Will our children be Christians when they are grown?
Will our precious faith in Christ be successfully passed on to the next generation?
Will our sons and daughters join us around the throne of God at the Last Day?

These are questions that all Christian fathers and mothers ask (to themselves, if not out loud) as they labor through the years of child-raising. Our aim is not just to produce a new crop of decent, moral citizens. We want to help populate the world with a new generation of men and women who are zealous for the Lord and faithful to Christ all their lives, and who will be with us in God's presence for eternity.

Yet as we look at ourselves, at our ignorance, at our failures, even sometimes at our own rebellion, we understand that it would be an amazing thing if any of our children walked with God! Can we, then, have any confidence that they are and will be His? On what basis could we have any such confidence? Is it just a matter of chance or fate? Is it all up to us and how faithful we are to raise our children right?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if God decided that He would work in our children, that He would call them to faith in Christ, that He would assure that they belonged to Him in time and in eternity?

Well, are you sitting down? Because I have some great news for you. Unfortunately this good news has been substantially forgotten in recent times, but it is true nevertheless. The good news is this: God has, in fact, decided to work His salvation in your children and mine. He has planned to be the Lord and Savior not only of Christian parents, but of their children as well. He has promised to be the God of believers and of their children and of their children's children.

SALVATION IS A GROUP EXPERIENCE

This precious truth is rooted in the larger truth that God works through families, for good and for ill. The Bible makes clear on virtually every page that God does not just deal with an individual as an individual; He deals with the individual as part of a family (and as part of a church and of a nation). The biblical way of saying this is that God deals with mankind covenantally. He has made a covenant (or testament) of salvation by which He binds a people to Himself in Christ. In this covenant God promises blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience as His people keep or do not keep the terms of His covenant, namely faith in Him and obedience to His word. Ultimately God's covenant is with Christ and His elect, the true church, but God also deals with families, nations, and church groups based on the pattern of this one over-arching covenant.

Don't misunderstand what we are saying. We are not denying that God deals very personally and individually with people. Jesus is indeed my "personal savior," to use a favorite expression of evangelical Christians, and this is a precious truth. But it is noteworthy that this expression never appears in Scripture! It is instead a reflection of how the modern fixation on the individual has affected the church and its theology. The common biblical language is that Jesus is the savior of "the church," of "His people," of "the saints." Read through the New Testament for yourself and see how many times salvation is spoken about in terms of its corporate, group dimension.

GOD WORKS THROUGH FAMILIES

Let's go to the Bible and see how it consistently expresses the covenantal perspective. At the very beginning this principle was in operation as Adam, serving as mankind's covenant head, sinned and brought the whole race under the curse of death. Jesus, the "last Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45) and the second covenant head of the race, brought mankind back from death to life. The whole human family fell in Adam's sin, and all the elect are saved through the work of Christ. Romans 5 puts it like this: "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous" (v. 19). It is the principle of covenantal solidarity that brought all of mankind under God's curse, and it is this same principle that enables you and me to be saved.

While the covenantal system is evident throughout God's dealings with mankind, we will be focusing on how that system affects families. That the blessings and curses of the covenant flow through family channels over time is evident in the warning given in the context of the Second Commandment: "For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments." Two chapters later the idea is reinforced: "Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments" (7:9).

The story of Noah and the flood illustrates how God works through families. In Genesis 6:8,9 we read, "Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD… Noah was a just man, perfect in his generations. Noah walked with God." For this reason God determined to save Noah. But notice who was saved in the ark. "But I will establish My covenant with you; and you shall go into the ark - you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you" (6:18). Because Noah was a righteous man, his whole family was saved from the wrath of God in the flood.

When God entered into covenant with Abraham we find one of the clearest statements of family solidarity in all of Scripture: "And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you" (Gen. 17:7). When God chose Abraham, He chose his descendents as well. The central covenant promise is that God will be our God and we will be His people (cf. Jer. 31:33; Rev. 21:3). God did not just call an individual, He called a people, and this people is formed in large part through the accumulation of the generations: God is the God of the parents, the children, the grandchildren, and so on "for an everlasting covenant."

