How Forgiveness Displays the Gospel to Our Kids
My daughter spilled a big glass of water all over the kitchen table. Again. That girl is my ever-fidgeting, often-daydreaming, rather-clumsy gal. “Here we go again,” I moaned, “I’m toweling up another mess because you don’t listen to me and stay in your chair!” My tone seethed with frustration. She lowered her eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Five minutes later, guess who spilled her cup of tea? This time it was me. Not watching what I was doing, I splattered hot tea onto the couch, the floor, and even our poor pup, Penny. In that moment, as I eyed the tea stain I dreaded to remove, I felt a shift happen in my heart. “Accidents happen,” I thought to myself. “I’ll be able to get that out,” I reassured myself.
And then it hit me. Only minutes before, I’d shown such little grace to my own daughter, but here I was showing mercy to myself for the very same mistake.
Making God’s Love Known
Outside the home, I work as a biblical counselor, and I regularly encounter people who doubt God’s love for them. I run up against a performance trap mindset all the time. If I do this right, God will be pleased (and love me more). If I do this wrong, God will be mad (and not love me as much). I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by this. It’s colored by how we humans love one another. We’re quick to show our favor to those who are easy to love, and hesitant to show grace to those who make our lives difficult.
But God is not man, and thank the Lord for that! Romans 5:8 reminds us, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God died for us while we were still sinners. He forgave our sin by sending Christ to pay the penalty for it, not because we earned it. God forgave us because he loves us.
As moms, we have the unique privilege to share God’s amazing love with our kids. Since God especially shows his love to us by forgiving our sin, we can reflect his love to our kids as we exhibit similar mercy and grace.[1]
Growing as a Forgiving Parent
We are ambassadors for Christ in our kids’ lives; God makes his appeal through us.[2] Teaching forgiveness through our actions and words will show them so much about what God is like. Here are some friendly reminders for cultivating forgiveness in your home:
Forgive your children for their sins from your heart. We want to show God’s love to our children by genuinely forgiving them. Grace starts in the heart, prayerfully before God.[3] Start your day asking God to give you a heart of grace toward your children, before your interactions with them even begin. When they sin against you mid-day, ask again for God’s help to forbear and forgive. The best way to grow in forgiveness is by ruminating on God’s forgiveness toward us.[4] Let God’s amazing grace in your own life soften your heart to show grace in theirs.
Acknowledge your commonality with your kids in their sins and weaknesses. Let’s be moms who humbly admit fault, rather than pridefully hide or deny our wrongs. Remember my moment of failure in showing grace to my daughter when she messed up? This became a teaching moment for shepherding her heart. I was able to turn to my sweet girl, and admit my fault to her. I showed her how similar we are in that we both make mistakes (sometimes the very same ones!), and I apologized for my earlier anger and lack of grace. Openly acknowledging my sins to my kids regularly is a good way to model transparency, humility, and confession—and it’s a helpful safeguard against my own pride and self-righteousness.
Ask for forgiveness—from your kids and from God. Not only do we want to acknowledge our own sins to our kids, but we also need to ask them and God for forgiveness. It’s important that we model doing the hard thing of asking others for forgiveness. But let’s not stop there. Let’s also model running to the Lord,not away from the Lord, when we mess up. Let’s entreat our kids to pray with us for God to do the work in our hearts that we can’t do by ourselves. This way, when it’s their turn to ask for forgiveness, they’ll know what to do. And as we model asking forgiveness from them and the Lord, perhaps they’ll feel safe enough to do the same when they sin against us.
Discipline wisely. While forgiveness is crucial, we all know that our children need discipline too. What wisdom we must exercise here! When discipline is needed, we must give it carefully, out of obedience to God and love for our child, not out of anger for ourselves. Even amidst discipline, we can reaffirm our love and speak the “I forgive you” that they need to hear after they’ve messed up.
Avoid the Performance Trap. It’s so easy to show favor to our kids when they’re behaving nicely and shame them when they drive us nuts. But my, how we can flip this on its head by showing favor when it’s undeserved. An “I love you” even when we give a negative consequence for a sinful choice. A cuddle after a hard interaction, reminding them that they are loved in spite of themselves. Entering in with encouragement and help when we see their sin on display.
Above all, let’s pray for God to help us demonstrate forgiveness to our kids so they will know the greater forgiveness of God.
[1] Ephesians 2:4–5
[2] 2 Corinthians 5:20
[3] Mark 11:25
[4] Matthew 7:5; 18:23–25
