Show Them Jesus: Teaching the Gospel to Kids

by Jack Klumpenhower

I’d forgotten that although teachers do want support, no one likes to give even a minute of their time for ministry that’s so easy it must be unimportant.

Jesus tells us that the work of proclaiming God’s kingdom is dangerous. It takes courage. It demands earnest prayer. It’s more about faith than giftedness, and it requires no resources other than those God provides. It’s a high-stakes spiritual battle, using supernatural weapons. Anyone who’s willing to engage the fight on this level is needed for the cause. Such an adventurer will reap a rare mix of power, humility, and wide-eyed joy.

These kids actually have good reasons to quit. They look back and realize that they learned much about Christian behavior and churchy experiences, but whatever they learned about Jesus didn’t really change them. They never saw him so strikingly that he became their one, overriding hope and their greatest love. They were never convinced that Jesus is better—a zillion times better—than anything and everything else. Our goal must be

“You see,” I said, “just one man sinned, but many died. That’s the lesson.”

When the account of Achan is taught at all, it’s usually with the moral point that stealing is wrong. Okay, but that girl needed to hear the larger biblical point: that sin destroys life with God. Then she needed the biggest point of all—the theme of the whole Bible: that wherever sin destroys, Jesus heals.

I’m only a parent and volunteer who works with children and youth, leading lessons and other Christian activities. I’m just a Bible teacher—like you.

We pledge to teach the good news and show kids Jesus.

Where was the application? Wasn’t he at least going to tell the kids how to listen like Samuel? No. Gradually, I saw that Joe’s chief purpose was just to let us see Jesus a little bigger and better than we’d seen him before.

It worked because the cross of Jesus—not principles for good living—is the engine of the Christian life.

First, the content of the message matters; it must be about Jesus.

Second, the cross of Christ applies to the entire Christian life.

No. It means that the most powerful way to handle every sin in the life of the church is to apply a deeper understanding of the cross of Christ.

Third, faith in this message comes from God.

Rather than coax the kids into temporarily acting better, Joe told about Jesus and trusted God to use that message to make the kids become better.

All your effort to obey will be a response to what he’s already done, never a performance to win his favor.

The typical lesson for kids isn’t like this. Instead, it tends to be what mine were for years—little more than a lecture about some way you ought to live for God. Such lessons create pressure and invite pretending.

Fellow teachers, our challenge is to proclaim the good news of Jesus so clearly and consistently that no kid of ours will ever place him in a category with typical religious leaders. Our calling is to be good-news fanatics. I stress this because if I don’t, someone will hear me talk of teaching about Jesus and get the wrong idea. They will think, “Yes, we ought to teach kids to be like Jesus and to follow his example.” This would be typical religion. What a tyrant Jesus would be if he lived a perfect life and then, as his main message, told us to be like him. What a setup for failure! What discouragement and worry would mark our lives! What masquerades they would be! We must understand that our central hope is in Jesus’s full saving work, not just his instructions, and that kids will be stuck in the pressure-filled mode of trying to measure up unless we bombard them with this good news.

Good teaching is personal. If you use published material, make the good news the guide by which you tailor your lessons.

A focus on Jesus is God-centered.

Did I read you right? Did you say “Ask Jesus into your heart and you’ll be saved” is not the good news? Kids do need to respond to Jesus in faith, and the call to do so is part of the good news. But the good news is also more than just “Ask Jesus.” We too easily turn faith into little requirements—like saying a certain prayer—that end up being all about something external we must do. On Pentecost, Peter preached the good news of what Jesus has done (using the Old Testament like Joe did, I might add). He didn’t immediately ask for a behavioral response, but first let that good news lead to a heart response: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’” (Acts 2:37) Only then did Peter tell his listeners to repent and be baptized, as a necessary part of what God was already working in them. I’ll say more about how the good news works in nonbelievers in chapter 3.

It seems to me that Samuel is a good example of a kid who listened. Why shouldn’t I teach that? You could. There’s nothing wrong with that. The Bible does give us useful examples. However, all too often that’s all kids get from a lesson, instead of what they need most. If they get Samuel the good listener without first appreciating God the Great Speaker, they’re liable to end up relating to God only in an anxious, what-I-must-do way. Joe’s discussion time about how the lesson applied to life on the playground was important. It showed how God’s speech to Samuel three thousand years ago matters to Jesus’s followers today, and it encouraged the kids to believe and act on it. It’s good to challenge kids to obey God. Just make sure they’re responding out of faith in the love of Jesus, not out of mere moralism.

Teachers: Pick a specific spot to talk about the cross of Jesus in your next lesson, discussion session, worship time, or whatever you lead.

This is the great mystery of the gospel in the blood of Christ, that those who sin every day should have peace with God all their days. —John Owen1

the cross and the resurrection remain our focus, even when we broaden our spotlight to take in more.

