TLP 239: Teach Your Children to Apologize, Part 2

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We need to see our sin this way. This will make it much easier to apologize when we realize that we have stolen something from God and or others that needs to be forgiven.

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Welcome to Truth. Love. Parent. Where we use God's Word to become intentional, premeditated parents.

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Here's your host, A .M. Brewster. Last time we defined apologies as confessing sin and requesting forgiveness, and we saw that apologizing is so incredibly important because forgiveness is so incredibly important.

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If you didn't hear that episode, I suggest you take a listen because in it we laid an important foundation for today's discussion.

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And right before we jump in, I want to thank Matt, Sonia, Ray, and Carolyn for making today's episode possible.

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We are a listener -supported ministry, and your generous gifts allow us to continue making biblically grounded parenting material for families all over the world.

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So thank you for helping us spread God's Word. So if you're returning today, let's consider what God has to say about apologies.

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Number three, and this is obviously a continuation from last time, now let's take the rest of our time to consider what

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Jesus has to say about apologies and forgiveness. And if you make it to the end, I'll have two bonus points for you that are very important as we consider how apologies work and how we teach it to our children.

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Okay, number one, we apologize because we owe something. I believe the best place to start is the disciples' prayer in Matthew 6.

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Toward the end of the prayer, Jesus models this attitude for his disciples. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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The first interesting observation is that Christ uses the word debts. I'm not going to suggest that debts is a poor translation, but I do believe that if we grapple with what

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Christ is saying, we're going to understand that this has a deeper meaning. What do we owe God? Well, we owe

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Him everything. In one sense, we owe Him our lives, our possessions, food, everything. There's nothing that is not

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His. But is that the point that God is making? Is He suggesting that we ask Him to forgive us those debts so that we no longer owe

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Him for them? Yeah, that shouldn't sound right in your ear, so if it didn't, good for you. Metaphorically, this word can also refer to sin, and I think that is the way it should be understood in this passage.

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In fact, in Luke 11, 4, a different Greek word is used, and it's translated, Forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us.

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Understanding that our sin is a debt is very powerful. God created us. We owe

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Him allegiance. We owe Him obedience. He is God. We owe Him everything

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He wants. And so, when we sin, we have stolen something from Him. We've taken

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His glory. We need to see our sin this way. This will make it much easier to apologize when we realize that we have stolen something from God and or others that needs to be forgiven.

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Number two, we apologize because we need spiritual health. In Matthew 9, 6,

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Jesus asks, For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk?

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But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins. He then said to the paralytic,

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Rise, pick up your bed, and go home. Jesus healed many people, and He did it for many reasons.

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One reason He did was to show His power. Another was to confirm His authority. Another was simply because Jesus was in the business of healing broken things.

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And another reason is that it was a physical picture of a deeper spiritual reality.

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We desperately need to be forgiven. It's more important than physical health. This paralytic man was unable to work, function in his family, and be a profitable member of society.

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But his broken relationship with God was far more important. We need to teach our children to apologize because forgiveness is more important than working legs.

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When our kids refuse or forget to apologize, they believe that there are other things that are more important than forgiveness.

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And that, my friends, is a delusion. And lastly, number three, we apologize because we desire to change.

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Luke 17, 3 -4 reads, If your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him.

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And if he sins against you seven times in a day and turns to you seven times, saying, I repent, you must forgive him.

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You know that we parents are to reprove our children. Sometimes we call that the interpretation step of parenting.

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Rebuke is also part of that process, and our children will show their submission to God's truth when they willingly repent.

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To repent is to change direction. Again, it's not just stopping on their way down the wrong path.

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It's a deliberate turn so that they can move in the opposite direction. A person who does not desire to be forgiven is a person who does not believe they need to change.

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But, you say, the guy in the parable didn't change. He returned to the man seven times and apologized for the same thing.

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Please notice that the forgiveness is not a gift bestowed on the perfect. It's a gift bestowed on the humble.

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Yes, our kids are imperfect, and yes, they're going to sin in areas where they've already repented. But, you know, so do you.

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So do I. As long as their children, though, are willing to be counseled, corrected, and they show that by a desire to repent, they should be forgiven.

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If I'm heading south by a mile and I turn around and go north for 30 feet, I still repented.

