February 27, 2014February 15, 2019 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Parenting

The Hearts Of The Young Restless, And Unredeemed

The Woowh, Woowh, Woowh of our first child’s heartbeat was by far one of the most glorious sounds to ever reach my ears. Only moments before the tech found my sons’ heart, my wife and I had been sitting nervously in the Doctor’s office afraid that we might be on our way to becoming America’s next goofiest couple. After all, who misreads a pregnancy test? But when we saw our son’s little jellybean shape appear on the ultrasound screen accompanied by a strong heart beat our faces burst into uncontrollable smiles. We were having a baby!

The Nature Of Unredeemed Hearts

Just as the recognition of our son’s little heartbeat moved us quickly from insaneville to the corner of happy and reasonable, understanding a child’s spiritual state at conception is foundational to all that follows. Before we can discuss salvation or the beauties of baptism with our grade schoolers, we have to understand what our little wiggle worms need to be saved from. Is a child graced with a morally neutral heart, needing spiritual guidance; or is our little gal given a mostly maladjusted heart that she can overcome with gifted spiritual actions; or did our cute guy inherit a desperately corrupt heart from which he cannot escape apart from the work Christ through the Holy Spirit? According to the Bible, only the last phrase accurately describes the hearts of those who process the glorious social freedom to run about in diapers. “The Bible teaches that children are not good by nature; they are not a ‘blank slate’…they are genetically predisposed to be bad because every child is born with original sin and a rebellious nature” (Fitzpatrick, Newheiser, & Hendrickson, p. 29). Let’s see how this plays out in Romans 5.

Babies Are Sinners

According to Romans 5:12, every human being enters the world infected by sin. Way back in Genesis 2, Adam was chosen by God to represent humanity. He was blessed with the ability to have a perfect relationship with God. But enticed by the snake, Adam irrationally chose to depart from God’s love. And the moment the fruit hit his lips, Adam radically altered the nature of humanity. He now had a selfishness, prideful, and generally sinful nature. Consequently, all of Adam’s descendants including the sweet baby cooing on her mommy’s quilt have the vile stain of sin on their hearts (Ps. 58:3). As Wayne Grudem notes, “Even before birth children have a guilty standing before God (p. 499)”. We know that this weighty statement is true because all people suffer from sin’s greatest side effect, death. As Paul writes in the next chapter, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a). Sinners die.

Why Some Say Babies Are Neutral

Now some object to the above statements. They question how babies and infants can be charged with sin if they did not willfully commit an act or recognize what they were doing when they did. For example, the miscarried child never cheated on its spouse or even stole a cookie. And the infant blessed with a short life span never realized that that slapping mommy at bath time violated the fifth commandment. Consequently, some Christians claim that babies are naturally innocent and become sinners with age and action.

Babies Receive Judgment

These proponents are correct to a degree. The Bible teaches that babies and fully grown adults are only held responsible for their actions. But these arguments do not overcome the harsh, practical reality of original sin. Babies die. My son’s heart stopped beating at 2:49 pm on July 16, 2013 only seventeen weeks after our initial visit. The Bible clearly states that my son did not die for my sins or for the sins of my wife (Ez. 18:19-20). He died nestled softly in my arms because he was born with corrupt nature. The apostle Paul noted in Romans 5 that “death reigned…even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam.” My son did not willfully sin as Adam did by defying the words of God. But his life was still ruled by sin. The lifeless tombstone that sits above my baby’s body is proof positive that his nature was corrupt and in need of a redeemer. Just as his father Adam, my precious son died.

All Babies Go To Heaven

Yet, I have hope. Even though my son was born a sinner like his dad (Psalm 51), we serve a God who conquered death through the cross! “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23b). “Look at yourself in Adam; though you had done nothing you were declared a sinner. Look at yourself in Christ; and see that you have done nothing, you are declared righteous” (Stott, p. 157). This is the gracious hope of every believer: Jesus freely saves! And, our heavenly father greatly delights in bestowing the gift of salvation upon little boys who only grow to be a lovable twelve inches long! All throughout scripture, we find evidence of God saving innocents, those who lack the mental faculties to worship their creator. In Job 3:11-19, we learn that by God’s grace innocents escape the suffering of this world and inherit the glories of heaven. In the New Testament, Jesus reaffirmed the presence of children in heaven, making little ones the centerpiece of several analogies (Mark 9:33-37, Mat. 19:14). As John MacArthur writes, “If children are not readily and fully received into the kingdom of heaven, the analogy to spiritual conversion would be a poor one” (MacArthur, p. 59). And, David famously comforts all parents with jellybean size holes in their hearts proclaiming, “I shall go to him” (2 Sam 12:23). “We cannot say that babies die and go to heaven because they are ‘sinless.’ Rather, babies go to heaven because God is gracious” (p. 72). As the above scripture passages make clear, God saves babies. He has redeemed my son and all innocent children from the curse of Adam by his free gift of salvation. And this same free gift of salvation is available to all who call upon the name of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Grudem writes, God saves babies and all other people, “entirely on the basis of Christ’s redemptive work and regeneration by the Holy Spirit within them” (Grudem, p. 300).