Sin means we were doomed to die. But Jesus died to give us eternal life.

Sin means we were cursed.

Sin means we were shamed. But Jesus endured the shame of the cross to give us honor.

Sin means we were guilty. But Jesus was condemned and punished so we could be declared not guilty,

Sin means we were enemies of God and deserving of his anger. But Jesus deflected that wrath onto himself to give us God’s favor.

Sin means we were shut out from fellowship with God. But Jesus died alone on the cross so we might never be lonely again.

Sin means we had no hope of lasting happiness. But Jesus suffered sadness to give us eternal joy.

If we somehow think we never were in hellish danger, we might still admire Jesus, but we won’t love him.

It was one of those rewarding moments that makes years of teaching worthwhile, and it never would have happened if I’d merely been teaching that Jesus died for us. The boy had heard that line before. But because this time he’d experienced a sharper conviction of his sin in the face of God’s holiness—a need to be saved—the good news brought joy. That smile was worship. Jesus became bigger to him.

Our salvation is generous and full. Yes, we’re saved by grace alone—but God knows we not only need to be loved in spite of our stench, but also to become non-stinkers. He includes as part of salvation our rebirth into people who erupt in true worship of our Savior—with good works.

The good news heals, and then it empowers. It makes us eager to serve God and our neighbor.

It’s better than moralism. Merely trying to live a good life makes kids either proud or frustrated.

It’s better than grudging forgiveness.

It’s better than cheap grace.

It’s better than therapeutic religion.

It’s better than Jesus-as-example.

Doing good in the world, like Jesus did, is important. But Jesus-as-example alone gives kids no power to actually live in the self-sacrificing way Jesus modeled. Only when they’re powered by the good news will they follow with abandon. Then there will be no stopping them.

The good news does not let Christianity become a guidebook by which kids adjust their lives. Adjustments are not enough, and bare rules are for flunkies who have no share in the family business. We are heirs of the King. We are reborn. We’ve emerged from catastrophe in a burst f...

Often I do teach the need to respond in repentance and faith to the good news, but I didn’t do it with this lesson for two reasons. First, I wanted to focus on what Jesus did for us because we easily obsess over what we must do—and then the good news gets lost. If the Holy Spirit gets through to a kid’s heart, a proper response will follow without much coaxing from me. Second, the point of our discussion was that believing the good news is a critical habit even after becoming a Christian. The lesson wasn’t about how to be saved. The God Report Card is about how kids who are already believers can gain confidence and joy by understanding the good news that they’re justified before God.

Well, you’ve diagnosed those kids’ core spiritual problem. Their true trust is in their own ability to act like good Christians, and your talk about sin exposes them as failures. Kids who trust in being good can’t handle reminders of their sin. It destroys their self-confidence, precisely because it is confidence in self. For those who firmly trust Jesus, even a hard look at their sin only makes them appreciate him more. The cure for kids who feel burdened by sin is not to ignore the topic (they feel the burden anyway, even if they aren’t talking about it), but to administer large doses of the good news so that their trust in Jesus grows. We are sinners but no longer guilty, no longer unclean, no longer ashamed.

Teachers: Make a set of God Report Cards (described for parents above) to keep with your teaching supplies. This way, you’ll always have a teaching tool handy to bring out and demonstrate when your classroom discussions take a turn that calls for it.

Second, this means church kids—those we assume are doing fine because they’re from Christian homes and go to church—seldom hear the good news. For any message to make a life-changing impression usually takes hearing it again and again. This is doubly true with the good news because we all have a sinful nature inclined to prove ourselves rather than trust Jesus. Kids who only hear the good news a little tend to become kids who only love and trust Jesus a little. I’m not saying that every day should be “gospel day.” Rather, I’m suggesting an approach that makes such a day unnecessary. If we regularly weave the good news into every lesson, treating it as the one truth most practical and valuable for helping that day’s topic come alive in us, we can avoid this trap.

I don’t bring this up to discourage you. Rather, I say it in the hope that it will cause us, in desperation, to look to God. He alone works salvation, and his mercy is abundant. We can have much hope for our kids if we rely on God and use his methods.

We must not trust the “churchy behavior” formula. It’s great to see a kid live a largely moral life and practice Christian disciplines. But God doesn’t count that as obedience unless it flows from true faith in Jesus, which is prompted by the Spirit.

We must not trust the “say-a-prayer” formula. Generations of church kids have been taught to become Christians by saying the “sinner’s prayer.” Certainly prayer is appropriate at the moment of conversion, but it’s an empty incantation unless God’s heart work has prompted it. The true decision-maker is God. Raising hands at Bible camp and walking down the aisle only counts if the Spirit has brought change on the inside.

If our