The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

comes. And further, it was now to be revealed whether the family was to
be one of the means of grace. There was every reason to expect it would
be. It had been sin’s mightiest ally, the chief instrument through which
it had acquired such universal dominion. This principle was now to be
rescued from the power of sin, to be adopted into the covenant of grace,
to be consecrated and made subservient to the establishment of God’s
kingdom. How otherwise could the declaration be verified, ‘Where sin
abounded, there did grace much more abound,’ if sin alone had the
power through the parents to secure dominion over the children? Nay,
in this very thing we are to have one of the brightest displays of
redeeming grace — that the relation of parents and children, which had
become the great means for the transmission and establishing the
power of sin, was much more to become the vehicle for the extension of
the kingdom of God’s grace. And though many ages would have to pass
ere the promised Seed of the woman should be born, yet in anticipation
of that holy birth the seed of God’s people were to share in the blessing
of their parents. It was on the strength of this hope that the children of
righteous Noah were blessed with their father.
Let believing parents understand and remember this. The man who is
righteous in God’s sight is not dealt with only as an individual, but in
his relation as parent. When God blesses He loves to bless abundantly;
the blessing must overflow the house of His servant. It is not only for
this temporal life, and the supply of its many needs, that the father
must regard himself as the appointed channel through whom the
blessings of nature and providence must reach the child, and that he
may count upon God’s help. The parental relation has a nobler destiny:
for the eternal life too, with its blessings, the believing father is to
regard himself as the appointed channel and steward of the grace of
God.
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