“Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6, NASB)
What a seemingly simple, but overwhelmingly complicated verse! This verse is one of the most quoted—and often misquoted—verses in the Bible. There are some different views of what this passage means.
Many take it to mean that if godly parents teach their kids the Bible, they will become Christians. This view of the passage sees it is a promise given to parents, a guarantee that if they raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4), they’ll always stay on the right path.
A second view holds that early training secures lifelong habits. Parents need to insist upon teaching their children God’s Word and enforcing it with discipline that is done in love throughout the child’s upbringing.
A third view holds that Proverbs 22:6 is not a promise to parents who raise their children properly but a warning to those who allow their adolescent children to grow up without guidance. According to this view, the difference between a promise and a warning is from the addition of the word “should” in the English translations, something that’s not supported in the original Hebrew. Without the “should,” the nature of the verse changes: It’s more about allowing your children to go their own way, rather than the way they “should” go. In this view, the reading would be more like “Train up a child in his own way, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Children left to their own way are not likely to change; they’ll become adults who go their own way….the wrong way.
So then, what is this verse saying? First, we have to remember that Proverbs are written as wise sayings and truisms, not inviolable rules. In Proverbs 22:4, two verses earlier, we read, “The reward of humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, honor and life.” This is not a blanket promise that everyone who is humble and fears the Lord will always be rich and receive honor. There are a ton of Scriptures that also teach us that the righteous are inevitably persecuted (2 Timothy 3:12) and often poor (James 2:5). Likewise, Proverbs 22:6 is a principle that is generally true.
Parents who take Proverbs 22:6 as a promise place upon themselves expectations that even the perfect parent would not be able to fulfill. Parents teaching their kids and raising them in the fear of the Lord may be one of the means He uses to bring people to true faith and repentance, but the determinative factor is the Lord’s saving work.
Salvation is non-transferable, regardless of the depth of a parent’s love of Christ. Sometimes there are children raised in a Christian family who grow up and abandon the faith. Ezekiel 18:2-26 teaches us that each generation is responsible for the choices they make. The spiritual outcome of a child, taken by itself, is no reliable gauge of success as a parent. It is also not an accurate measure of a parent’s faith.
It is important that parents should be praying to God and instructing their children, using all available means to impress the truths of the gospel continually on their hearts. But a grown child’s spiritual fitness alone is not necessarily a reliable gauge of the parents’ success. A parent’s best efforts cannot guarantee salvation in a child, but a parent’s bad example could be a great hindrance to the work of the gospel in the child’s heart.
Parents training children is a means God sometimes uses to save them and always uses to glorify Himself.
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