Children and the Gospel! (Part 3)
Is there an age?
Many people tend to believe that there’s a general age range that a child should be in before they can really make a decision for themselves to trust Christ as their Savior. Some call it the “age of accountability,” or they use some other term. The general idea is that a child doesn’t have the cognitive development to make a life-long, faith decision for themselves until a particular age.
I’ll just put it this way. The “average” three year old isn’t going to make a thought-out, long-lasting decision to trust Christ as Savior. I’m not saying that it couldn’t happen…I’m just saying it’s not normal. They can begin to learn the concepts, and they should be taught them continually in hopes that a basic worldview would begin to be shaped.
I don’t know where that age is. I really don’t. Over the last seven years of ministering to children, though, I have become extremely adept at deciphering between a kid who has come to a decision for themselves and a kid who got pressured into making a saying a prayer or verbalizing something about Jesus so that his/her parents could relax knowing that their child was “in the club.” Please hear my heart. Present the gospel every time you feel the Spirit lead you to do so, but please don’t pressure your kids or force them there. Trust me…it’s just going to be harder for you later.
There’s one common issue that I’ll address. A number of kids will come to faith at an early age 6-9. They make a decision, trust Christ, they may even be baptized. However, that child gets to be 12 or 13, goes to church camp, and hears the gospel preached and wonders if they need to “re-up” with Jesus. Either one of two things is happening in this situation. Either, they are realizing that they may have just performed an act or empty ritual without the necessary faith behind it or they learned some new facet of what the gospel means and they are attempting to rectify that with their previous understanding.
When I made my decision to trust Christ, I was a young boy. Now, as a man, I understand much more about the decision I was making that day and what it meant. Just because I understand more now, does not mean that I didn’t have faith back then. In fact, in may have been greater faith, because I chose to trust Christ without understanding all the details.
It’s sometimes really hard to know what to do in these kinds of situations. Do your best to be encouraging and not over-dramatic.
Fire insurance or life with Christ?
So often, we treat a faith decision in Christ as “fire insurance.” I said the prayer. I walked the aisle. I signed the card. I got baptized…I’m in. Then some live the rest of their life doing whatever they want, because they can pull the “imaginary membership card” or their “get out of hell free” card out of their wallet so that they can avoid the bad place. The gospel is so much more than that. It’s so much more than where we’re going to go when we die. If we’re sharing the gospel with someone, and all we talk about is heaven or hell, we may have, inadvertently, turned the gospel message into “fire insurance.” What a tragedy!
Instead, what we receive for trusting Christ is eternal life. That idea is much bigger than, “I get to go to heaven and get to avoid hell.” Can you see how that kind of thinking quickly turns into doing this because of something I get…what’s in it for me…self-centered?
Eternal life, our gift from God, is much bigger than escaping hell (a very real place).
John 17:3 – This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
Eternal life is more than “fire insurance.” Eternal life is the privilege of knowing God through his Son, Jesus Christ and having a relationship with the Almighty. Heaven and Hell are real places, and they ought to be a part of any discussion of salvation. But let us remember that eternal life is bigger than that, and when we say “you don’t want to go to hell, do you?” we may be selling the gospel very short. We may be missing the point!
Last chunk of this topic is coming up in a couple of days!
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