Vacation Bible School (VBS) was always the best week of the summer when I was growing up. Five days of skits, sports, singing, crafts, and a well-arrayed snack table—what more could a kid want? Every year revolved around some theme of Christian living (e.g. running the race, being prepared for the return of the King, etc.) and we added pins and stickers to our crowns or sashes for every lesson we learned. One notable year, WWJD (“What Would Jesus Do”) bracelets appeared, which summarized the spirit of what many VBS programs try to teach: how to live like Christ.
But as my friends and neighbors from those VBS days grew up, many of us found that our well-intentioned VBS lesson plans left us feeling discouraged and disenchanted by our failures and by the failures of those in the family of faith. Some of us even walked away from the same churches that had once ushered them in for summer Bible schools. If no one was doing what Jesus would do, why stay?
Living like Christ is a biblical charge and, indeed, all of humanity is responsible for keeping the law of God (Rom. 1:18–20, 32). We know that, for believers, God’s Holy Spirit works in us to conform us to this image of Christ (Rom. 8:26–29), even though it will never be a perfect, completed image this side of eternity. Even with new hearts, we will wrestle with our sinful flesh our entire lives (Rom. 7). For that reason, no Christian—no matter how old or how mature in their faith—outgrows the basics of the gospel of profound grace.
But when kids show up at VBS, sometimes that gospel message gets lost. As children show up for your church’s VBS programs this summer, here are three important things to teach them about salvation and the Christian life.
Christ’s Work Is First
Too often, we assume that kids who grow up in the church already understand the story of salvation. They’ve been hearing about Jesus since their earliest Sunday school class and they can recite Psalm 23 from memory or sing “Jesus Loves Me.” Surely they know the gospel!
And yet, sometimes, growing up in a church, it’s easy to think your job as a Christian kid is just to be good, try harder, and be better. For many of us, Christ’s perfect life and sacrifice was mostly a model to follow in order to please our parents, avoid hard consequences, and “be good Christians.”
What the Bible tells us is far different.
Kids need to understand that not one of us is righteous (Rom. 3:11)—not our parents or our pastors or our Sunday school teachers—but rather, we all need the work of Christ for our salvation. Christ’s work isn’t something we grow out of; we don’t “level up” from it as we become adults. All Christians will continue to struggle with sin (Rom. 7:19).
It’s essential to help children grasp this tension, that although we “have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Rom. 7:4), that fruit won’t save us. It is the belonging to Christ that saves us.
Christ’s work comes first, and it is that work which frees us from the power of sin and allows us to pursue good works. His work is the foundation of our own growth in godliness and the complete basis for our hope of eternal life.
Christ’s Work Is Final
Paul describes the dichotomy of the Christian life well: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Rom. 7:24–25).
Growing up in church often means knowing exactly what kind of good behavior is expected of you…and still failing to do it. Adults know this well—how convicted we can be to put away sin and how often our sinful flesh wins out, time and time again. If this cycle of sin and the slow progress of sanctification is disheartening for mature Christians, imagine how it must be for young people still learning to walk in faith.
It’s important that kids are taught early on that Christ’s work is both for them and for good. It is finished. It is final and complete and needs nothing added to it. The writer to the Hebrews explains:
For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.— Hebrews 7:26–27
Our own failures will not shake the foundations of our hope because it is Christ’s perfect obedience in life and in death that has merited our salvation, and his resurrection from the dead has sealed our eternal life (1 Cor. 15:20–22). For those who have put their trust in that work, no matter how fragile and failing your own good works, Christ will “present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24).
Christ’s Work Is For Them
Both the children who always find themselves wrangling their own sin and the children who pride themselves on their good behavior need to know that Christ’s work is for them.
Like Jonah, Jacob, Judah, Peter and so many others in the Bible, we will have moments where we find ourselves running from the Lord, forgetting his promises, doubting his plans, and denying his name. But, like the Prodigal Son’s father, God will welcome us home at every turn of repentance, running down the road to meet us with open arms. God’s mercy is not contingent on our own righteousness.
So, too, for the Pharisee, the Rich Young Ruler, and the Prodigal Son’s older brother—they needed Christ’s work as well. Like them, our laurels will not earn us a seat in glory. Our efforts provide no peace of mind—only continual striving.
When we teach our children only the sin-and-consequence message of Scripture, or the What-Would-Jesus-Do message, without the climax of the indescribable joy of assurance based on what Jesus did, we run the risk of teaching them the wrong thing. We run the risk of teaching them that Christ’s work is for those who don’t know the Bible yet, but you need to be better. We run the risk of undermining the magnitude of their sin and ours, and diminishing the depth of love and mercy found in Christ’s sacrifice.
Unsurprisingly, these are truths all of us need to hear—VBS students and teachers, alike! This is the heart of our faith and we all need to be reassured by this promise of grace, again and again. The most important thing to teach kids at VBS is also the most important thing to hear in church on Sunday and in our homes and Bible studies: that we are saved by the mercy and power of the Almighty, and to that holy God, “our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen” (Jude 25).