This same idea is clearly stated in Isaiah 59:21: "'As for Me,' says the LORD, 'this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants' descendants,' says the LORD, 'from this time and forevermore.'" This is nothing less than a promise that God will bless His people with salvation generation after generation. His salvation will flow through family channels over time "and forevermore."

IN THE NEW TESTAMENT, TOO

Some might question whether this principle of God's working through the physical generations of families is not simply an Old Testament thing that has been superceded by the more spiritual emphasis in the New Testament. In response we must first point out that the Old Testament promises, though including the blessings of material prosperity and the land of Canaan, were very much spiritual in their content. Having God as your God includes the blessings of forgiven sin and the gift of imputed righteousness. It was true for Abraham, the father of faith, about whom we are told, "And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness" (Gen. 15:6). Abraham is the example of what it means to be justified by faith in Christ! (cf. Rom. 4:11,16) Note, too, the wording of the promise in Isaiah 59 above: the promise is that the Holy Spirit will continue upon God's people as evidenced in their changed hearts, which leads to His words being in their mouths. You can't get any more spiritual than that! It is simply false to say that the Old Testament promises were less spiritual than those of the New Testament . On the contrary, the foundational expression of the Old Covenant promise (to Abraham) is the central pattern for New Testament faith and life.

Another evidence that the principle of family solidarity has not been abrogated is that the New Testament, far from distinguishing the covenant with Abraham from the New Covenant, virtually identifies the two. New Testament saints are described as children of Abraham: "those who are of faith are sons of Abraham…. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (Gal. 3:7,29). This suggests a strong continuity of God's plan and of the pattern of His relating to His people. Since God's promises to Abraham and His saints in the Old Testament were "for an everlasting covenant" and "forevermore," we should not be surprised to see this continuity. What would be surprising is if God changed the covenant in mid-course. There is no evidence that He has done this.

The New Testament certainly does speak of a real discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant (e.g., Heb. 8:7,13), but when it does so the reference is always to the Mosaic dispensation. The bloody sacrifices, the Aaronic priesthood, the temple - these have passed away because they have been fulfilled in Christ. But the law of Moses did not nullify the character and promises of the covenant announced to Abraham and fulfilled in the New Testament in Christ. "Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made... And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect" (Gal. 3:16,17). The promise stands, because "if you are Christ's, then you are Abrahams's seed, and heirs according to the promise" (3:29). And, again, what was the central covenant promise? "I will be God to you and to your descendants after you."

In fact, the New Testament is full of evidences that God continues to work through the generations of His people. Peter preached the gospel on the day of Pentecost and concluded by saying that the people should repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Immediately he added, "For the promise is to you and to your children…" (Acts 2:39). What promise? The promise of salvation of which he spoke, evidenced by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This promise is "to you and to your children." Far from signaling some change in God's dispensation, whereby the New Covenant era was to be marked by a new emphasis on individualism, this statement is perfectly consistent with the promise made to Abraham and confirmed so often before: God is the God of the generations of His people. God works his salvation through families. Those Jews who heard Peter, steeped in the Old Testament emphasis on family solidarity in the covenant, would have needed a very clear word that God was abandoning His previous plan to call families to Himself, if indeed He were doing so. They heard instead words that showed that God still intended to be God to them and to their descendants.

This would explain why in every case where an identified head of household is baptized in the New Testament his whole family is baptized with him (cf. Acts 16:13-15, 29-34; 1 Cor. 1:16). Just as Abraham was told to circumcise himself and all his male children, down to eight days old, so we see whole families being baptized in the New Testament as an expression of their solidarity in God's covenant. God told Abraham to circumcise his infant sons, even though circumcision was a sign and seal of being justified by faith (Rom. 4:11). Obviously those infants had not exercised faith, but God showed that He was claiming the whole family as belonging to Him and being subject to His covenant from birth. The same is true under the New Covenant. That's why most of the Christian church through the centuries has understood the biblical pattern to require the baptism of the infant children of believers (though we certainly recognize that many such portions of the church have fallen into apostasy). The point is that God calls families as He extends His covenant in the world, he does not just call individuals.

