Teaching Kids About Salvation with the Wordless Book

As parents, we’re often concerned about our children’s safety. Thoughts of the dangers that lurk out in the world motivate us to take extra precautions. You don’t just tell a small child to stay close when walking by a street, you hold their hand tightly, so you know for sure they won’t run into the street and get hit. We know that when our children reach young adulthood they’ll face a whole new set of dangers in this world. Will they fall into sin and be terribly hurt? Or will they follow Jesus and avoid the pain caused by sinful decisions?

Our First Priority is Teaching Kids About Salvation

In Christian homes, it’s easy to get the cart before the horse, so to speak, and neglect teaching kids about salvation. We sometimes put a lot of emphasis on teaching children Christian growth truths, jumping straight into discipleship, when the child may not yet know Jesus as Savior or have the Holy Spirit for guidance. 1 Corinthians 2:14 says, “the natural man does not understand the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him.” This means that the greatest need of the unsaved child is to understand the gospel and choose to accept Christ as Savior and Lord of their life—something that can only happen by teaching kids about salvation. Once the child understands the gospel and receives new life in Christ, it becomes much easier to teach them Christian growth truths to help them grow in that faith.

If you have a Christian home, you or your child might be assuming that they are a child of God. If you don’t remember the time when your child received Christ as their own personal Savior, talk to them soon and guide them through the plan of salvation.

Teaching Kids About Salvation with CEF’s Wordless Book

Child Evangelism Fellowship has great resources to help with teaching kids about salvation and leading them towards a salvation decision. Our favorite tool is the Wordless Book, which uses nothing but colors to help children remember basic concepts while teaching kids about salvation.

The Wordless Book starts with the gold page, which reminds us of God in Heaven—He wants to be your friend now and take you to Heaven for eternity. But there’s a problem represented by the next dark page. It’s our sin, which separates us from a holy God and causes us to walk in darkness. Because God loves us so much, He made a way to be forgiven of our sin, and that one way is represented by the red page; signifying how the Lord Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself on our behalf. It was a free gift that we must choose to receive, signified by the light page, because the Bible says we can be washed clean and walk in the light. Lastly, the green page is all about growth in God’s family and in our own faith.

Now, this was a very simple explanation. For an in-depth training on how to use these colors for teaching kids about salvation, go to cefonline.com/free. The online training helps you explain each concept to the child, teaching kids about salvation using Bible verses and examples, while testing the child’s understanding and conviction as you go through the colors.

Once you learn how to explain the gospel clearly to a child, you can explain it well to adults too. Even if you don’t show them colors, you can go through the colors in your mind as you cover each concept. It also helps you stay on course as people sometimes divert the conversation to nonessentials, or helps you test a person’s understanding systematically, so you know where they are in their understanding of the gospel. It used to be that you could launch right in to talking about Jesus when witnessing, but now, you don’t know if when you’re talking about God, you’re both talking about the same God. You don’t know if the other person accepts the truth about sin or has any conviction of wrongdoing. Covering these basics first is more essential than ever, especially when teaching kids about salvation.

So, whether you’re talking with your own child, to a child whom God has given you the privilege of caring for in some role, or even to an adult, don’t assume anything. In your home, don’t skip this most important first step of teaching kids about salvation; helping your child give his or her life to Jesus before expecting your child to understand and care about Christian living principles. Try as we might to teach our children how to behave well, unless their heart first belongs to Jesus, they’ll never be rightly motivated for successful living. God bless you as you lead others to His saving grace while teaching kids about salvation!