Christian Education
Children are a gift from God to their parents
When considering the education of our children, an appropriate question to begin with is “To whom do children belong?” The Bible says that children belong to God, and are given by Him to their parents 1.
Education of children is the responsibility of parents
With the gift of children comes the great responsibility to bring them up and to educate them. In particular, fathers are exhorted to bring their children up in the training and instruction of the Lord 2. The truth that “in Jesus Christ all things hold together” 3 should underpin all aspects of the education of children provided by Christian parents.
Children should have godly teachers
The Bible says that parents are responsible for the education of their children. However, in the modern world, few parents have the time or expertise to educate their children themselves and may appropriately delegate this task to a Christian School, for example. The teachers, to whom parents delegate their children’s education, must have absorbed God’s truth themselves in order to truly educate children in godliness.
Christian education should be a part of any vibrant Christian community concerned with passing the truth onto the next generation. We live today in a society saturated with ungodly thinking and all its consequences. Our children will inevitably be affected by ungodly thinking unless a strong stand is made to the contrary. “As a man thinks so is he” 4 .
The aim of Christian education is to train children in God’s Word so that when they are older they will not depart from it 5, and, as Psalm 119 says, they will be able to govern themselves, be wiser than their enemies, have more insight than their teachers, understand more than the aged and keep themselves from every evil path 6.
Psalm 127:3; Genesis 33:5; Isaiah 8:18