Why Children Matter

How Our Actions Reveal What We Really Believe About Children

Everyone agrees that children matter—right up until someone begins living as though they actually do. It is remarkably easy to nod along with a statement without following it to its logical conclusions. We have all mastered the art of agreeable assent without practical commitment. We affirm the principle, but quietly decline the implications. This is how many obvious truths are treated. We can say the right things, agree with the right sentiments, and still arrange our lives in ways that avoid the weight of what we have just affirmed. The mind agrees, the head nods, the conversation moves on—but the calendar, the bank account, the ambitions, and the household remain untouched.

Everyone agrees that children are a blessing. And so, naturally, when my wife and I got married, the questions began almost immediately. Friends asked politely, relatives asked directly, and the occasional stranger felt perfectly free to ask when we planned to “start a family,” as though the wedding itself had merely been the opening ceremony. The expectation was clear—children are wonderful, and the sooner they arrive, the better.

Four years later we had our first son, and everyone was delighted. Congratulations poured in. Grandparents beamed. Friends celebrated. Photographs were shared. Our little boy was received exactly the way a blessing ought to be received, with joy and warmth and enthusiasm. And so, for a moment, everything made sense. Everyone loves children. Everyone says they are a gift from God. Everyone celebrates when they arrive.

But then, a little over a year later, we were expecting our second child. And suddenly the tone shifted. The congratulations were still there, but they were now accompanied by a different kind of question. “Already?” “So soon?” “Was that planned?” People who had previously been eager for us to have children now began doing quiet calculations about school fees, sleepless nights, and the practicalities of raising more than one. Then our second son was born, and once again there was joy. Everyone held the baby, admired his tiny fingers, and welcomed him warmly into the world.

But something interesting happened after that. Whenever my wife and I spoke openly about our eager hope for more children, about how grateful we were for our boys and how gladly we would welcome more, we were no longer congratulated. Instead, we were met with concerned faces and scolding glances. Sometimes the correction was subtle. Sometimes it was not so subtle. But the message was always the same. “Be careful.” “You need to think about the future.” “That’s not very wise.” “You shouldn’t be foolish about these things.” “Your wife is not a baby-making machine.” “What on earth are you going to do with all these children?” “Two is more than enough.” “Are you even thinking?”

In other words, the very people who had enthusiastically affirmed that children are blessings suddenly felt the need to warn us against receiving too many of those blessings. And this reveals something about the way our culture thinks. We say children are a blessing, but we really mean something more like a blessing in moderation. One child is celebrated. Two is acceptable. After that, the conversation begins to sound less like congratulations and more like family counseling.

It turns out that we do indeed love children, so long as they remain within the boundaries that modern life finds comfortable. We like children who arrive on schedule, spaced properly, and limited to a number that does not interfere too much with careers, travel plans, or personal ambitions. But the moment someone begins speaking about children the way Scripture speaks about them—as gifts, as rewards, as arrows gladly received—the tone changes. What was once applauded begins to look irresponsible. What was once celebrated suddenly becomes impractical. Which means that our culture’s love for children often turns out to be conditional.

We love the idea of children. We celebrate their arrival. But we grow uneasy when someone begins treating them not merely as manageable additions to life, but as blessings that might actually reshape it.

Say that children are important and everyone nods. Say they are a blessing and no one objects. But begin arranging your life around that belief—have several children, structure your home around raising them, devote time and energy to discipling them—and the atmosphere changes. The smiles tighten. Someone eventually asks, in a concerned tone, whether you have “thought this through.”

The truth is that modern culture likes children in theory but not always in practice. We enjoy photographs of babies, sentimental stories about childhood, and slogans about “the next generation.” But the moment children begin shaping the priorities of our lives—our finances, schedules, ambitions, and comforts—many people begin to hesitate.

Yet Scripture speaks about children in an entirely different way. The Bible does not treat them as an inconvenience to be managed. It treats them as a central part of God’s design for the world.

To understand why children matter, we must begin at the beginning.

Children and the First Commission

Children are not an afterthought in God’s plan. They are not a side effect of marriage. They are woven into the very first command given to humanity.

When God created the first man and woman, He blessed them and said,

Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

— Genesis 1:28

This command contains several imperatives that build on one another — be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and rule.

• The first instruction is clear, be fruitful. In the context of Genesis, fruitfulness refers to bearing offspring. God’s first blessing upon marriage included the expectation that children would follow.

