Children need regular biblical teaching just like adults do, and the fact is that children can often grasp more truth than we give them credit for. Certainly some deeper theological truths may be challenging for a child to comprehend, but we must teach the core truths of Scripture to our children from the earliest ages so they will come to truly know God.

Do you have a mission statement for your family?

Every successful business has a mission statement that carefully articulates the company’s central vision and primary objectives. Yet the mission statement does not exist simply to be placed in an employee manual or on a plaque in the conference room. It exists to set the parameters for the structures and methodologies the company employs in pursuit of that mission.

In a similar way, to determine what is best for our children, we need to begin with consideration of our end goal. Every family needs a mission statement.

All Christian parents want to rear children who trust Christ for their salvation and live lives committed to him. Every church wants to disciple children who grow to be faithful servants of Christ. Yet to establish the best way to accomplish these goals, we need to have a sound biblical picture of what we are trying to accomplish.

Perhaps the best place to start is with the core confession of faith God gave to his people in the Old Testament. Known as the Shema, from the first word of the confession in Hebrew—“Hear”—this statement encapsulates a valuable model for what it means to be a true follower of God:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.

(Deut. 6:4–6)

To Know God

The Jewish confession begins with a requirement to believe certain things. The first of these affirmations is that the Lord, the God of Scripture, is our God. We believe in him, we affirm him as our God, and we trust in him. But then Moses adds an additional qualification. Not only is the Lord our God, he is the only God. There is one and only one true and living God. In other words, only one being in the entire universe deserves to be worshiped. The one true God is the Lord, the God of the Bible.

At the core of our desire for our children is that they truly know this. We want them to know God, to believe in him, and to trust him. We want them to know that he created them and what he has done throughout history. We want them to know he requires perfect obedience and does not tolerate sin. This very desire informs our intent to give them biblical teaching so they can understand truth about God.

The New Testament, of course, adds the complete revelation essential to salvation, and that is that Jesus Christ is “the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [him]” (John 14:6). Jesus is both God and man, and thus knowing him is the only way to truly know God. Our children need to be taught that since sin deserves everlasting judgment and prevents us from having fellowship with God, they must come to God through Christ, who died to pay the penalty that sin deserves. We need to teach them that those who repent of their sins and trust in Christ alone for their salvation will be forgiven of their sin and given everlasting life.

This is why the Word of God must be prominent in the lives of our children from the earliest of ages. This was true of Timothy, to whom Paul says, “From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15). Timothy’s grandmother and mother had faithfully communicated truth about God from the Scriptures to him as a child (1:5).

Children need regular biblical teaching just like adults do, and the fact is that children can often grasp more truth than we give them credit for. Certainly some deeper theological truths may be challenging for a child to comprehend, but we must teach the core truths of Scripture to our children from the earliest ages so they will come to truly know God.

To Obey God

The immediate context of the Jewish confession in Deuteronomy 6 is the giving of the law to the people of Israel, the “statutes and the rules” God gave to Moses. God required certain things of his people, and their adherence to those requirements resulted in either blessing or curse. In verse 3, Moses told them to be careful to obey these things.

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