Proverbs 29:15-18

Discipline — the rod and the reproof together — gives a child wisdom; a child simply "left to himself" grows up to break his mother's heart. Picture a spirited horse with the reins dropped on his neck: full of his own energy, with nothing to check him, he plunges headlong over the cliff. That is a child left to himself. Many a hardened criminal on the gallows was once a sweet, teachable little child — only left to himself. So discipline, but discipline rightly: try reproof first, and where words succeed, spare the rod; let the correction always be loving, never cruel, "tempered with authority," never the venting of a parent's temper. (The parent who strikes without mercy and never explains the fault deals worse with a child than a shepherd does with his dog.) In the end the rule is simple and unavoidable: either the child's will must be broken, or the parent's heart will be.

When the wicked grow numerous, sin multiplies with them, because bad company emboldens — every particle of the mass is corrupt, and together they grow bold. But "the righteous shall see their fall." Mark how to take that: not with gloating — the godly take no pleasure in the final ruin of any man, for they ardently desire even their enemies' repentance — but with the steadying assurance that there is a God who reigns, and that wickedness, however it swells, does not get the last word.

The command is plain: correct thy son. And it comes with a promise — do it, and he will give you rest, and more than rest, real delight to your soul. The pain of correction is brief; the pleasure it yields is lasting. Join prayer to your discipline, and remember Eli, who "honoured his sons above God" (1 Samuel 2:29) and spared the rod to the ruin of them both. Faithful correction now is the seed of joy later, for the parent and the child alike.

This famous verse is constantly misquoted to mean "a people needs goals and ambition." That is not what it says. "Vision" here means divine revelation — the Word of God faithfully preached and known; where there is no living proclamation of God's truth, a people runs wild and perishes. Both halves of the verse are about a people, not just an individual: a nation without serious, faithful, powerful preaching certainly perishes, for ignorance is not, as some claim, the mother of devotion — it is the mother of destruction. The famine of bread is a light judgment compared with "a famine of hearing the words of the LORD" (Amos 8:11). And then the bright other half: "he that keepeth the law, happy is he." It is not the man who merely owns a Bible who is blessed, but the man who delights in it and meditates on it day and night (Psalm 1:2). A people perishes without the Word; a soul is happy that keeps it. Prize the preaching of the Word, and live by it.