It is not enough to be born and raised in the church and receive the benefit of Christian education. A covenant child still needs the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. . . . They need the internal saving essence of the covenant, which is the regeneration by the Holy Spirit and union with Christ. If we do not understand and emphasize this, we will end up producing little Pharisees who say, “We are covenant children, so we are saved”; rebels who abandon everything and plunge back into the world; or nominal Christians who warm pews for eighty years and die, never having brought forth the fruits of salvation. Of them, Scripture says, “And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done: this is also vanity” (Eccl. 8:10).

Joel R. Beeke, Parenting by God’s Promises, 24.