Dear Parents:

 

Over the last few weeks, several of our students have surrendered their hearts to Jesus Christ, repenting of their sins and turning to Jesus in faith. It has been a really incredible experience to witness God working in a real and powerful way in their lives. However, many of these experiences have come in the lives of students that previously made a “profession of faith” as a child. So I thought it would be wise to offer you some Biblical guidance on what to do if your child has a similar response to the Gospel. All of us want to be able to give a good answer to the Lord for the stewardship he has given us of our children on the Day of Judgment – and this area of shepherding our children is certainly one of the most important. I pray you will read and consider these thoughts carefully and above all will pray for your child that they will be saved. After all – without God’s redeeming and intervening grace, no one would be saved.

 

Many parents & adults, after becoming convinced a child is saved, seek to give that child verbal assurance of his salvation. As a consequence, the church is filled with teenagers and adults whose hearts are devoid of real love for Christ, but who think they are genuine Christians because of something they did as children. However, it is the role of the Holy Spirit—not the parent or any other adult to give assurance of salvation (Rom. 8:15–16). Too many people whose hearts are utterly cold to the things of the Lord believe they are going to heaven simply because they responded positively as children to an evangelistic invitation. Having “asked Jesus to come into their hearts,” they were then given a false assurance and taught never to examine themselves and never to entertain any doubt about their salvation.

If your student expresses doubt about their salvation – don’t try to reassure them, explore their questions with them. Test them – to see if they are in the faith. The evidence that someone has genuinely repented of their sin and believed in Christ is the same in a child as it is in an adult—spiritual transformation. According to Scripture, true believers follow Christ (John 10:27), confess their sins (1 John 1:9), love their brothers (1 John 3:14), obey God’s commandments (1 John 2:3; John 15:14), do the will of God (Matt. 12:50), abide in God’s Word (John 8:31), keep God’s Word (John 17:6), and do good works (Eph. 2:10).

 

You should look for an increasing measure of this kind of fruit in your children’s lives as you continue to instruct them in the truths of the gospel. In addition, you should be diligent in your efforts to teach your children about Christ and their need for salvation, but also recognize that an essential part of that work is to guard them from thinking they are saved when they are not. Understanding the biblical evidences of salvation—and explaining them to your children—is foundational to this work of protection.

 

You should commend and rejoice in the evidence of real salvation in the lives of your children only when they know the child understands the gospel, believes it, and manifests the genuine evidence of true salvation—devotion to Christ, obedience to the Word, and love for others.  However, it is alright to encourage your student when they have messed up and then responded with repentance and genuine sorrow for their sin. Constant doubts about salvation usually indicate a lack of genuine conversion, while occasional struggles with doubt because of a sin or stronghold are natural.

 

Your part in anyone’s salvation is simply to share the Gospel and pray for them. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to draw the person, to convict them of their sin, to produce repentance and grant faith to believe in Jesus. It is a Biblical truth and my personal experience that when a person is ready – there is nothing you can do to keep them from being saved. You don’t have to supply any special motivation, words or a special prayer, they know what to say when they have been presented with the Gospel. However, it is also my experience that almost anyone can be talked into saying a prayer or making some type of commitment without a real change of heart. That’s why you should do your best work in praying for your student and sharing the Gospel and challenging them to respond in faith, but leaving that response completely in God’s hands and their hearts. The people who live with the most doubts are those who were most manipulated in the salvation process.

 

Pray -  pray that God will change their hearts. That He will give them a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. Pray that he will convict them of their sin.

 

Teach - Start with the Ten Commandments. This is God’s moral law – and it is by this that we will be judged by God. Every sinner needs to know the seriousness of their sin and the dangerous position they are in without Christ. As a family, you can consider one of the commandments each night around the dinner table. Talk about how your family fails at keeping this commandment. Talk about how God’s standard is absolute perfection. Talk about how your only hope is in the Lord Jesus Christ and his work on the Cross.

 

Once they understand their sin – they are ready to hear the message of the cross. That God loves the world – and he loves his people in such a way that he was unwilling that all should perish. So He made a way for us to be saved. We couldn’t do it on our own. You can point out to your student here how all their efforts to be good have failed. How they have tried to keep some of the commandments on their own – but they have utterly and completely failed every time. There is no way they can do enough good to get to heaven. So God, because He loves us and because He is rich in mercy, made a way for us to escape the punishment that we deserve.

