Are There Benefits in Raising Children in a Christian Home? | Clip from SFC: Conversion

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Well, here's another question that this chapter helps us to answer. Chuck, how do we know that these kinds of changes, in some measure, will exist in every single person who is born again, and that there is no such thing as a born -again person who doesn't have these things occurring within them?

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Our text tells us so. Yeah, yeah. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creature.

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Yeah. He gives us two other points there in his arguments. He says, so since this is part of the great plan of God, his promise to his son, that everyone that the son has purchased with his death will be given to the son and will be made completely like the son.

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So if there's if that process hasn't begun in this life, there's no reason to call yourself a

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Christian. I think of Mr. Roberts preaching at the church some time ago, and he's probably said this many times, that Christ has not just saved us from the consequences of sin, but also from the power of sin and that he means to rescue us completely.

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Yeah, and the second reason he gives is that every person in Christ does have the Holy Spirit in them.

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I mean, really, he could give him a lot of answers. You're adopted into the family of God, and the

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Bible makes it very clear that the Father will discipline his children, even though he won't discipline everybody else's children.

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You know, so many wonderful things, a new nature will be there. And though it's not always equally visible, it is in every believer.

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And I think that, you know, we can take that as a we can take that as kind of a daunting test, like, oh, am

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I really a Christian? But it can also be a very encouraging thing. You know,

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I am his. But when I look in the mirror, sometimes I see some gaping holes in my

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Christianity. And if I'm tempted to think, maybe he will kind of just lay me aside and, you know, just say, look,

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I'm sorry, you're too bad of a pupil. You're too slow of a follower. No, he has begun a good work.

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He will complete it. And I know he will because of these two things. Mm hmm. Another question that the chapter answers, and we can ask it this way.

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What about people who have children who have been born into godly homes, godly parents?

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Maybe they've been baptized as infants in a system like Presbyterian or Anglican, where there's pedo -baptism, baptism of a child.

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What about people that have been very morally carefully raised and they have obeyed their parents?

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What about people who have really good doctrine from the beginning because of a godly influence? If a person has this background, do they need the same kind of regeneration and conversion as the people who have been brought up in a very wicked atmosphere?

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Yes. Yeah, they do. It kind of assumes that because they've had this kind of start that they're not really sinful or depraved.

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They haven't inherited original sin or that there's another way to the Father, but there's not.

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There is a benefit in those things. Yes, certainly. But it's not that you have been put into a different category and do not need to be converted or born again.

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Yeah, and I think that even pedo -baptists that we admire, like Puritans, and we think of Robert Murray McShane and the

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Bonnars and those people, and many good ones today, they are careful to explain to their children in their system, which we are credo -baptists.

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Chuck and I believe in believer's baptism. But if you're a pedo -baptist and you're telling your children, look, this doesn't mean you don't need conversion.

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This doesn't mean you don't need to begin to believe and repent and continue to believe and repent. It doesn't mean that the

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Spirit of God doesn't need to make you alive. So, you know, you want to be very careful that that isn't maybe because of a lack of clarification, that you don't want the infant to think, you're fine, just don't be really bad.

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But when you think of Paul talking to Jews who have all those benefits and to Gentiles who have none of those benefits in Ephesians, a mixed church, and he says to all of them, you were all, we were all dead in trespasses and sins.

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So not the Jew, less dead, you know, Jews, you were sick and you need a little help.

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Gentiles, you were just dead. The pastor that was my pastor in Wales, a man named

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Vernon Hyam, grew up in the Presbyterian church and he was still a Presbyterian. But he said that in a liberal

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Presbyterian denomination that he grew up in, he heard one of the leaders of the denomination speak to a group of youth and he preached a

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Bible passage and then he applied it. And here's where the error became obvious. He said, now, some of you are covenant children.

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You've been baptized and you're in godly families. You need to be careful to continue to be, you know, good church kids, you know, continue to believe, don't turn away from it.

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And then he said, but some of you young people don't have Christian parents. You have to be born again. And that's a very dangerous statement,

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I think. One that's not endorsed by scripture, even if it fits a system where you feel like, well, but it's logical.

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But as you mentioned, there is great benefit in being raised by parents who are laboring by the grace of God, not only to explain the truth, but to exemplify it.

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And of course, as parents, I mean, we're both parents. So our long list of failures, you know, dwarfs our list of things where we think, by the grace of God, I did pretty well here.

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Like, no, my list of failures is, you know, seems endless. But it is a great privilege.

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Hudson Taylor's parents, you know, wonderful statement. They said that what we're doing with our children and teaching them and pointing them to Christ and living this out in front of them, we're not saving them, but we are laying up kindling.

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And God will send the spark. We plead with him to do that. And if he sends that spark, then that kindling there, you know, will catch flame.

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And that young person will have, you know, really have a lot of advantages over a person who was wonderfully saved, equally saved, but from a bad background, you know, where you didn't have the advantages of careful teaching.