A striking evidence of the continuance of the covenantal principle as regards the family is found in 1 Corinthians 7:14. The context here is Paul's discussion of what a new believer should do if his or her spouse remains an unbeliever. Should he or she get a divorce? Paul's answer is, No. The reason he gives is as follows: "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy." The believer should not divorce the unbeliever because the unbeliever is "sanctified" ("set apart," the root of the word "holy") by association with the believer. On what basis could Paul say such a thing? Obviously the unbeliever is not a Christian, so the sanctification he writes about is not salvation. But what is it then? The only possible explanation is found in the principle of covenantal solidarity. When God takes hold of one family member, the others come into the special sphere of God's gracious operation, such that, even though they are not believers, they can be described as "sanctified" or set apart from the world. Note, too, that the children of this couple are described as "holy." They, too, are set apart unto God, even though they, too, may not be believers. This is how God works in the covenant: he calls the parents (or just one of them) and claims the children as well. They belong to Him and He will work in them to be their God as He is the God of the parent(s). They don't just belong to him when they believe; they belong to Him in some sense even before there is any faith. That "sense" is the covenantal sense. The only possible explanation for 1 Corinthians 7:14 is that God continues to work through families like He always has. The children become "holy" not by virtue of their faith but by virtue of God's sovereign call.
They are in His covenant from birth. Now, we must stress that they will not be saved apart from personal faith, but their inclusion in the covenant community is a result of God's decision to include them as the children of believers.

COVENANT CHILDREN

To avoid confusion in this matter of children and the covenant it is essential that we grasp the distinction Scripture makes between the inward and the outward covenant. Pay close attention to these words in Romans 2:28-29: "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter…." In other words, "they are not all Israel who are of Israel, nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham…" (Rom. 9:6,7). Even though God commanded that every male child of the descendants of Abraham receive the covenant sign of circumcision, thus placing them all within the covenant family, that did not mean that they all in fact were saved.

It is God's sovereign, eternal choice that determines who is called to Him in salvation. Discussing the difference between the brothers Jacob and Esau, Paul writes, "…(for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls), it was said to [Rebecca], 'The older shall serve the younger.' As it is written, 'Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated'" (Rom. 9:11-13) In other words, even though both Jacob and Esau were born into the covenant family, God had already chosen that one would be among "the children of the promise" (v.8) and the other would not. He "calls" the one to Himself and passes over the other.

Without God's eternal choice in election, without the operation of the Spirit in the heart, without personal faith in God, the physical members of the covenant family were not truly children of God. Outwardly they were in the covenant ; inwardly they were not.

God's purposes operate on two levels simultaneously: the hidden level of His election and of true, inward salvation, and the visible level of His covenant community. We need to heed the words of Deuteronomy 29:29: "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." Who ultimately is saved is among the secret things that belong to God. Our concern is to do what He reveals, including obeying the principle of family solidarity in the covenant. The children of believers are born into the covenant; they are covenant children, by God's choice. Our concern is not who is elect; only God knows that for sure. Our concern is what He reveals, and one thing He reveals clearly is that the children of believers belong to Him and are counted among His people from birth.

GOD'S PROMISE AND OUR RESPONSIBILITY

Knowing that God's purpose is to use the family connection as the ordinary channel of His sovereign grace in the world, the biblical doctrine of eternal election ought to be, not a source of fear or uncertainty, but a source of comfort. The God who chooses who comes to Him for salvation is the God who has also chosen to work through families, drawing the children of believers to Himself. Although for God's hidden purposes He may not call every last one of "a thousand generations" to Himself, He has made clear that ordinarily His sovereign grace and love will flow from parents to children. That should greatly encourage us in our expectation that our children will walk with God and should motivate our faithfulness in the task of raising them for Him.