Age Of Accountability

Before we go on, let’s quickly address the age of accountability. I believe the age of accountability to be as elastic as a pair of maternity pants. I’ve known seven-year-olds that legitimately understand salvation and choose to reject or accept it. I’ve seen five-year-olds that don’t. And, I’ve been blessed to minister to forty-year-olds who may never have the SalvationSeries_BaptismClassforParents_Session1 mental capacity to repent and accept Jesus as Savior. I think John MacArthur summaries the position well writing, “All children who die before they reach a state of moral awareness and culpability in which they understand their own sin and corruption – so that their sins are deliberate – are graciously saved eternally by God through the work of Jesus Christ” (MacArthur, p. 89).

Treat Your Children As Sinners

How do we respond to the news that our children enter the world with evil hearts (Gen 8:21)? We respond by calling our children to repent of their sins and to believe in the gospel. We can do so without fearing that we will somehow bump our children off the corner of spiritual neutrality into fire of damnation. As noted earlier, children are born sinners. As J.D. Geear writes, “You didn’t start to sin because you hung around the wrong crowd; you were the wrong crowd” (p.29) They already stand in condemnation and in need of a savior. All of us are ultimately children of Adam. Just ask any parent harboring a member of the terrible two’s gang. They will happily affirm their child’s capacity to sin. Exposing children to truth does not change their initial status before God. Preaching the gospel to our children is a blessing and kindness (Rom. 10:15). All children even the ‘innocents,’ come to salvation through the word of God (I believe babies encounter the risen word of Christ). The best and most loving thing we can do for little sinners is to expose them to the word of God, prayerfully asking the Holy Spirit replace our baby’s heart of stone with a heart of flesh.

Next Week

During the next few weeks, we will look at how God transforms hearts and discuss how parents are supposed to preach the gospel to their children.

Recommended Resources

Fitzpatrick, E., Newheiser, J., & Hendrickson, D. L. (2001). When Good Kids Make Bad Choices. Eugene: Harvest House Publishers .

Geear, J.D. (2013) Stop Asking Jesus Into Your Heart: How to Know For Sure You Are Saved. Nashville: B&H Publishing.

Grudem, W. (1994). Systematic Theology . Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House .

MacArthur, J. (2003). Safe in The Arms Of God . Nashville: Thomas Nelson. Stott, J. R. (1994).

The Message of Romans. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

February 20, 2014July 8, 2014 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Parenting

Faith Detectors: How To Know Your Child Is A Christian

Nothing is more exciting; on the other hand, perhaps, nothing is scarier. Your intelligent, talkative seven-year-old child just bounded downstairs and said, “I want to be a Christian.” Your heart leapt for joy! You energetically reviewed the gospel, talking about sin, the cross, and eternal life. You listened to your child happily agree with your weighty, twitter sized message. You had knelt down together and then, heard your child softly pray for Jesus to come into his or her heart. But as your precious little soul trots happily back off bed, doubts begin to pummel your brain like the onslaught of unending punches that seem to find Sylvester Stallone at the end of every Rocky movie ever made.

False Professions

If you are anything like me, you grew up making false professions of faith or knowing children who did. Being in church my whole life, I knew I should be a Christian. The combination of perceived adult expectations, the religious emotionalism of Charles Finney, and my childhood fear of fire gave my heart a passionate desire to escape judgment through various versions of the sinner’s prayer. Quite naturally, I made several of these professions of faith public, earning a trophy and confirmation class certificate in the process. By all human standards, I deserved the title “Christian” years before I actually repented. My childhood love for God consisted of nothing more than counting hymn verses (fewer verses or shorter stanza meant church would get out 30-60 sec earlier), thinking about miniature toy soldiers, and longing for baseball.

