What is the biblical way to lead a child to Christ?

What does it mean for us to bring our children to Him? Let us look at an Old Testament example, Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who said: ‘I will wait until the child is weaned; then will I bring him, that he may appear before Jehovah, and there abide for ever’ (1 Sam. 1:22). Here we find a mother who brings her child to the Lord. What is her objective? First, that he should appear before Him; second, that he should abide there forever. This ought to be the great objective of all parenting and the upbringing of our children. First of all, they should appear before the Lord — in other words they should accept Jesus as their Saviour and in doing so get to know Him. Second, they should abide with Him forever — in other words they should accept Him as their Lord, the one they want to follow and serve. Of course, we should also teach them the ‘life skills’ they need as they grow up, especially those to do with the way they relate to other people. But the main point is that they acknowledge Jesus as their Saviour and Lord.

How do we bring them to Him? There are two main elements. The first is that we set them a good example. Generally speaking, children take notice of our actions much more than our words. If they see us following the Lord Jesus and living in daily communion with Him, we create the right preconditions for them to do the same. If instead they realise the opposite is true, and see us living self-centred and hypocritical lives, we hinder them from coming to the Lord Jesus. The second main element is that we start as early as possible to talk to them about Him, and to pray and sing with them. This is the best seed we can sow in their hearts and it is ever more necessary in this age.

The education of children and young people has a variety of objectives. Of course, it includes instruction and guidance in a range of matters which will help them in the rest of their lives. However, for Christian parents, it should include something more important. As was the case for Hannah, who desired to have Samuel appear before Jehovah, the main objective in the upbringing of children by believers is to bring them to the Lord Jesus. When He was on earth, the Lord Jesus said: ‘Suffer little children, and do not hinder them from coming to me; for the kingdom of the heavens is of such’ (Matt. 19:14). It is therefore a privilege to bring children to Jesus, so that they might come to know Him as early as possible. However, this is a challenge also. Let us follow Hannah’s example and be an encouragement to our children to trust in the Lord, rather than in any way deter them from doing so.

This will never do. What is really needed is to surround our children with a thoroughly Christian atmosphere, from their earliest moments; to let them breathe the pure air of the new creation; to let them see in their parents the genuine fruits of spiritual life — love, peace, purity, tenderness, holy disinterestedness, genuine kindness, unselfishness, loving thoughtfulness of others. These things have a mighty moral influence upon the plastic mind of the child, and the Spirit of God will assuredly use them in drawing the heart to Christ — the centre and the source of all these beauteous graces and heavenly influences.

Labour to arouse the conscience; and pray God the Holy Spirit to work by you until the heart becomes tender and the mind perceives the need of the great salvation. Children need to learn the doctrine of the cross that they may find immediate salvation. Believe that God will save your children. Be not content to sow principles in their minds which may possibly develop in later years; but be working for immediate conversion. Expect fruit in your children while they are children. Pray for them that they may not run into the world and fall into the evils of outward sin, and then come back with broken bones to the Good Shepherd; but that they may by God's rich grace be kept from the paths of the destroyer, and grow up in the fold of Christ, first as lambs of His flock and then as sheep of His hand.

When attention is focused upon the best of themes, let us be ready to explain the great transaction by which God is just, and yet sinners are justified. Children can well understand the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice; it was meant to be a gospel for the youngest. The gospel of substitution is a simplicity, though it is a mystery. We ought not to be content until our little ones know and trust in their finished Sacrifice. This is essential knowledge, and the key to all other spiritual teaching. May our dear children know the cross, and they will have begun well. With all their gettings may they get an understanding of this, and they will have the foundation rightly laid.

This will necessitate your teaching the child his need of a Saviour. You must not hold back from this needful task. Do not flatter the child with delusive rubbish about his nature being good and needing to be developed. Tell him he must be born again. Don't bolster him up with the fancy of his own innocence, but show him his sin. Mention the childish sins to which he is prone, and pray the Holy Spirit to work conviction in his heart and conscience.

My little boy was sitting on the floor playing with a small toy, and as I looked at him I realized that to reach the conscience and heart of an obviously dying man I must speak to him as simply as I would to my boy. I told him that nothing we had done or could do, availed for salvation. We had all sinned — done what was wrong in God's sight, and God must punish sin. If we had to bear the punishment we should be sent away from the presence of God for ever. But God Himself had provided a way — the only way — in which we could be forgiven and have our sins washed away. God's own Son — the Lord Jesus Christ — had come from heaven to earth. He was sinless, spotless and holy, and He alone could be our Saviour. His Name was to be "JESUS, for He shall save His people from their sins." To do this He must pay the penalty of sin, which is death; and so He died on Calvary's cross — the "Just for the unjust." He shed His precious blood, and it is "the blood of Jesus Christ (God's Son) which cleanses us from all sin." God offers us salvation through faith in Christ, ceasing from our own efforts to keep the law, and putting our trust in that finished work which He did on the cross; owning Him as our Saviour and Lord. "Neither is there salvation in any other."

