THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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prca.orgDear Radio Friends,
School is in the air. Stores are having their big “Back-to-School”
sales. Teachers and staff are gearing
up. Some children are tired of summer
vacation and eager for a new year. And
many parents are eager for a new school year.
It is an exciting and a busy time of year.
Maybe your family
has a little one starting for the very first time. Or, perhaps, God has blessed you with many children
and you have been sending your children off to school for years and years.
What kind of a
school are they going to? The choice of
school is important. Everybody says
that. It is very important. It is an important decision for a parent,
perhaps one of the most important choices a parent makes. Therefore it is a decision that needs to be
made with much prayer over an open Bible.
Children of God
ought to feel very strongly about the schools that their children attend. And the school that your child attends ought
to be a very important thing in your life.
Are you looking into a school for the very first time? Are your children enrolled in a school you
have used for many years? What kind of a
school is it? Why do you use the school
that you do?
Christian parents
look for good Christian schools. So
important is a good Christian school to believing parents that they are willing
to pay large tuition bills rather than accept free public education. So important is Christian education to
Christian parents that fathers are willing to work two or three jobs and to
live in a place where there is such a good Christian school. Not only are Christian parents willing to pay
the cost involved, but the commitment runs even deeper. They prize their Christian school as an
extension of their own home and as an invaluable tool in aiding them in their
calling, that is, in the parents’ calling to train their children in the way of
the Lord.
But what is a good
Christian school? Is the essence of a
Christian school the fact that there is a Bible class included in the
curriculum? Is that what makes it a good
Christian school? Is the essence of a
Christian school the fact that students are allowed to pray there, or that it
has a dress code, or that morals and manners are taught and insisted upon? Does a Christian school relieve parents of
their responsibility? Is it simply a
place where they can send their kids off to for a while? Is creation presented in such a school, as an
explanation of origins, as well as evolution?
What is a good Christian school, one that is truly Christian?
A good Christian
school is a covenant school. A good
Christian education is a covenant education.
That is, it is one that is based upon the biblical teaching (I was just
about to say “a biblical teaching,” but, no, based upon the biblical
teaching) of God’s covenant with believing parents and their children. And the heart of understanding Christian
education is to be found in an understanding within your soul of the truth of
God’s glorious covenant of grace with believers and their children.
Now this will take
some explaining. So, buckle your
seatbelts—that is, follow very carefully, or, better, in the words of
Scripture: gird up the loins of your
mind.
Our Christian faith
is built upon knowledge. Faith-knowledge
for sure, heart-knowledge for sure, but, nevertheless, a knowledge taken from
Holy Scripture and that involves the use of your mind seeking to absorb
biblical truth and principles.
I said, a good Christian education is a covenantal education. Covenant is the truth that is found in the
Holy Scriptures from cover to cover. I
will offer this definition: Covenant is
the teaching of the Holy Scripture that it is the will of the glorious God to
embrace His people in Jesus Christ within arms of perfect love and everlasting
faithfulness. The Bible uses many
expressions to convey it. God says, “I
will dwell with you and be among you; I will abide with you; I will live within
you; I will be your God and ye shall be My people.” God speaks to us of a relationship that He
makes with His people, chosen in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ. But He speaks of that relationship in the
Bible in terms of fellowship, communion, endearment—in
terms of covenant.
Covenant is a living
bond of love and fellowship between God and us.
As a father lives with his children in love, as a husband knows and
loves his wife, so God, in the Scriptures, says to us: “I will be a covenant God to you. You shall enjoy the blessing of My covenant.” God
wills, through Jesus Christ, to love us, to live with us, to keep us, to bless
us, to dwell within us, and to sanctify us through Jesus Christ entirely of His
grace. Covenant: the truth that God graciously takes wicked,
rebellious, sin-laden men and women and washes them in the blood of His own
Son. He renews them by the Holy Spirit
within their hearts and He draws them to Himself in an irresistible, saving
love. And we come to know, cherish, love the living God.
Then God lives
within us and lives with us and holds us and instructs us, comforting,
correcting, preserving, forgiving, and at last perfecting us in the splendor of
heaven. The covenant!
God makes this
covenant, according to Scripture, with believers and their children. And right there lies
the basis for Christian education.
Christian schools are born out of the truth that God establishes His
covenant with believers and their children.
