Using The Moral Law to Train the Heart and Mind of a Child To Follow Christ By Brannon Howse

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In order for children to understand God, we must teach them the moral law because moral law is a reflection of God's character and nature. Everything consistent with the character and nature of God is truth, and everything contrary is untruth.
Parents must connect the Word of God, the moral law, and Christian doctrine with the character and nature of God. It gives a very skewed picture simply to tell a child to do or not to do something ONLY because the Bible says so. The Bible "says so" because of God's nature. If we teach our children that the Bible is a book of rules for behavior, then we are leading them down the road to legalism and rebellion. Rather, we must be clear that the Word of God reveals God Himself. He wants us to model His character so we can bring honor and glory to Him, be witnesses to the unsaved, and enter a deeper relationship with Him.
As you train the heart and mind of your child, use the moral law to reveal to your child his or her inborn sinful and lost condition, to communicate the need for repentance, and to explain the grace and mercy of our holy and just God. The moral law reveals the disease as well as the need for the cure which is only found in salvation through Jesus Christ.
Remember: The purpose of our training is to prepare the soil of our children's hearts so they will seek God for themselves and be convicted of sinfulness and the need to repent. Forcing or coercing children to "pray a sinner's prayer" will not save them but only make false converts. I know this well from personal experience. At the age of five, I prayed a "sinner's prayer," and at seven I walked the aisle to join our church and be baptized. For years, I used these acts to affirm my salvation. I learned to "perform" to do what was expected of me or to do what I knew would make other Christians respect and accept me.
I played the "game" even though I didn't know I was playing a game. I thought I was saved because I had prayed the right prayer, walked the aisle, and was baptized. It was not until I read Revival's Golden Key by Ray Comfort that I understood my total depravity and need for Biblical repentance. (Ray Comfort's book is now titled, Way of the Master and is available in our online bookstore at www.worldviewweekend.com). Ray reveals Biblical teachings about the moral law-the lost key to understanding why we need salvation. Subsequently, I worked out my salvation with "fear and trembling" and went from false to true conversion.
 
The Moral Law Is a Wake-up Call to Change Hearts and Minds-and Bring Repentance
 
According to Romans, the moral law is written on the heart and mind of every person-thus the conscience. "Con" means with and "science" means knowledge. So, every time people sin or rebel against God, they know it is wrong. We come to understand that we don't murder fellow human beings because murder goes against the character of God. We are not to lie, steal, or break any of the other Ten Commandments because doing so would go against who God is.
Romans <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />1:21 reminds us, "although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." And Romans 2:15 points out that people "show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them."
People can either accept the guilty feeling of the law that accuses them of their transgression when they sin, or they can excuse the guilty feeling and learn to ignore it. If they ignore the guilt long enough or often enough, they will become people "speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:2). Norm Geisler explains how this works out in a person's life:
 
[T]he root cause of the character disorders (moral corruption) … is directly associated with a person's refusal to acknowledge and act upon what is morally right and reject what is morally wrong. It becomes harder and harder for the individual to get help with his character disorder because of the increased moral depravity. This increase is associated with greater levels of insensitivity in that person's conscience. For example, during the progressive moral deterioration in the life of the person who uses pornography, his sequence of feeling-to-thought-to-deed proceeds with less and less intervention of the inhibitory mechanism of conscience and guilt.[1]
 
This is the effect of having your conscience seared, but no one will have an excuse at judgment for rejecting God. Romans 3:19–20 explains:
 
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
 
Everyone has broken the law. No one can justify their entry into heaven by claiming they have "lived a good enough life" because God's standard is to keep the complete moral law, and no one has done that.
To further underscore that committing sin is breaking the moral law, 1 John 3:4 says, "Everyone who commits sin also breaks the law; sin is the breaking of law." And Romans 3:10 explains, "There is none righteous, no, not one." Finally, Romans 3:23 concludes: "…all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Because everyone but Jesus Christ has broken the law, any who have not repented of their sins and trusted in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ will not be pardoned for breaking the moral law. To repent means to turn from sin, to stop practicing sin as a lifestyle. This does not mean you will never sin again, but there is a big difference between stumbling into sin and willingly jumping in. A repentant heart is born out of an awareness of your deep-seated sinfulness and the understanding that you deserve the wrath of God. A repentant person who surrenders his life to Christ receives eternal life with Christ. Eternal life is theirs at the moment of salvation because Christ fully paid for their sin when he died in their place. Second Corinthians 7:9-10 says:
 
Now I rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that your sorrow led to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly manner, that you might suffer loss from us in nothing. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death.
 
True repentance is a "godly sorrow" for sin; it is turning and going in the opposite direction of your willful sinful lifestyle. True repentance leads to a change in a person's life as he or she grows in relationship with Jesus Christ.
 
 
To order Brannon's latest book, Christian Worldview For Children: How To Train the Heart and Mind of a Child to Follow Christ, please click on this link:
http://www.worldviewweekend.com/secure/store/product.php?ProductID=400
 
 
 

[1] Norm Geisler and Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations, (Bethany Press, Mlps, MN 2001) p. 358.