A boy of nine came to a gospel meeting that I held some time ago in Scotland, and at that meeting he found out that he was a sinner; he went home very miserable, and during the night his sobs awoke his father; his father came to his bedside to know the cause of his grief. "Oh! father," he said, "I am so bad, that I am sure God will not save me." His father was a Christian, and knew that God could save the very worst of sinners, so he sat beside his little son and told him that Jesus came to die for sinners, and that His precious blood could cleanse even him from all his many sins. The dear boy trusted Jesus that night, and though he was a great sinner, yet he found that Jesus was a great Saviour, and that all his sins which had made him so miserable, and fitted him for hell fire, could be washed away by Jesus' precious blood. He came to tell me about it the next day, and bright indeed did he look as he confessed the precious name of Jesus. At our next meeting he joyfully sang:

I will tell you how I learned this blessed truth. Thirty years ago, when a medical student, I was living in the north of London, in the house of a godly couple, who had but two children, a son and a daughter. The little boy of thirteen, Johnnie, was very friendly with me. One evening in the summer of 1864 I was busy at my studies, when there was a knock at the door, and I said, "Come in." In walked John with a book and slate under his arm, and a frown on his brow. "If you please, sir," he said, "I have got an awfully difficult sum in algebra, which I cannot understand, and mother said perhaps you would be kind enough to explain it to me." We sat down to the equation, and very soon it worked out all right. The frown went off the boy's face, he was delighted, and he thanked me very heartily. He was walking off in the full conviction that he would be at the top of his class the next day, knowing this difficult sum, when I said, "Stop, John, there is a still more difficult problem to be settled: how are you to be saved?" "Only by the Lord Jesus," he replied. "Quite true, and do you know the Lord Jesus yet?" "I do not, but I wish I did." "Well, you may know Him if you really wish to, you may come to Him just now," and taking up my Bible I put the gospel as simply as I could before the little fellow.

Within ten minutes the light entered his heart, and he confessed his faith in the Lord Jesus. He believed the gospel so simply and readily that, thorough believer as I am in sudden conversions, I began to think that perhaps he did not apprehend the subject, and was professing to be converted too quickly. I questioned him, and cross-questioned him, and tried to puzzle him if I could, but it was no good. He had come to Jesus, and He had saved him, and blotted out his sins, and the boy's face was beaming in the sense of the Lord's love. "Well, suppose the Lord should come?" said I. "I would be quite happy to meet Him," replied the lad. "And suppose you were to die?" "I would be quite happy to die now," was his calm answer. "But, sir," he added, "there is no reason why I should die now, is there?" "What do you mean, my little man?" said I. "Well, you know, sir, you have been telling me that Jesus has died for me, and I thought then there would be no need for me to die."

Yes, "All things are now ready," but not a man will come and enter that feast unless he is converted and becomes as a little child. The little child of the Lord's parable hears and believes, there is no pretence about him, he confesses his need when he feels it, and simply and thankfully receives what is offered him and talks about what he has received. After a protracted gospel service in Kingston, Jamaica, at which many anxious souls had pressed into the feast, a little negro lad, ten years old perhaps, touched me on the elbow and said, "Do speak to me, sir, my soul does feel so unsaved." We found a quiet spot where he could listen to the word, and then we knelt in prayer. When I had prayed for him, he prayed for himself, "Lord Jesus," he said, "save my soul." And he jumped to his feet, having no doubt that his prayer was answered, for as he said, I had told him that the Lord had said, "Him that comes to Me, I will in no wise cast out." He had come and proved that the Lord's words were true.

But why should you not be saved even now, young as many of you are? Look at Josiah who lived when Judah was in an evil day and judgment near. At eight years of age he was a decidedly pious child. What will make you so? Nothing but Christ, You are in your sins, it is true; but the very name of Jesus means that He was to save from sins. Whatever be your guilt as you are, look to Him as the Saviour God exalted with His right hand to give repentance and forgiveness of sins. It is just as guilty and lost ones you are now called by the gospel to believe on Him; and, if you believe, each to say, By God's grace I am saved. Salvation does not depend in any way on the desert of the saved, but on the grace of the Saviour. Indeed, it is now a declared part of God's righteousness to justify him that believes in Jesus.