Parenting – Chapter 3

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Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul Tripp

Chapter 3 – Travis Koch

My wife and I built a beautiful, raised-bed garden beside our house in Connecticut. The most difficult part of the project, by far, was the fence I installed around the perimeter of the yard. If you’ve ever tried to dig post holes in New England soil, you know that the ground is packed with football-sized boulders. But we knew the fence was necessary to keep out destructive critters and curious neighbor kids. Although the fence didn’t directly contribute to the health of the plants, it created a space within which our plants could flourish.

In our lives, the law of God functions as a fence designed to keep the bad things out and the good things in. The wisdom of the law outlines the space within which we can be secure and fruitful, and the conviction of the law warns us of our danger when we step beyond its bounds. God’s law is good and necessary, but it is powerless to produce the kind of growth we need. For deliverance and change, we need the rescuing and enabling grace of God.

In Chapter 3 of our book, Paul Tripp gives us this gospel parenting principle: Your children need God’s law, but you cannot ask the law to do what only grace can accomplish. May God continue to transform us by his grace as we consider the implications of this principle for life and parenting.