Ryle: "... it is never too soon to strive and pray for the salvation of the souls of children"

Mark 9 v 21(CSB)

21 “How long has this been happening to him?” Jesus asked his father.

We read a fearful description of the miseries inflicted by Satan on the young man whose case is here recorded. And we are told that he had been in this awful state “from childhood” (verse 21).

We must labor to do good to our children even from their earliest years. If Satan begins to harm them so early, we must not be behind him in diligence to lead them to God. How soon in life a child becomes responsible and accountable is a difficult question to solve.

Perhaps far sooner than many of us suppose. One thing at all events is very clear: it is never too soon to strive and pray for the salvation of the souls of children—never too soon to speak to them as moral beings and tell them of God and Christ and right and wrong.

The devil, we may be quite sure, loses no time in endeavoring to influence the minds of young people. He begins with them “from childhood.” Let us work hard to counteract him. If young hearts can be filled by Satan, they can also be filled with the Spirit of God.

See J. C. Ryle, Mark, Crossway Classic Commentaries (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1993), 132.

Comments

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place w...

Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

Search This Blog