Harry Truman said, “The only thing new to you is the history you don’t know.”  Whereas we might think that the intrusion of works into the palace of grace, especially with children, is relatively new, but there it is, dagger at the ready, to stab the Reformation in the heart.  The next generation would then come to know an “IF” after “faith alone,” “grace alone,” and Christ alone.”  The children would come to think that salvation is by “faith alone if . . .;” “grace alone if . . .;” “Christ alone if . . .” With the “IF,” Luther could hear the tolling of the bells for the Reformation. 

Works hasn’t dropped its dagger.  It’s been carrying the blade since the 1500’s.  Peruse today’s literature for children and you find the dagger.  The following examples suffice as photographs of the murder weapon:

In boldly alliterated instructions on how to give the gospel to children, teachers are  instructed to tell children to:

“Repent of your sins- Understand that you sin (disobey God) and that you must turn from your sin.  To repent, tell God you have sinned, ask Him to forgive you and help you obey Him the rest of your life.  Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out” (Acts 3:19).  

“Receive Jesus into your life- You must invite Jesus to come into your life to be your Lord and Savior.  By inviting Him, you are promising to obey Him in all areas of your life.  ‘Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God’” (John 1:12).” 

Where is “faith alone” in those instructions?  “Christ alone” isn’t there either.  The author quotes John 1:12 as its proof text, but where in John 1:12 do we read, “You must invite Jesus to come into your life to be your Lord and Savior.”  Where do we find in John 1:12 that “you are promising to obey Him in all areas of your life?”  The author has imported “invite,” “promise” and “obey” into  the sentence. John wrote “receive/believe;” he didn’t add three other words.  The instructions have smuggled those dagger-bearing words into “believe.” 

In addition, the instructions are packing “repent” with “turning from your sin,” “telling God you have sinned;” “asking God to forgive” and “asking God to help you obey Him for the rest of your life.”  Each addition comes carries its own grace-slaying dagger.  If repentance demands “turning from your sins,” then what child (or adult) can do that?  No reader of these words has ever done such (I John 1:10).  The writer of these instructions on how to evangelize children hasn’t turned from his sins either.  His pen drips the ink of hypocrisy and he doesn’t even know it.

Some parents realize that the Lordship Salvation “gospel” presentation is fraught with difficulties for children and have raised concerns about it.  They ask, “What can a child understand about submission to Christ, making Him lord of one’s life?”  In their concern, some have written to ask how this can be done.  They’re sincere; their question is a good one.

In answering their legitimate concerns, one Lordship Salvation advocate writes, “They [children] need to be told that Jesus expects to be obeyed, and they will understand even better than some adults that trusting Jesus means obeying Him. The importance of obedience needs to be emphasized repeatedly, even after the child makes a profession of faith.”

In this answer, we see the confluence of salvation and discipleship, mixed together to become the salvation package.  The writer says that children must understand that to trust means to obey.  Again, we see the packing of “believe/trust” with baggage it can’t carry.  “Believe” does not mean “obey;” they are two different words. 

Faith is to be persuaded that something [in this case, the gospel] is true.  It is to rely on or have confidence in the object of the faith, the faith having no merit in itself ( Rom. 4:4-5).  As Dr. Charlie Bing writes, “When one believes, he takes God at His word and personally appropriates the provision of Christ’s free gift of salvation for himself.  This is saving faith.” 

Another presentation of the gospel designed for children records the following: “To accept Jesus as your Savior and begin a new life with God, pray this prayer: ‘Lord Jesus, I'm not perfect. I've done things that are wrong. I'm sorry. Forgive me. Change my life and help me to live for You.  Make me what You want me to be. Show me your beautiful plan for my life. Fill me with the power of the Holy Spirit. Fill my life with Your love, peace, and joy. Amen.’”

This presentation contains the common error of asking the unbeliever to pray a prayer, sometimes called “the sinner’s prayer,” a prayer no one has been able to find in Acts or the epistles to this day.  Neither Paul, Peter, nor any New Testament evangelist ever instructed the unsaved to pray “the sinner’s prayer,” they never heard of it.

The evangelist is told to instruct the child to feel sorry for the things he’s done wrong and by this, he imports the necessity of feeling into the gospel.  The issue in the gospel is never to “feel,” but to believe.  This leads a sincere child often times to try to manufacture the emotion he’s told to feel in order to be saved.  In addition, the evangelist fills his presentation with a host of weaponry—the “change-my-life-dagger,” the “help-me-to-live-for-you-dagger,” and the “make-me-what-you-want-me-to-be-dagger.”  Where in any evangelistic sermon in the book of Acts do we read of the Apostles making such demands of the unbeliever?   

There’s no need for the unbeliever to ask God for forgiveness; God has already promised to forgive upon faith alone in Christ alone. This smacks of Islam where the penitent are told to seek Allah’s forgiveness in the morning, not later in the day because one never knows if he will be on the giving hand.

Enough.  The presentations are becoming redundant, replete with this dagger or that daggers, but grace-slaying weapons of works nonetheless.

Luther saw the IF in his day, but we can miss it in our day.  We can miss the daggers because they come wrapped in the all too familiar.  We teach children to sing the IF and we never notice it: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong. . . . IF I love Him when I die, He will take me to His home on high.”  There it is!  There’s the IF, sitting there with its dagger, killing grace to a catchy tune.   

From the nursery through the high school Sunday school classes, the child should not learn that which will have to be unlearned.  We start him with grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone and each succeeding year, we reinforce it with consistent teaching.

Some might call Luther a prophet when they read: “I am much afraid that schools will prove to be great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.”

Luther was writing about the German schools, not Sunday schools or churches, but we may apply his words to them with a paraphrase: “I advise no one to place his child where grace alone, faith alone, and Christ alone do not reign paramount.”