LEADING CHILDREN TO FAITH IN CHRIST?
“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up…(Deuteronomy 6:5-7).
God has given parents the privilege and responsibility of nurturing their children in an understanding of the truth of God’s Word. While you can’t make your child believe or trust in Christ, you can create a climate in which God’s Word is heard and loved.
The purpose of our “Communicant’s Class” is to help your child understand the membership vows made when he or she is received into communing membership. We will review the basic message of the gospel, discuss the nature and privileges of church membership, and discuss the meaning of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
When the classes are finished, we will set up an interview for you and your child with one of the elders. The purpose of this interview is to give the elder an opportunity to see if your child seems to have a “credible profession of faith” – that is, does your child seem to understand the gospel message and has your child put his or her trust in Christ. We can’t see into anyone’s heart to know for certain, but it is our responsibility to make sure as best we can that those received into membership in the church do have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
To help your child prepare for that interview, please take some time to talk through the basic truths of the gospel with your child, specifically, what makes someone a Christian and what is it that saves? Is it something we do, or what Christ has done for us?
The following is an outline of key gospel truths:
I. What does someone need to understand in order to embrace Jesus Christ by faith?
A. Regarding God
1. That there is a God who made us and holds us accountable.
2. That God created us to enjoy Him and to be like Him.
3. That God loves people.
- Regarding Sin
1. The meaning of “sin” – doing what is contrary to God’s commands and failing to live up to what God has commanded. We sin daily in thought, word and deed.
2. That I am guilty of sin before God.
3. That my sin separates me from God.
4. That I cannot pay the debt my sin has created by my own efforts.
5. That I deserve God’s wrath and punishment
C. Regarding Jesus Christ
1. Who Jesus is – God became a man in the person of Jesus.
2. Why Jesus came – God sent His Son to rescue us from all the problems caused by our sin. God wants to be reconciled to sinners!
3. How Jesus saves – Jesus lived in my place – he lived without sinning against God. Therefore He deserves life and the complete approval of God. – Jesus died in my place – He took on Himself the punishment I deserve before God for my sin.
4. Who Jesus saves – all those who look to Christ in faith for salvation are saved by God’s grace. Their sin was paid for when Jesus suffered and died on the cross. And His righteousness is credited to them when they trust Christ in faith. That means their sin has been fully punished in Jesus and they are without any condemnation before God.
- Responding to the gospel
- We are saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. It is God who saves, not anything we do.
- The Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit) creates life in people whose hearts are spiritually dead by nature. Faith in Christ is a gift God gives!
- We must respond to the offer of the gospel by embracing Christ in faith.
- What is faith? – believing God will do what He has promised.
- believing God can be trusted and resting in Him.
- Faith involves repentance – agreeing with God about our sin and turning from our sin to follow Jesus. Repentance also means turning from trusting ourselves and our efforts to earn God’s approval and trusting Christ alone.
- It would be appropriate to ask someone who believes all these things to ask God to give them the gift of faith, to ask God to give them life in Christ, and to thank God for doing all these things for them in Jesus Christ.
E. Avoid making salvation something other than God’s Word teaches.
1. Just believing certain facts about Jesus (James 2:19).
2. “Accepting Jesus into your heart.” – where does the New Testament teach that Jesus lives in your heart? Who lives in you – Jesus or the Holy Spirit? (cf. Ephesians 3:14-19).
3. Making salvation depend on praying certain words.
4. Suggesting being saved means knowing the day and the time when you prayed to receive Christ.
5. Making salvation depend on works of obedience.
J. Gresham Machen: From the beginning Christianity was a campaign of witnessing. And the witnessing did not concern merely what Jesus was doing within the recesses of an individual life. To take the words of Acts in that way is to do violence to the context and to all the evidence. On the contrary, the Epistles of Paul and all the sources make it abundantly plain that the testimony was primarily NOT to inner spiritual facts but to what Jesus had done once for all in his death and resurrection. Christianity is based, then, upon an account of something THAT HAPPENED, and the Christian worker should tell the truth. When a man takes his seat upon the witness stand, it makes little difference what the cut of his coat is or whether his sentences are nicely turned. The important thing is that he tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
II. Challenging your child to respond to the gospel of grace
A. Make it personal
1. Remind them that God’s Word requires a response.
2. Asking whether or not they have put their faith in Christ.
3. Remind them not to trust their own works or methods to secure God’s approval.
4. Remind them that what matters is not the day or time when they prayed a prayer of surrender to Christ as Savior and Lord, what matters is what Jesus has done to save!
5. Explain how you came to understand the gospel and what it is you are trusting for your forgiveness of sin and present acceptance with God.
(Dan Iverson: You can’t commend what you don’t cherish.)
B. Leading someone to faith
1. “Is there any reason why you are not ready to trust Christ as Savior?”
2. “Would you like me to help you with some words to pray…?”
eg. “I understand that I am a sinner, that I can’t earn your approval by trying harder. But I also understand that you have chosen to love sinners like me! I understand that Jesus earned your approval by the sinless life he lived, and that he took on himself the punishment sinners deserve when he died on the cross. I believe what you have promised – that you will save those who take hold of Jesus in faith. By faith I believe he lived and died for me too. By faith I rest in what Jesus did and ask that you accept me into your family as your adopted child for the sake of Jesus!”
C. Helping them understand what has happened.
1. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus – all your sin has been paid for by Jesus – past, present, future.
2. God adopted you into his family. It is a legal transaction.
3. God’s Spirit now lives in you. He will begin to change your heart. Believe that He is at work, changing your desires…
4. God has put you into a family. You are now a citizen of a new kingdom!
5. God has given you tools for growing in grace – His Word, the Church, baptism and the Lord’s Supper…
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