We are reminded of Joshua's words, "But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24:25). A father can make such an assertion with confidence, not primarily because he has good intentions, but because God has first shown His intention to work in the children. So, far from making us complacent in our child training, the truth of God's covenant purposes should spur us on to faithfulness in that calling. We are encouraged to be faithful because God has first revealed His intention to be faithful to us and to our offspring.

It is vitally important for us to remember that God's sovereign plan to claim our children for Him does not mean that our actions are of no significance. To the contrary, God reveals that His purposes are carried out through the means He has ordained, and when it comes to the salvation of children the chief means is the faithfulness of the parents in raising the children the way God has commanded. Listen to the balance between God's promises, on the one hand, and human responsibility, on the other, in Psalm 103:17-18: "But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear Him, and His righteousness to children's children, to such as keep His covenant, and to those who remember His commandments to do them." God's covenant blessings flow through channels of covenant obedience. It is the height of presumption to believe that God will save my children just because they are born into a Christian family, as if I can just sit back and wait for God to act in their lives. The God who plans to draw my children to Him plans also to use me as the primary means in that drawing process.

An example of how this works can be seen in the life of Timothy. At the beginning of 2 Timothy Paul is thanking God for Timothy and writes of his joy "when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also" (v.5). God worked through the human agency of a godly mother and grandmother to bring Timothy to a true faith in Christ. Having called Lois, God also called Eunice and then Timothy. His grace flowed through the family channel (even though apparently the spouses were not believers).

But how did that grace flow through the generations to Timothy? We gain some insight from 2 Timothy 3:14-15: "But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." We see here the two ingredients of effective child-raising that we have noted before in these pages ("The Father's Heart: God's #1 Priority," Issue 22, and on our web site) namely a loving relationship coupled with godly training. Timothy had a strong relationship with his grandmother and mother (and Paul himself) which gave weight and credence to the things he learned from them ("knowing from whom you have learned them"). The faith is not just taught; it is caught from those who lovingly disciple us. But the content of instruction is also important: Timothy had been taught the Scripture from childhood ("you have known the Holy Scriptures"). This combination of godly instruction and a loving relationship brought about the result of salvation through a genuine faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the normal pattern by which the covenant operates within a family. God's promise of salvation, to be God to the children, is realized as the parents "keep His covenant" and "remember His commandments to do them." His intention to save the children comes to pass as the parents raise them "in the training and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. 6:4). The faith of the parents, and their faithfulness to the covenant, becomes the channel through which God's saving grace flows to the children.

So we can regard Proverbs 22:6 as the promise it appears to be: "Train up a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This verse has suffered much at the hands of modern Bible teachers who try to find some way around its assurance that covenant faithfulness in child-raising brings about positive results. So many Christian parents have lost their children spiritually that they have concluded that this verse cannot mean what it says. But it does indeed mean exactly what it says: if you raise your children God's way, in line with His covenant and commandments, they will stay on that path for life.

Again we must stress that this kind of assurance comes not from the perfection of the parental efforts but from the certainty of the promise of God. Even the most faithful parenting could have no effect on a child's spiritual standing apart from the sovereign and gracious working of God in that child's heart. Paul writes of his spiritual children in Galatians 4:19 where he says, "My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you…." Paul could labor away at training his followers, but only God could see that "Christ is formed" in them. This must be our posture as parents: laboring with all our energy to bring up our children for God, while all the while realizing that it is only as God chooses to invade them by His Spirit and transform their hearts that our training will achieve its desired effect. Our work is useless without the prior work of God, but it is very effective as we work according to His working.

