How to Explain Salvation to a Child: Stories, Words and Verses

Tell it as a simple story. God made us and loves us. We have all done wrong, and wrong pulls us away from him. Jesus died and rose again to forgive us. God offers this as a gift, and we receive it by trusting him. Short words, a story Jesus told and your own faith are enough to begin.

Faith has often been handed on this way, long before a child could explain it. Paul reminded the young pastor Timothy of “the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice” (2 Timothy 1:5), and of how “from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). The good news reached Timothy at home, from a mother and a grandmother. It can reach our children there too.

Start with God’s love, because everything else rests on it. A young child can hold one sentence: God made you, and he loves you more than anyone ever could. Scripture puts it the same way. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). And love comes from him first: “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

Then speak honestly about sin. Children already know what it is to grab, to lie, to hit, to want their own way. We can tell them that God has a name for this, and that it is true of every one of us, parents included: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Sin hurts other people, and it puts a wall between us and God.

Then tell them what Jesus did. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Commendeth is old English for shows. He did not wait for us to be good first. He died on the cross to take our wrongs away, and on the third day he rose again. Paul calls this the news that comes “first of all”: “how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4).

Last, tell them it is a gift. Children understand presents better than anyone. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). We cannot earn a gift. We can only say thank you and take it. Saying yes to Jesus means trusting him and following him: “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12).

The stories Jesus told in Luke 15 are made for this. A shepherd has a hundred sheep and loses one, and he will not rest until he finds it: “And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:5). A child can picture being carried home. Then comes the son who ran away and wasted everything, and the father who watched the road for him: “But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). The son had a speech ready about being unworthy. The father hardly let him finish before he called for a robe, a ring and a feast.

Ask your child who the shepherd is, and who the sheep is. Let them find Jesus in the story. He told us himself: “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep” (John 10:11), and “the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). These stories also answer any fear that God is waiting to be angry. In Jesus’ story the father runs.

Older children can begin to see that the whole Bible is one story, and that Jesus is at the centre of it. You can tell it in a few evenings:

1. God made the world, and it was good: “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).
2. The first people turned from God and hid from him. God came looking for them and called, “Where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9).
3. God made promises to Abraham, rescued his people from Egypt through Moses, and gave them a king in David, and the prophets kept saying a Saviour would come.
4. Jesus came. He healed and taught, died on the cross for our sins, and rose from the dead.
5. He sent the Holy Spirit and gathered his church, and he calls every family into it.
6. One day he will make everything new: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying” (Revelation 21:4).

A good storybook Bible helps here. The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones, first published in 2007, tells 21 stories from the Old Testament and 23 from the New, and its publisher describes it as introducing children to God’s story “and the Savior at the center of that story.” Reading such a book aloud at bedtime does what Moses asked of Israel’s parents: “thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deuteronomy 6:7).

Sin is going our own way instead of God’s way. Isaiah says it in words a child can repeat: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Isaiah 53:6). The same verse ends with the good news: “and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” It is wise to tell the two halves together, so a child never hears about sin without hearing about Jesus.

Original sin is harder, and the churches explain it in different words. Paul teaches that “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls original sin “a sin ‘contracted’ and not ‘committed’ – a state and not an act” (paragraph 404), and says it “does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants” (paragraph 405). The Orthodox Church in America teaches that “while everyone bears the consequences of the first sin, the foremost of which is death, only Adam and Eve are guilty of that sin.” The Southern Baptists’ Baptist Faith and Message says that Adam’s “posterity inherit a nature and an environment inclined toward sin.”

For a child, all of these can begin with the same simple picture. Since the first people turned away from God, every one of us is born into a world where going wrong is easy, and we find a pull toward wrong inside ourselves too. That is why we all need Jesus, and why he came for all of us.

Gently, and with the ending in sight. Children can hear that Jesus died on a cross; they hear about death in other places too. What they need is to hear why he died, for love of us, and that the story did not stop there. Begin, if you like, at the empty tomb, where the angel’s first words to the women were “Fear not ye.” Then: “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay” (Matthew 28:5–6).

