Children and Salvation

What do we hope for in our children regarding salvation?  Should we be looking for a conversion experience and be ready with the “sinner’s prayer?”  A burdened father asked me this question regarding his son.  He, like me, comes from a background of altar calls and sinner’s prayers.  He, like me, believes the altar call to be unsavory and unbiblical.  But he, like me, wants to do right by his kids.....to know how to pray.....to know how to shepherd them to salvation.  

    First of all, we should hope/pray for the souls of our little ones.  We can’t assume that they are somehow reconciled with the Living God just because they’re young.  David wrote “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (Psalm 51:5)  Paul wrote “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good. Not even one.”  (Romans 3:10-12).  He also wrote “all have sinned and all fall short of the glory of God.”  (Romans 3:23)  I believe those passages and gobs of others indicate that we’re born crossways with our Creator.  We’re guilty at least by our relationship to our Federal Daddy, Adam.  Romans 5:18 says “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”  Romans 5:19 says “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”  Just by our relationship to Adam, we’re part of a guilty humanity and we need to be “transferred” to a new humanity.  (Col 1:13)  So we should be burdened for the souls of our little ones.  They, like us, need to be rescued (Exodus 12), reborn (John 3), adopted (Ephesians 1:5) into this righteous family by God’s sovereign work.  Just like we can’t achieve this for ourselves by merit, you can’t achieve it for your children by your merit or even your parenting.  It’s God’s work......so our primary efforts should be in God’s direction......so we should pray for the souls of our little ones.   

    Then in response to our prayer time with God (seeking His face and heart for the souls of our children), we do what we can to cultivate and sow into the soil of their little hearts.  We are to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.”  (Eph 6:4)  We are to have God’s words on our hearts as parents and are to “teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.” (Deut 6:7)  Burdened parents should saturate themselves with God’s words and then their homes with God’s words.  The true teachings of God as Creator, of man as sinner, of Christ as Savior become robust seed on the cultivated heart and should the Lord will it, will germinate, take root and bear fruit.

    Now, If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll appreciate that what I’ve shared regarding our children takes time.  Praying, diligent teaching, cultivating, sowing, saturating all sound like they’re p r o t r a c t e d events......ordinary moments factored over time......maybe years.........any of which in themselves seem as insignificant as a tiny seed in a big fertile field.  So the parent is a burdened gardener with a few years to pray/sow/cultivate before our kids leave to start their own families.  So should we be burdened for a conversion event and the sinner’s prayer moment?  If our burden is an event and an experience and a recitation of a prayer then we may be guilty of focusing too much on that “experience” so that we miss the bulbs we’ve planted that bloom here and there.  The gardener looks for and celebrates even the tiniest green sprout.  The parent should enjoy little expressions of faith.  We should celebrate the child that sings “Jesus loves me” as a three year old.  Their song isn’t somehow disqualified because they’ve not had a conversion “event.”  We should celebrate those tiny seedling expressions but as confessional Baptists we should hope for a time when they can articulate and express their faith in Christ as Savior and Lord.  While we should not be too focused on an event, we should hope for a day when, like Cami expressed on Sunday, they can say “I’m a sinner in need of a Savior.....and Jesus is that Savior and my King” and you can have some sense that they understand what they’re saying.  

    Romans 10:9-10 so beautifully captures what I’m describing. (A disclaimer – if you’re lazy you won’t get this....if you read it and re-read it and engage it, you’ll get it and treasure it).  Romans 9 reads “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  The verb tense for confess and believe in this passage are what’s called aorist tense.  It’s a Greek tense that’s sort of like past tense but it contains the event to a point in time.  So this confess and believe may point to a moment or day or period in your life or the life of your child when they first believe and confess the Lordship of Christ.  Then the next verse captures the ongoing expression that’s characteristic of salvation.  Verse 10 reads “for with the heart one believes......and with the mouth one confesses.”  These are both present tense......not past tense “believed” and “confessed.”   They reflect the ongoing, living faith of the true believer.  They point to the dailyness of the faith of a Christian parent who’s enjoying the gospel/truth/word as we sit in our houses, as we walk by the way, as we lie down and as we rise up.  Maybe in connection to the altar call backgrounds many of us share, we’ve erred in making the “event” too important and diminished the importance of the dailyness......of the sowing.....of the praying.....of the diligent teaching....of the saturating.  It seems from Romans 10 that a confessional recognition is important and a daily response of confession and belief equally important.  

    It’s appropriate to hope for a period in the life of our little one when confession and belief begin.  A better dream and prayer would be for a life transformed, a little soul surrendered, a worshipper reborn in a home where the gospel is discussed and enjoyed over time.   

Ben McGraw