Explaining Salvation To Your Child, Part 6

December, 2003

by: Brock Bolde

This month will be the last and final part of our six-part series on salvation. Within this series, I have stressed the importance of parents helping their child to understand their Need for Salvation, the Gift of Salvation, the Reason for Salvation, the Evidence of Salvation, and the Victory of Salvation. After having taken the time to explain these five elements of salvation to your child, there is still one more element that has yet to be addressed — the Sharing of Salvation. Our children must understand that once they have received this incredible gift of salvation from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they will have a desire to share this Good News with other people.

As parents, we must constantly take our children to the Scriptures if they are to understand this thing called salvation. One of the places that we should take them is Matthew 28:19. Within this verse we find Jesus Himself commanding His disciples to “go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” As you go over this text with your child, help them to understand that Jesus is commanding His disciples to MAKE DISCIPLES! He isn't asking them if this is something they'd like to do, He is telling them to do it. Again, the charge in this verse is not that the disciples should “go” but rather it is that the disciples should MAKE DISCIPLES. The early church had no problem in understanding this command and thus fulfilling it. They went to great lengths to share the Good News of Christ and make disciples. The book of Acts gives us a perfect demonstration of this when we read Chapter 5, verses 17-42. Within these verses we find Peter and the apostles suffering imprisonment and beatings for the sake of the Gospel. Picking things up in verse 40 it says: “…after calling the apostles in, they flogged them and ordered them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and then released them. So they went on their way from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His Name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ.” (Acts 5:40-42)

The thing that allowed Peter and the rest of the apostles to share the Good News of Christ even when being persecuted was their desire to obey God rather than man. In other words, they cared more about what God thought of them than they did about what other people thought of them. This is a key point that you must help your child to understand if they are going to know what a true disciple looks like. Back in the days of Jesus, being a disciple meant more than simply calling yourself a Christian or having regular church attendance. Back then a disciple would attach himself to his teacher and do all that he could to learn from Him — this even meant that the disciple would quite often live with the one who was discipling him (kind of like a parent and a child). This would enable the disciple to learn not only by their teacher's (parent's) words, but also by their actions.

Parents, I cannot stress to you enough the importance of your role! God has entrusted you with the care of that little boy or little girl that lives in your house. Let me plead with you to not leave the spiritual training of your child up to anyone else. Let me encourage you to fulfill your God–given role so that your child may understand what it means to be saved.