The Bible teaches
that God takes His children out of the children of believers. Or you could put it this way, that God casts
the lines of His eternal, unconditional, gracious election in the generations
of believers. Or you could put it this
way (this is what we are saying), when God saves a man and a woman by grace, He
promises to them that He will begin to keep covenant with them—not only with
them personally, but also to work within their children, calling these parents
now to love and to nurture their children in the Holy Scriptures. When God saves a man and a woman, He begins
covenant, that is, He promises that He will work within their offspring His
saving love and truth. And so God would say to Abraham
(Gen. 17:7):
“I will be a
God to you, Abraham, and to your children after you.” So also the apostle Peter could say to repentant believers on the day of Pentecost
(Acts 2:39):
“For the promise is unto you and to your children,
that is, to repentant sinners who have been brought, by grace, to confess and
repent in Christ and to possess forgiveness in Christ. The promise of God is to you and to your
children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall
call.”
So God sends forth
His Word. And that Word calls sinners to
Him. In the book of Acts:
That is the basis
of Christian education: God saying to a
believing parent, on the basis of His covenant, “Teach your son and your
daughter what you have known and seen and learned of Me.”
Listen to good king Hezekiah say it in
Isaiah 38:19.
In this
context, Hezekiah had been sick, nigh unto death. The Lord had restored him and given him the
promise that he would have a son to sit upon the throne. And Hezekiah responds in a psalm, a psalm of
his great distress when he was sick, but also of his great praise to God when
he was recovered. He says this in verse
19: “The living, the living, he shall
praise thee, as I do this day: the
father to the children shall make known thy truth.” Hezekiah, as I said, had experienced in a
profound and personal way the wondrous grace of God. He had been brought exceedingly low and had
been brought to see the unshakable promises of God. Now those promises and the grace of God live
within His breast. They lived! “The living, the living shall make known Thy
truth. The living shall praise Thee.” A child of God who knows the glorious truth
of God’s grace to him shall praise God.
And out of that same impulse, out of that holy impulse, he will make
known God’s truth to his children.
The covenant, then,
is this, that when God sheds forth His light upon you in Jesus Christ and gives
you to taste and to see that He is gracious, you will
want your children to know this wonder with you. As you love God and you love your children,
you will desire for your children the greatest possible good, which is to know
the grace of God that you know.
So we read in
Psalm 34:
“Come, ye children, hearken unto
me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”
Or, throughout the book of Proverbs:
“My son, give me thy heart.” As a
believing father, we are not just concerned that our children become
electricians or cabinet-makers or executives—a chip off the old block. But we are concerned that the children know
better than we the wonderful grace of God, that they
may taste and see that the Lord is gracious.
So
believing parents of one faith bind together in a holy purpose to begin a
Christian school. Understanding
my calling as a father, which is given to me as a parent, I seek out other
like-minded Christians. We pool our
abilities and our resources, elect a board, hire teachers who share our faith,
and we begin a school in which the children of the covenant may be taught even
as God has taught us.
This includes the
covenant community as we care for our children born within the sphere of that
community. Our commitment in the
instruction of our children is not just for the children of our own flesh. This commitment would be ours if we had no
children, or if our children are now beyond the age of schooling. We possess a love for the children born in
the sphere of the covenant. If a brother
or sister becomes unable, laid low, we will help with their children. Should a brother become neglectful or
disobedient, God willing, we will yet seek to do all that we can to aid and
help in the instruction of their children.
Because of covenant, because of the living desire that
the children born within that sphere of God’s gracious truth might come to know
that truth and embrace it with all their hearts.
Out of the womb of
the truth of the covenant, Christian schools are born. These Christian schools, of course, will then
have very distinctive features. The most
distinctive is the covenant itself, that is, in how the children are going to
be viewed and approached. They will not
be viewed as being outside of the grace and work of the Holy Spirit. But they will be viewed as those who are to be
nurtured, taught, brought up in the truth of Jesus Christ, their Savior and
their Lord.
Such schools will
have some clear features. Let me mention
a few of them. There will be a clear
commitment to truth: biblical, creedal,
confessional truth. Families seeking to
have their children enrolled in this school will be told up front that there is
a clear commitment here to a statement of faith and truth in the Holy
Scriptures. The statement of the faith
will be seen throughout the school. If a
family is looking for simply good academics with just a little religious
topping over it, they will soon discover that this is not the school for
them. The school will be committed to
teaching students the clear truth of God, in order that the student might
become fully devoted as a follower of Jesus Christ.
What we are saying
here is that Christian education is not neutral. It is not a school that is trying to be
neutral over issues of the truth and neutral over issues of Jesus. A Christian school does not downplay what
they stand for in the name of academic freedom or in the hope of increasing
enrollment. But love for God’s glorious
truth revealed in the Scriptures and stated in biblical, Reformed creeds will
be expressed in clear and open commitment.
This will keep the
school from becoming aimless, purposeless, a clone of the secular school, where
nothing is believed with certainty. A
Christian school states up-front what it believes.