 

The way to be saved is through his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus came and lived a perfect life (without sin) so that he could die a perfect sacrificial death. Which means that instead of paying for his own sin (of which he had none) he could pay for our sin. So on the cross; it was your sin and my sin that God punished Jesus for. Make sure you understand this and are able to communicate it effectively. Sinners must understand this to be saved. Jesus died a subsitutionary death – Jesus stood in your place, taking the punishment you deserve – so that you could be freed. He paid your debt in full. A debt you could never repay. And he paid it with his life. Jesus, who had never done anything wrong, stood in your place and took your punishment. You might ask them if they would do that for one of their friends. If you could take the punishment for one of your friends – would you really do it. You might think about it, you might even say you would do it, but when it really came down to it – would you really give your life if you were innocent and they were guilty. NO. But Jesus did – for you.

 

And not only did Jesus pay for sins – and pay the debt that you owed, he also credited to your account what you could never earn. In order to go to heaven, the Bible says we must be perfect, but we can’t be perfect, so the perfect life that Jesus lived get credited to our account so that now when God looks at us – he sees the perfect righteousness of Christ, rather than our filthy sin.

 

So the question is – how do you go from being under condemnation to being under grace? You must turn from your sins and put your faith in Jesus – and him alone. There is nothing you can do. You can’t work harder, read your Bible more, go to church more, be more obedient – on your own. If you try to do those things to be saved – all you will do is fail. You must trust in Jesus Christ alone and what he did. It is what He did that will save you.

 

Watch – look for genuine sorrow over sin. If there is no sorrow for sin – there is no conviction and a person is not ready to receive grace. You should continue to pray and talk about the Ten Commandments and remind them continually of their dangerous position of being under judgment.

 

If there is genuine sorrow for sin and real conviction, then pray for them and send them running to Jesus. You most likely will not have to help if it is a true heart response. They will know what to say to God in response to what the Spirit has done in their heart.

 

The heart of evangelism is the gospel, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Rom. 1:16). If anyone is to repent and believe in Christ, then, it will be through the proclamation of the message of the cross (1 Cor. 1:18–25; 2 Tim. 3:15; James 1:18; 1 Peter 1:23–25). No one can be saved apart from the gospel.

 

For this reason, you must teach your children the law of God, teach them the gospel of divine grace, show them their need for a Savior, and point them to Jesus Christ as the only One who can save them. It is best to start from the beginning—God, creation, the fall, sin, salvation, and Christ in His life, death, and resurrection.

 

As you teach your children, resist the temptation to downplay or soften the demands of the gospel and proclaim the whole message. The need to surrender to the lordship of Christ, for example, is not too difficult for children to understand. Any child who is old enough to understand the basic gospel is also able by God’s grace to trust Him completely and respond with the purest, most sincere kind of repentance.

 

The key is to be clear and thorough. You more than anyone have the time and opportunity to explain and illustrate gospel truths, to correct misunderstandings, and to clarify and review the most difficult aspects of the message. Be faithful, patient, and persistent, being careful to look at every moment of the child’s life as a teaching opportunity (Deut. 6:6–7).

 

One such teaching opportunity is found in your responsibility to discipline and correct your children when they are disobedient (Eph. 6:4). Rather than seeking simply to modify their behavior, look at discipline as an opportunity to help your children become aware of their failure and inability to obey, and subsequently, their need for forgiveness in Christ. In this way, discipline and correction are used to bring your children to a sober assessment of themselves as sinners and to lead to the cross of Christ where sinners can be forgiven.

 

As you explain the gospel and exhort your children to respond to the gospel, it is best to avoid an emphasis on external actions, such as praying “the sinner’s prayer.” Which by the way is found nowhere in Scripture, nor is there any command to do this in Scripture.  However, you should always challenge your children to repent and run to Jesus in faith. Of course the way to do this is with prayer, but it is best to let it flow from a heart that is genuinely moved.

 

There is an urgency inherent in the gospel message itself—and you should impress that urgency on your child’s heart—but the focus should be kept on the internal response. What Scripture calls for from sinners is: repentance from sin and faith in Christ. As you diligently teach the gospel and take opportunities each day to instruct your children in the truth of God’s Word, then you can begin to look for signs that your children have truly repented and believed.

 

I am praying for you and your students. These are the decision that will affect eternity and this life in the most profound way. Please call me if I can help, counsel or pray for you or your students.

 

For the Gospel,

 

 

Todd Blackhurst