Start Early: Teaching Your Kids the 10 Commandments

Three Sources

If you look at the history of the church, there have been three items that have formed the backbone of the church’s catechesis (which is just a fancy word for discipleship): the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Many of the Reformation Confessions or catecheses are based on those three things from a variety of different traditions.

For thousands of years, Christians thought, What do we do to help kids and new Christians learn about the faith? And they instinctively went to three things: the Apostles Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments.

We need to put obedience into the context of a response of gratitude to God who sent his son for sinners like us.

It’s really embarrassing if in our day we think we don’t need those things anymore and that we’ve come up with better ways. We absolutely ought to be teaching our children the Ten Commandments. They ought to memorize them. You may say, Well, you know, memorization doesn’t make for godly Christians. But it’s a start. You want to hide the word in your heart. Of course, the end goal is not just to recite the Bible—but that’s the starting place.

Teaching What and Why

I think Christian education programs, teachers in Christian schools, and parents ought to be teaching kids at a young age to memorize Scripture. There’s a time in kid’s lived when they’re sponges—they soak up, they want to memorize, they want to cram that stuff in. When they’re teenagers it’s not memorization that they need as much as an explanation of why things are true, why they matter, and what role they play.

So as long as we’re helping our kids to understand that the Ten Commandments are not God’s ten rules so that God will love you or ten things that you need to do every day so mommy and daddy will like you and God will love you.

Obedience as Gratitude

We need to put obedience into the context of a response of gratitude to God who sent his son for sinners like us. Our covenant God gives us these commandments so that we might live in joy and peace with him and with one another.

The Ten Commandments

Kevin DeYoung

Pastor and best-selling author Kevin DeYoung delivers critical truth about the Ten Commandments as he explains what they are, why we should know them, and how we should apply them today.

We shouldn’t hesitate to to remind each other of this. I do it often as a parent by reminding my children of one of the the Ten Commandments. We don’t have to reinvent anything—there’s ten of them right there and we can all memorize them.

We can help our kids understand that there are rules and there are consequences for breaking those rules. Explain them in the context of a gracious God who forgives us, who gives these to us that we might be free people. Our children will be better for knowing these commands.

Kevin DeYoung (PhD, University of Leicester) is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina, and associate professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte. He has written books for children, adults, and academics, including Just Do Something; Impossible Christianity; and The Biggest Story Bible Storybook. Kevin’s work can be found on clearlyreformed.org. Kevin and his wife, Trisha, have nine children.