How Do We Know

And you wondering, “Is our child is going to be like Peter?” Did we make a disciple or child of perdition twice over, by giving this little smiling face a false sense of security? How do we encourage our child’s expression of faith without creating a miniature Pharisee? What do we do? In my experience as a child, seminary student, and pastor, the typical answer to these and similar questions is: plop the child in the minivan, drive to church, place the child in your pastor’s office, shut the door, and wait for white or grey smoke to appear.

No Quick Answers

Though I am (and I think most pastors would be) excited to and want to meet with children and/or their parents, I must admit that I cannot fully discern the hearts of little men and women. I sadly do not have a radiation scanner that tells me how many Holy Spirit particles are in your child’s heart. That would make ministry so much easier. “See there, the count is fifty; you’ll know you’ll be seeing this guy in heaven for sure.”

Like the parents I’ve meet with, I can only judge a child by his or her spiritual fruit. And assessing the fruit of a child’s faith is a tricky task. Think back to the parable of the soils (Mathew 13). Now, we can typically pick out the child living in the harden soil. He talks about how Jesus, Peter Pan and Spiderman fly around together in Gotham City or she rebelliously smarts about how much she hates church.

But discerning if your child’s heart resides in the rocky, weedy or good soil of religiousity is not so easy. Because our little men and women have yet to win unfiltered access to transportation, communication, or disposable income, they lack the tools generally needed to express the love for the world. Consequently, children may reside for years untapped by the pressures of persecution and worldliness. All the while, all three types of children can get excited about baptism, about giving to missions, or about winning Bible Drill awards. But only the true heart rooted in God’s saving grace will withstand the pressures of persecution and lawlessness that appear in high school, college, and the business world. “Faith that fade, no matter how luscious its first fruits is not saving faith” (Geear, p.79). Only little souls nourished by Christ produce a life of repentance characterized by love, hatred of sin, and boasting in God. This fruit is what we must seek and affirm in our child’s life.

Parents Rule

Honestly, the person best positioned to discover the fruit of your child’s repentance is not me. It’s you, the child’s parents (provided you are believers). You see your child’s heart every day and night. You are best positioned to expose your child to truth through words and actions. And, you have the best viewpoint from which to observe whether or not your child is daily responding to truth.

Most any child can be polite for thirty minutes in a pastor’s office or before a confirmation board. With enough inadvertent coaching (i.e. Sunday school classes, etc.) most any child seven or above can accurately articulate the gospel. At the very least, I could. But no child can cover up a corrupt heart day in and day out. Just ask my little sister! For this reason and many others, God has charged parents to care for their child’s spiritual health through training, evangelism, and discipleship (Deut. 6:7; Eph. 6:4;Col. 3:21)

What To Do

The best thing I or another pastor can do for parents striving to determine the faith and spiritual understanding of their child is to equip parents for their divinely inspired mission. Every time I sit down with children and/or their parents, I hope to encourage and support parents in this awesome task. Starting next week, I want to move my office briefly to the web and launch a “Baptism Class for Parents” if you will. I invite you to join with me as we will tackle the topics listed below in an effort help us all better understand how to minister to young hearts sensitive to the gospel:

February 13, 2014July 8, 2014 Peter Witkowski Discipleship, Parenting

From Sochi to Salvation: A Brief Theology For The Parents of Sport’s Nation

The screaming, jumping, whooshing, waving, and excitement of the Olympics is here. And as we click on T.V. screens to see which flips, spins and twists were medal worthy, we also are treated to fascinating personal interest stories. Whether they are covering a petite figure skater or a rough snowboarder, all of the interviews reveal that a spot on the medal podium requires a lifetime of personal and familial sacrifice. As Christians, we are often awed by these athletes’ devotion and wowed by their success. Naturally wanting our children to succeed, we start to wonder if we should send our five-year-old girl off to Michigan to practice figure skating or sign up our ten-year-old son for college football camps in Alabama. What should Christian parents do?

Go Sports Go

Before we zing off to the slopes, the beach, or the practice field, we first need to ask, “Do Christians belong in sports?” I believe the answer is a resounding yes! God has made us physical creatures. He has given us the ability to run, jump, and create fun competitions. As Exodus 28:3, Exodus 35:35, and I Kings 7:14 make clear, all human skills are gifts from God. Even the ability to ski down a mountain or to dribble a soccer ball is a present from our creator. Moreover, sports provide us with the opportunity to relax, fellowship, and responsibly care for our bodies. Employing several sporting analogies, the apostle Paul confirmed that “bodily training is of some value (I Timothy 4:8).” We can and should encourage our children to participate in sports. We and our children belong in sports’ nation.