Another way of
saying this is that covenant Christian schools bow before the infallible and
inspired Scriptures. They believe the
absolute truth of the Bible, from cover to cover. It is God’s Word written. In such a school the truth of the Bible will
shape the teaching of every subject and will provide understanding unto every
aspect of life. In such a school the
Bible will be held supreme. In schools
where the Bible is not the basis of truth, students are offered plenty of
information and opinions but they are not given a solid foundation on which to
build their thinking and to ground their entire life. Students in a good Christian school will
learn what the Bible says, learn sound doctrines, learn church history, learn every subject (literature, history, math, science,
music, art) in the light of the Holy Scriptures.
A Christian school,
further, has this feature, that it is God-centered. You see, Christian education is not simply a
reaction to prayer-lessness and godlessness in the
public schools. But believing the truth
of the Bible, a Christian school is devoted to a God-centered approach in life
and learning. The Bible says that all
things were created for God’s glory. The
unifying principle of knowledge is to know God and His Son Jesus Christ, which
is eternal life. The Christian school
seeks to humble the mind. It seeks to
bring the soul into reverence before the great and the glorious God of
salvation. The physical sciences in such
a school will seek to investigate the physical universe as fashioned by God’s
power and a demonstration of His glory.
The life sciences within such a school will study the wonderful
diversity, construction, and function of all of God’s creatures. The social sciences and languages will
examine how God calls us to communicate with each other, to build each other
up, and to express our thoughts in love.
The arts and the music within such a school will provide opportunities
to respond to the beauty and to the design God has placed in the creation. All will be aimed at bringing the student and
the teacher to stand in awe of God and to say, “My God, how wonderful Thou art!”
A Christian school,
then, is not a place where the Bible class teaches that the universe is
governed by God’s will, while the science class teaches that the universe is
controlled by natural law. It is not a
school in which the children in choir will be singing “Beautiful Savior, King
of creation,” and then in the chemistry class will be taught to deny the
Creator by being taught a form of evolution.
A Christian school tells students why they should live, for whom they
should live, what it means to live: God, and God alone!
There will be more
features. Let me mention some of them
only in passing. Such a covenant
Christian school will not be mediocre.
It will call students to use and to develop the abilities and talents
that they have. The school will not
simply “dumb things down” to make the student feel better about himself, but
each child will be met at his level of ability and be aided to be thankful for
what God has given him and to use what God has given to him. Another way of saying this is that each child
shall be taught the joy of faithful stewardship of his own abilities and
talents.
Further, it will be
a school that will be very friendly to families. Parents will be welcome. And parents will be seen as the primary
educators of the children. The teacher
will not see himself or herself as a replacement but as the parents’ tool, and
the parent will be involved in constructive, mature, and helpful ways, making
the school the very best that it can be.
It will be covenantal. It will be
fellowship. It will be humble, respectful
fellowship with each other, with administrator, teachers, parents, and
students. Parents will talk with
teachers. They will work together. They will go on field trips together with the
class. They will know what is going on
with their child.
The Christian
school, further, is one that has a great passion for holiness—holiness of life,
devoted Christian life for their students and teachers. The education that they provide is not simply
a building, not simply in books. But it
is how the student will live, how the student will live with fellow
classmates. A Christian school is the
place where character is molded, where teachers understand that they will have
a profound impact upon the life of their students. And the students, covenant students, will act
as friends of God with each other.
Having received of God a gracious friendship in Jesus Christ, they will
be taught and encouraged to live as friends with each other. They will be respectful, thoughtful,
compassionate, kind one with another. It
will show. You will feel it. You will sense it within the school. You will see that everybody in this school is
concerned about godly character, that their lives be
shaped to the honor and the glory of God.
That is a good Christian school.
These are some of
the features, then, of a covenant Christian school: Clear commitment to the truth of Holy
Scripture, God-centered teaching, a striving after excellence, parental
involvement, personal godliness and holiness.
Yes, even the best
Christian schools, reaching unto these truths, fall short. Now, remember, if you and I join such a
school, by our joining it, that Christian school cannot be perfect. All we need to do is to look at
ourselves. But they are a blessing. They are worth all the sacrifice. They are a great good. By God’s grace God gives such schools, which
are great treasures, to us. Let us pray
for them. Let us encourage those who are
laboring in them to establish such a Christian school. May God prosper us with such schools and
families in establishing them. And may God unite our hearts as parents in
the thrill and in the joy of teaching our children to know and to trust in God.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy Word to us. As we begin
another year of schooling, we ask for Thy blessing. Remind us as parents that this is our
calling, our privilege, and our responsibility from God. May our hearts feel a great burden, as those
who have been made alive in Christ, to teach our children the glorious truths
of Thee. We
pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.