Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, Jesus

BELIEVE

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” (NASB)

Children learn a lot. Children learn that two plus two is four, four plus four is eight and so on. Children learn that the color blue is blue and green is green. Children learn to capitalize the first letter in a sentence and to capitalize the first letter in someone’s name. They learn the difference between a mammal and an amphibian. And the majority of time these lessons are taught by just a handful of adults that are a part of a child’s life. So children begin to trust these adults for the most part (and by the way this is a huge responsibility). So when one of the significant adults in a child’s life tells them they need to “believe” in Jesus, that He is the Son of God, this is easy for them to accept. After all the significant adult was right about two plus two equaling four, so they must be right about Jesus being the Son of God.

So we simply ask a child to “believe” in Jesus, and when that child says they “believe” in Jesus then celebration breaks out and we declare another in the Kingdom. This is another reason our churches are full of adults who remember a time in their life they started “believing” in Jesus as a child, maybe shortly after they stopped “believing” in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. And these adults are lost, because an acknowledgement of Jesus does not necessarily result in salvation. What does result in salvation is when you trust Jesus.

Children cannot fully grasp the meaning of John 3:16 without careful explanation of what it means to believe. The Greek word that we have translated as believe is pisteuo, which in the NASB translation is used 93 times in the Gospel of John. Most recognized is the occurrence in John 3:16. Many people claiming to be a follower of Christ are making their claim based on hearing this one verse and maybe even intellectually acknowledging the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. However it means more than just intellectual assent to a fact; pisteuo means entrust. According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, pisteuo means to believe and entrust. Entrust as defined by Webster’s is “to turn over for safe keeping”. Now that sounds more like Biblical Salvation, turning your life over to Jesus Christ for safekeeping. Not always easy and not always what we see as safe, but in His hands we are safe even though we are among powers that are against us. Read Psalm 3.

   

So try this; read the entire Gospel of John and each time you see believe, read it as trust. “For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever trusts in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life”. We will follow Jesus when we trust Jesus. So why not tell our children to trust Jesus? Don’t think we can “slide” them in the Kingdom with some quick “yes I believe”. Their belief in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy was short lived, and without trust their belief in Jesus may be short lived.