The True Value of Sports

Yet as C.J. Mahaneny noted, “as soon as you introduce the human heart, things get complicated” (Mahaney 2010, 9). We can’t blindly encourage our kids to just “do it” every time the practice field opens. We need to realize that sports are only valuable when done to the glory of God. When we and our children use sports as an opportunity to encourage others, to accept correction, to serve our friends, to praise God, and to share the story of salvation, sports’ nation is a good thing (I Cor. 10:13).

But, we cannot value sports’ nation simply for the sake of sports. If we do, sports’ nation become more dangerous than facing Barry Bonds in the bottom of the ninth inning with the base loaded and no outs. Nothing created, not even the cute, little guy wearing a T-ball jersey two sizes too big, should take the place of Christ. If we covet success and fame for our children, we transform sports into an Idol. And, covetousness is idolatry (Col. 3:5). If we inflate the value of sports, “Worship is happening – on ESPN and in our hearts” (Mahaney 2010, 40).

Admittedly, we cannot keep little, prideful hearts from boasting in thirty mile-per hour fastballs and three inch verticals. We cannot redeem our miniature superstars (Ez. 18:20). But we can point our children to Christ through our actions! Sports played for the glory of god are immensely valuable.

Breaking God’s Rules

Now, it’s time for the practical side of things. If we fail to follow God’s rules and place our children’s sports’ career above the things of God, our lives will show it. As Paul David Tripp notes, “You are always attaching your inner hope and contentment to something, and when you do, those things take on life-shaping value” (Tripp 2012, 103). Family devotions will be replaced with never ending practices. Church attendance will be regularly bumped off the calendar by weekend tournaments. And, our bank accounts will see giving withdraws redirected to season tickets, uniforms, and that all important swag. Words of gracious love spoken to our children will be replaced with criticism, rants against officials, and complaints about coaches. By virtue of our actions, we will teach our children that the gods of sports’ nation will give them, “what the God the Bible cannot give – success by worldly standards” (Baucham 2007, 38). We will prepare our children to gain their lives only to lose them. And at the end of the day, we cannot be surprised to see our children mature into adults who place the world before Christ. As Voddie Baucham warns, “We cannot expect our children to rise above our example” (Baucham 2007, 40).

Playing God’s Way

For our children’s sports’ activities to glorify God, we must place them comfortably behind Christ, our marriage, and our family. We are children of the king, designed to worship Christ. The prize we should most value and most want for our children is the one consisting of eternal glory (I Tim. 4:8). It is the prize that requires one to lose his life to gain it (John 12:25). It’s the prize that our children can get only through hearing the word of God preached and the seeing the word of God lived out faithfully by their parents and other believers (Deut. 6). Such instruction is far better than any scholarship, trophy, or medal.

Below, I’ve list a few practically ways we can use sports to point are children to Christ. The following is taken mostly from C.J. Mahaney’s book Don’t Waste Your Sports:

Celebrate godliness. We should praise our children for making it to the podium and for hitting a homerun, but we should praise their humility, diligence, and self-control even more.
Prize your family. If your children’s gymnastics event or if watching the Olympic snowboard competitions dominate your family life, cut back on your sports. Skip a practice, turn off the T.V. and spend time studying the word and/or praying together as a family or take your wife on a date.
Guide Your Speech. Speak truth in love. Strive to only say things that support, encourage, and build up your children, the coaches, and the officials. God is sovereign even over peewee football. Are words should reflect our faith in his control.
Love your local church. Missing a Sunday morning or two “doesn’t make you guilty of idolatry” as C.J. points out (Mahaney 2010, 41). But, we can still help our children understand that God comes first. When events fall on Sunday, we can miss practice, arrive late, or visit other Bible believing churches.
Train for life. Use your children’s sporting failures and successes as opportunities to teach them about their hearts and about the character of the one true God.

Game On

Sports are a blessing. For the sake of for disclosure, I must confess that I am sports’ enthusiast. I played baseball until my sophomore year of college. My office is decorated with mini football helmets. I celebrated the coming of my first son by purchasing Chicago Cubs onesie. I even find aspects of Olympic curling to be interesting. As my wife can attest, I am a sports’ junky.

But for all of its benefits and life lessons, sports’ nation will never save. Red Sox Nation, Wrigley Field, and Sochi will all burn. If you start place sports’ nation behind your marriage, family, and church, your child may slide from starter to sub. But isn’t eternal life worth the earthly cost? Is there anything that we or our children sacrifice on earth that will not be returned a thousand times over in heaven? Let’s encourage our children to use their athletic ability to glorify their creator. Let’s point them to salvation!