Easter also answers a question children often ask, about grandparents who have died and about themselves. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Because he is alive, death is not the end for those who belong to him.

Scripture sets no age. When parents brought “infants” to Jesus and his disciples tried to send them away, he said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:15–16). In the King James Bible, suffer here means let: let the little children come. Then he turned it around on the grown-ups: “Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” (Luke 18:17).

The churches welcome children in different ways, so begin with your own church’s practice.

If your family is Catholic, your child was most likely baptized as a baby, and your part is to help that grace grow: “for the grace of Baptism to unfold, the parents’ help is important” (Catechism, paragraph 1255). At about seven, the age at which the Church’s law presumes “the use of reason” (canon 97), you prepare your child for first confession and first Holy Communion (canon 914).

If your family is Orthodox, your child was baptized, anointed with chrism and given Holy Communion as an infant, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America expects “every baptized and confirmed Orthodox adult, child and infant” to receive Communion often. Your part is the one it gives all parents: to “provide them with spiritual guidance.” Lutheran and Presbyterian churches also baptize infants (Augsburg Confession, Article IX; Westminster Confession, chapter 28), and parents there teach a child who already belongs to the church.

If your family is Baptist, or belongs to a church like it, you will wait for your child’s own faith before baptism, because “Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer” (Baptist Faith and Message, Article VII). Many evangelicals speak of an “age of accountability.” GotQuestions.org, an evangelical ministry, notes that “the Bible does not directly address an age of accountability,” and that the age at which a child can choose Christ “likely varies from child to child.” So you watch for a child who understands and wants to follow Jesus. You can read more in how Catholics and evangelicals differ on baptism and being born again.

What about children who die young?

This question needs a gentle answer. When David’s infant son died, David said, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23), and many Christians have taken comfort from those words. The Catechism says that for children who have died without Baptism “the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God,” and that Jesus’ tenderness toward children allows us “to hope that there is a way of salvation” for them (paragraph 1261). Parents grieving a child can find prayers in prayers for the loss of a child.

Many evangelical families do, and a child’s prayer of faith can be the start of a lifelong walk with Jesus. Paul gives the heart of it: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9). If your child asks to pray, pray with them, in their own words or with a simple prayer. There are some in salvation prayers for kids. Catholic families pray with their children too, and prepare them for first confession and first Communion at about seven. Orthodox children already receive Communion from their baptism, and their parents teach them to pray at home and in church.

What matters most is that the prayer is the child’s own. Children want to please us, and some will say whatever we hope to hear. So let the question come from them. Never use fear of hell to hurry a decision, and never treat one prayer as the end of the conversation. Faith that begins at five keeps growing at fifteen.

Listen for their own words. A child who can tell you, simply and without prompting, that Jesus died for their sins and rose again, and that they trust him, has understood a great deal. Look too for small signs of a living faith: questions about God, prayers they make up themselves, sorrow when they have hurt someone, and a wish to obey that comes from love more than fear.

Do not expect a finished believer. Even Jesus “increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man” (Luke 2:52). We plant and water, and the growth is God’s: “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

Most often, they think it depends on being good. Children live with star charts and report cards, so it is natural to think heaven works the same way. Go back, again and again, to the gift: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us” (Titus 3:5).

Some children fear that one bad day will make God stop loving them. Give them Paul’s promise that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39), and the promise of forgiveness for every day: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Others think Jesus is for grown-ups, or for very good people. Remind them who he took in his arms. And some think that once they have prayed, how they live does not matter. Salvation is the start of a friendship with Jesus, and friends spend time together and listen to each other.

Tell them heaven is being with Jesus. He said so himself: “In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:2–3). A child who has a room at home understands a room prepared for them. Eternal life begins now, in knowing Jesus, and it does not end. When they ask what heaven is like, we can say honestly that we do not know everything, but we know who will be there, and that he will wipe away every tear.

None of this needs a perfect lesson. It needs a parent who believes it, telling it again at the table, in the car, and at the edge of the bed. And it needs Jesus, who has always welcomed children, as he did when his disciples tried to send them away: “And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:16).

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