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Of course, I turned around again and walked another mile south. But if I realize my sin again, confessed it, and repented again, then

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I'm doing what the Lord commanded, even if that means I only walk another 30 feet north before turning south again.

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Now, I need to address two very bad applications from this verse. A, the first is that some parents live as if they've already forgiven their children who never asked to be forgiven.

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These parents don't require apologies or counsel their children to apologize. In fact, I've heard many children say,

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I'm sorry, and the parent immediately says, I forgive you. Well, that's wrong. The child didn't ask for forgiveness.

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They didn't confess their sin. I've even heard parents say, you don't have to say anything, sweetheart,

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I forgive you. Those parents are hurting their children who sinned because they're not helping them follow this very necessary and biblical process of humbly confessing their sin and receiving forgiveness, of admitting that they need to change.

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However, other parents swing in the opposite direction. B, some parents become bitter when their child doesn't apologize.

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To grant forgiveness is that you no longer hold that sin against them. And so, if the sinner doesn't ask for forgiveness, some people use that as justification for constantly holding their sin against them.

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Well, that's not biblical either. Here's what God desires for us. We need to live in a spirit of forgiveness toward those who sin against us, but we can only actually forgive them if they apologize.

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Now, how does that practically work? Let me give you an example from Victory Academy. Getting one of our students to acknowledge their sin is difficult enough.

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Actually having them apologize for their sin is worse than pulling teeth. For one, most of our guys were not required to do that as a child, and the whole concept is foreign to them.

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We'll get I'm sorry's from time to time, but no one really comes to Victory with a will you forgive me in their working vocabulary.

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The other reason is that they don't really believe they're wrong, or they believe the other person is more wrong and should apologize first.

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I once had a conversation with a student where he admitted that he did wrong, but the moment I suggested that he apologize to the authority against whom he sinned, his student cried out,

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I'm not apologizing to him. So anyway, this one student sinned against me pretty hardcore, but I continued interacting with him in a spirit of love and kindness as we should.

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I wasn't going to treat him poorly because he sinned against me. That would be a sinful response on my part. But most people are unfortunately used to there being tension in a relationship after a conflict.

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So when I continued speaking lovingly, he assumed all was well and pretended like it never happened, yet he never apologized.

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But then the student kept wanting me to bend over backward for him. He wanted me to play this game with him here and let him borrow my book over there.

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He wanted all the benefits of a good relationship without taking any responsibility for making the relationship good.

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So I told him this, we'll call him Stanley, Stan, listen, you know I love you. I've proved that over and over, but you've sinned against me and you don't really care.

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You want the benefits of my relationship, but you don't want to do any of the work to fix it. Please know this,

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I will continue to love you and fulfill all of my responsibilities to you, but I'm not going to do anything additional or special just for you because there is a problem that needs to be addressed in our relationship.

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And then I said, and please know that I am ready and willing to forgive you the moment you ask, but you need to humbly admit that what you did was wrong and seek to fix the broken relationship before you can experience the benefits of a healthy relationship.

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And I was consistent with him. I spoke the truth in love to him. I poured into him the same way I did with all the other guys, but I wasn't going to simply forget that there was a giant hole in our relationship that needed to be mended and it could only be fixed if he wanted it to be fixed.

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And to fix it, he needed to confess that he was the one who broke it, repent, and seek forgiveness.

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And by God's grace, I can say that it took two to three weeks, but he finally did it.

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And then I could allow our relationship to be unaffected by that sin and help him take the next steps in the

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Christ -honoring direction. Again, there was no bitterness or anger on my part. I had a spirit willing to forgive, but I didn't allow him to think that everything was okay even though he was still unrepentant.

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Now, there's so much more that Jesus has to say on this subject, but this is a great starting place. Let's review real quick before we move on to our bonus material.

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Number one, we apologize because we owe something. Your kids need to understand that. Number two, we apologize because we need spiritual health.

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Do your children understand that? And three, we apologize because we genuinely desire to change.

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Do your kids truly desire to change? All right, let me finish off now with two bonus points.

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Number four, here's a good apology formula that you can teach to your kids. This is the format

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I use with my kids and the boys here at Victory. It consists of three main parts. Number one, confess the sin.

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Two, ask for forgiveness. Three, show a desire to change. This is how it sounds in real life.

