There is one thing, and only one thing, God has given you here on earth that you can bring with you to heaven, and that is your children. Houses, cars, toys, screens, appliances, and everything else will go up in flames on the Last Day (if they don’t suffer destruction sooner). But in the end your children can stand at your side before Jesus, provided they’re Christians. This is why the chief duty of fathers toward their children is to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4), so that the trust we have received from God might not be lost to perdition. An excellent pastor and preacher from the 4th century named John Chrysostom, when preaching on this verse, said, “Do not seek how he will live a long life here, but how he will live a boundless and endless life there. Give him the great things, not the little things” (Homily 21 on Ephesians).
What do you most want your children to have? Our flesh is too easily distracted by the stuff of earth, mostly because it’s right here in front of us, and it’s easy for our minds to jump to things like job, house, spouse, bank account, etc. These things are by no means bad, but they are certainly secondary. Setting earthly distraction aside and thinking as Christians, we all know that the chief thing we want our children to have is faith in Jesus. “By grace you have been saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8). We want our children to believe and thus be saved. It gives me great joy to hear many of you talk this way, to hear the joy that you express in seeing your children receive eternal things.
The Lord has given parents the duty to give their children the eternal treasure of His Word. He said through His servant Moses, “These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Dt. 6:6-7). While parents cannot make this duty someone else’s, they can seek help in doing it, and this is one of the reasons why Mount Hope Lutheran School exists. Sending your children to daily chapel or religion class doesn’t take the place of going to church together as a family or reading the Scriptures and praying at home, but it’s a wonderful supplement and good for our children’s faith. Theological discussions abound in classes like literature, history, and science. Children learn to sing the faith in choir and memorize Scripture and hymnody for their recitations, training their minds to hold onto the Word of God. Studies like math and logic train our children’s reason so that they draw good distinctions and conclusions, learn to reason rightly, and are not taken captive by bad arguments.
In addition to faith in Christ, we also want our children to love their neighbor and be serviceable to him. These same studies that serve faith also serve love as children learn to live for their neighbor and not themselves. Commenting on the fruits of a good Christian upbringing, Chrysostom writes, “And if you want to know, he will be a more serviceable man even in the world itself… For among many healthy people, the healthy man will escape notice. But among many sick people, when one is healthy, the report will be spread quickly, and into the royal ears, and he will set him over many nations. Therefore, knowing these things, bring up your children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.” We want our children to love and serve their neighbor, we desire help in teaching them to do this, and that is the other reason why Mount Hope Lutheran School exists.
Faith and love are the two goals of the Christian life. To read more on this topic, see the article on the school website entitled “The Goal of Education Part II: Fides et Caritas.”
In Christ,
Pastor Richard