A BALANCED VIEW

Notice how the perspective we have outlined above balances several crucial principles. First, the Bible's insistence on the absolute sovereignty of God is preserved. Salvation is God's work from beginning to end. He took the initiative in eternity past (Eph. 1:4). He accomplished redemption in Christ (Col. 1:13,14). He is applying His redemption in history through the powerful, irresistible work of His Holy Spirit (Jn. 3:5-8). He chooses and draws to Himself those who are being saved (Jn. 6:44) and none that He has chosen will be lost (Jn. 6:37,39). God decides who, when, where, and how to save people.

Second, the Bible's insistence on the absolute necessity of faith is preserved. No one can be saved without being born again (Jn. 3:3). Faith is a fruit of the new heart, and "without faith it is impossible to please [God]" (Heb. 11:6). The only way any man can be justified in God's sight is by faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation (Rom. 3:28). We do not believe that our children are saved because they are born into a Christian family. We believe they are saved because they are born again by the Spirit and trust in Christ as Savior and Lord - by God's sovereign choice in the covenant.

Third, also preserved is the Bible's insistence that God has chosen family bonds as a channel through which He spreads His salvation from generation to generation. This point brings together the first two. The God who sovereignly dispenses salvation according to His own plan has chosen to spread His salvation in large part through the family connection. Since salvation involves a new heart and the resultant faith, God ordinarily creates these in the children of believers as they are brought up in the covenant path. The salvation of our children begins with God's choice, not their choice; but that salvation necessarily involves a personal faith in Christ. This is what the Bible teaches. It is a perversion of biblical truth to teach that children are saved simply by being born into Christian families or by being baptized. It is an equal perversion to teach that these children have no special standing with God until they exercise personal faith in Christ. The children of believers have a living relationship with God from birth by virtue of the covenant. They are children of the covenant, children of the promise.

THE IMPORTANCE OF OUR LABORS

We have seen that God's sovereign, hidden purposes ultimately determine who is saved, but we have also seen that God's ordinary plan is to work His grace through our families. While we are comforted that the Lord has chosen to use parents as instruments of His grace, we are also thereby motivated to be faithful in our calling. We can have no reasonable hope that our children will be saved if we do not fulfill our obligations as covenant parents.

We summarized the obligations of covenant-keeping earlier by saying that believers must trust God and obey His word. If those parents who profess faith in Christ do not have the kind of faith that obeys His revealed will, then the blessings promised by God will not become their possession. So their children may not come to salvation and may not walk with God, but this is not due to the failure of God's promise but to the failure of the parents and/or the children to keep covenant with the faithful God. Covenant breakers experience the curses of the covenant instead of the blessings (Deut. 28:1ff, 15ff).

Hebrews 6 speaks of the relationship of God's promise and our work. The context is an appeal to the readers to "work and labor" and to show "diligence" in "things that accompany salvation" (vv. 9-11). Then the writer concludes, "that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises" (v. 12). God's promises are there for us to inherit, including the promise of salvation for our children, but this inheritance will not be ours apart from the obedient labors of faith.

God's promises are always made to faith; they are not made to unbelief. "That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed" (Rom. 9:8). In other words, God's promise is not some kind of mechanical assurance that every child will be saved. It is rather an assurance that God will be the Savior of every parent and child who keeps covenant with Him by trusting Him and obeying Him. This becomes a strong motivation to Christian parents to be faithful in raising their children for God, and it is a strong source of hope for them that their efforts will bear good fruit.

No parent is faithful enough to merit the blessings of the covenant. The blessings are merited by Christ alone and given to us by grace. There are ample failures in every father and mother of unbelieving children to explain why their children went astray, and when a child does wander from the faith, the parents' first response should be repentance and acknowledgment of their shortcomings. It is only by God's grace that any of our children walk with Him.

But God's grace is vast! "Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more" (Rom. 5:20). As far as it depends on us, we could not have much hope for our children. But God is in the business of overcoming sin and its effects. That's what the gospel is all about. And in His covenant He chooses to bless even the often feeble efforts of His people to obey Him and brings blessing far out of proportion to the measure of our faithfulness.