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Now, this really happened in real life in my home, okay? My son put a plastic honey bear in the oven to soften the honey with the oven light.

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It works really great, but I asked him not to do it because I was going to be using the oven in just a few minutes to make pizza.

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That was the teaching step of the whole situation. Now, he didn't take the honey out.

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I assumed he took it out, though, and I fired up the oven to 420. Long story short, melted plastic and honey is now all over the oven.

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That probably isn't as bad as you were picturing in your mind, but it still happened. Now, I confronted him with the interpretation step.

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I reproved him. I helped him to see that his reality was delusional. Now, there was no direct consequence in this particular situation beyond the mess in the oven.

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As of his father, I realized that he understood the significance of his sin without additional consequences, and so I didn't have to bring that to bear in the situation.

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And then, without prompting, he immediately said, Dad, will you please forgive me for not listening to you and taking the honey out of the oven?

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And in that moment, I was the happiest, proudest dad on the planet. I couldn't have been more proud of him.

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Of course, I forgave him and we embraced. By the way, that embracing part is super important. My family always at least hugs after an apology.

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That's one way of the child saying that I desire to change and fix this, and for the other person to say that I'm not going to hold this against you.

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It really is a humility thing to be able to hug someone like that. So, will you please forgive me for fill in the blank?

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That's the bare minimum. Okay? It needs to be specific, though. They need to say, will you please forgive me for disrespecting you, for saying fill in the blank, for doing fill in the blank?

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And the more specific they get, the better. I once had a young man apologize to me. It was the first time he had ever apologized to me, and it could have just been really simple.

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Mr. Brewster, will you please forgive me for directly disobeying you when you told me to blah, blah, blah.

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But man, oh man, he went on and on and on, and 45 seconds later he was done, and it was so beautiful because he saw his sin.

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He saw it the way he was supposed to. He was viewing it the way God viewed it, and it was beautiful. But the bare minimum is they need to be specific.

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Will you please forgive me for fill in the blank? Not just, you know, something, you know, will you please forgive me for disobeying.

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They should say how they disobeyed. And after forgiveness is granted, there needs to be something that brings the child's mind to the need of true repentance.

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Because remember, repentance and apologies are two different things. They're not the same thing. Asking you to forgive me is a humble step that needs to happen, but repentance is the changing process, okay?

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The child's mind needs to be drawn to that, to seek to live in God's reality. This is where you've entered into the counseling stage, and you can help your child correct their behavior.

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Number five, lastly, just a short note, bonus material here. Remember that receiving forgiveness doesn't remove us from primary and secondary consequences, okay?

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Primary consequences happen all the time, every time we sin. And secondary consequences are part of the reproving stage.

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Now, the reproving stage comes before the counseling stage. In theory, the reproving stage has happened before they've been given the opportunity to apologize.

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So if the consequences are going to happen then, they're going to happen before the child apologizes. Because regardless of whether someone has apologized or not, if secondary consequences are appropriate, then they should be meted out.

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Now, you may say, well, God forgives us and then He doesn't send us to hell. True, I agree with you, but that's not part of the primary or secondary consequences.

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You see, eternal punishment is a whole separate category that's tied to the fact that an individual has rebelled against God's authority in their lives.

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We also have to remember that Christians aren't immune from the very real primary consequences that come as a result of our sin.

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When I sin, it hurts my Lord, hurts the person against whom I've sinned, it makes it easier for me to sin again in the future.

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There are consequences. And then the secondary consequences of lost trust, or a speeding ticket, or whatever else, are still likely going to happen regardless of whether I apologized or not.

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And you know this and you believe this, because just because a murderer genuinely confesses and repents doesn't mean he shouldn't receive the consequences of his sin.

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Okay? Again, we know that in the sense of a murderer, of course, but we also have to understand that in the sense of our own sin and the sin of our children.

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Now, like I said, there is so much more that could be said on this topic, and we're going to dip into it a little bit more next time when we look at this from a different angle.

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So, please share this episode and join us next time as we discuss how to repeatedly forgive our kids when they've gotten really good at asking for forgiveness, but they haven't really changed that much.

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I'll see you next time. Truth. Love. Parents. Is part of the

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Evermind Ministries family and is dedicated to helping you become an intentional, premeditated parent.

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Join us next time as we search God's Word for the truth your family needs today.