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Teaching my kids about the bloody atonement

Our memory verse this week is 1 Peter 2:24:
"He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed."
As I was working on memorizing it during my prayer time today it occurred to me that I should use this verse to teach my kids about the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Why? Why do I think it's important to teach them about the atonement?
  1. The atonement is one of the central doctrines of Christianity. Paul said, "I resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified."
  2. The tendency in American churches is to get soft on sin and not talk too much about the bloody atonement of Christ.
  3. A full understanding of the atonement will grab their hearts. It will inspire worship. If they understand who God is and why he does what he does then the roots of their faith will sink deep into the soil of God's love and they will bear the fruit of righteousness.

So, here's what I did to start the conversation with my kids as we sat around the breakfast table today:

  1. I read the verse out loud to them.
  2. I asked, "Why did Jesus have to die? Doesn't that seem like an overreaction?"
  3. I told the story of David's sin with Bathsheba and how he murdered Uriah (2 Sam. 11). Then I read about Nathan's confrontation with David (2 Samuel 12:4-6). Then I asked, "Why was David so angry about the stolen lamb? How would you feel if someone stole Otis and ate him?" (Otis is our new puppy.)
  4. I explained that our sense of outrage comes from our innate sense of justice. We were created in the image of God. We're like him. Injustice makes Him angry. It makes us angry. But we have to multiply God's wrath by 1,000 because He is infinitely just and eternally holy. God cannot let sin come near him. He is light and in him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).
  5. So, Jesus death in our place, bearing our sins on the tree heals our wounds. We can come near to God because Jesus' death appeased the wrath of God.

I don't know how much they got it. My son is 13. My youngest daughter is 7. It's hard to teach something as profound as substitutionary atonement in one brief devotional, speaking both the language of an eighth grader and a second grader. But I figure a couple thousand interactions like this one over the decades they are in my house will lay a foundation for a faith that will carry on to the next generations.

I plan to talk more about the ugliness of sin in the days to come.

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