:6 “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

If you are a parent, you know that kids are observant. Kids know the schedules and the daily routines, even if they don’t always want to follow them. They notice when other kids have new shoes or the newest phone. They probably even know where you hide your secret stash of chocolate chip cookies!

Observation plays a big part in the development of children. Often what they regularly observe translates into actions and behaviors down the road; child sees, child does. Consequently, who do children watch more than anyone else? Their parents.

Teachers, coaches, friends, and classmates can all have a major impact on a child and their development, but it is the parents who most influence their young ones. A parent’s words and actions have a significant effect on their kids, and it is their example that most resonates in the mind of the child.

Proverbs 22:6 teaches that we are to train our children to follow the way of the Lord so that they will not depart from the Way later in life.  However, this task is not taken seriously in many Christian homes today. For many, their training is nothing more than giving their children a picture Bible and praying before eating dinner. These parents have no problem spending hours teaching the proper baseball pitching mechanics or helping their child memorize their speaking lines for the school play, but when it comes to teaching their children the things of the Lord, there is a sense of apathy.

Parents, please understand this: if you are apathic in the manner in which you serve God, do not be surprised when your children reciprocate.  

We must teach our children how to live according to the will of God. We must teach them the laws and statutes that are given in His Word. We must teach them what it means to profess that Jesus is Lord and how every facet of our lives must reflect that allegiance to the King. Teach them when they are young, and teach them these things often.

We must teach them these things and then, just as importantly, we must demonstrate what they look like. The way in which we live is just as important as the words that we teach them. The expression, “practice what you preach” is especially true in parenthood. Reading Scripture to your children every night will hold no real value if your own actions do not match what you are reading.

If you tell your children that they are not allowed to watch certain movies, then you must not be watching vulgar television shows every week. Send your children to Sunday school, but then go to the adult Sunday school class yourself, instead of drinking coffee in the foyer. Make prayer and devotion an intricate part of the day and not just an activity that is easily dropped.

Deuteronomy 6 and 11 exhort that we are to lay God’s words on our hearts and souls, that we are to bind them as a sign on our hands and before our eyes. But it also tells us to teach them to our children when we are at home and while we are on the road, from the moment we rise to the time when we lie down.

Your children are watching. Are they seeing what it looks like to be a follower of Christ?

About the author: Jacob is the youth director at Knox Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Harrison Twp., MI. He graduated from Kuyper College with a degree in Bible and Theology and is currently enrolled in Reformed Theological Seminary’s Distance M.Div. program. He and his wife are expecting twins in September.

Bavinck: The Unanimous Opinion Of The Reformed Regarding Covenant Children

Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Volume 4, p. 56 

“Reformed theologians unanimously agreed on the following points:

1. That the benefits of the covenant of grace were usually distributed by God in connection with the means of grace; hence regeneration is in connection with the Word;

2. That God, however, is not bound to these means, and hence he could also take an unusual route and regenerate and save especially young children without the Word;

3. That he, as a rule, worked that way in the case of children of believers who were taken by death before reaching the age of discretion;

4. That the baptized children of believers who were part of the life of the congregation had to be considered elect and regenerate until the contrary was evident from what they said and did; and

5. That this however, was a judgment of charity, which must indeed be the rule for our attitude toward these children but cannot claim to be infallible.

On the other hand, from the very beginning there was disagreement over whether the children of believers, to the extent that they were elect, were regenerated already before, or in, or only after baptism.  Some—like Martyr, a Lasco, Dathenus, Alting, Witsius, Voetius, Mastricht—tended to favor the first view.  But the majority—Calvin, Beza, Musculus, Ursinus, de Bres, Acronius, Cloppenburg, Walaeus, Maccovius, Bucanus, Turretin, Heidegger, and others—left the question undecided.”