• The next command is to multiply. Fruitfulness refers to having children, while multiplication refers to the expansion of those children into generations. God did not intend humanity to remain small or isolated. Families were meant to grow.

• Then comes the command to fill the earth. This instruction describes both the extent and the purpose of multiplication. Humanity was meant to spread across the earth, filling it with image-bearers who would live under God’s authority.

• Finally, mankind was instructed to subdue and rule over creation. The world was to be cultivated, governed, and developed by human beings who reflected the character of their Creator.

Notice the order of these commands. Before humanity can fill the earth, it must multiply. Before it can multiply, it must be fruitful. The entire project of human dominion begins with families and children.

This means that children are not merely participants in God’s plan. They are the means by which the plan unfolds.

God intended the world to be shaped through generations of faithful families who raise children to know Him and to steward His creation.

The Conflict Between Two Seeds

Immediately after the fall of mankind, the Bible introduces another theme that runs throughout Scripture, the conflict between two lines of descendants.

God says to the serpent,

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

— Genesis 3:15

From this point, the story of the Bible becomes the story of two seeds. One line belongs to the serpent, representing rebellion against God. The other belongs to the woman, representing those who belong to God. History itself becomes a conflict between these two lines.

And if children are the means by which God’s purposes move forward in the world, it should not surprise us that the enemy frequently directs his hostility toward children. The battle between the two seeds is not abstract. It often manifests itself in the way societies treat their children.

When Societies Turn Against Children

Throughout history, cultures that reject God frequently begin mistreating children. In the Old Testament, Israel itself fell into this pattern when it turned away from the Lord. The people began practicing child sacrifice, offering their sons and daughters to idols.

They have built the high places of Topheth… to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into My mind.

— Jeremiah 7:31

You took your sons and daughters whom you had borne to Me and sacrificed them to idols.

— Ezekiel 16:20

Notice that phrase, “whom you had borne to Me.” God says the children were His before they were ever offered up. They had been entrusted to parents as gifts, as a stewardship, as a holy charge. And Israel took what belonged to God and handed it over to idols.

Now we hear that and shudder, as we ought to. We picture pagan altars, flames, drums, shrieking priests, and mothers weeping under demonic deception. We reassure ourselves that we would never do such a thing. We are far too civilized for that. We have degrees, screens, child psychology, curated lesson plans, and educational consultants. We do not burn our children in fire. We are better off, right?

No. We merely hand them over to false gods with better branding. The idols have merely changed clothes.

Today we sacrifice children at the altar of secular education, where they are catechised for six or seven hours a day in a vision of the world where God is absent, Christ is irrelevant, and man is the measure of all things. We send them in cheerful uniforms, pack them polished lunches, and call it preparation for life. But if a child is taught to read the world without reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, then he is not being educated, he is being discipled into unbelief. Neutral education is a myth, and a useful myth at that, because it lets Christian parents hand over their children while pretending they have handed over only mathematics.

We sacrifice them to television and endless entertainment, that glowing household priest which asks for no blood on the carpet, only attention, imagination, and affection. We sit children before screens for hours on end while their loves are trained, their desires are softened, their attention spans are shattered, and their imaginations are colonised. And because everyone else is doing it, the sacrifice feels normal. No chants. No incense. Just streaming subscriptions, cartoons, reels, noise, and the slow formation of a soul by people who do not love God.

We sacrifice them to sports without measure, to ambitions without wisdom, to peer culture without supervision, to the idol of convenience, to the god of uninterrupted adult comfort. We say we are “giving them opportunities,” when often what we mean is that we are too timid or too tired to govern the home. We say we want them to be “well-rounded,” which often means thoroughly shaped by the world and thinly seasoned with Christianity.

And then the church, God help us, joins the conspiracy.

One of the more revealing habits of modern church life is the way children’s ministry is sometimes treated as the ministry of least consequence. If a man is gifted, polished, serious, and theologically sharp, we assume he belongs with the adults. If he is untested, awkward, shallow, or still “finding his voice,” we say, “Let him start with the children’s ministry.”

Why? When did we decide that the smallest saints require the smallest truths? When did we conclude that those with the least discernment should receive the least capable teachers? When did the church begin doing trial runs on its children?

If a man cannot hold the attention of grown men, why should he be entrusted with forming the minds of the young? If his doctrine is fuzzy, if his instincts are weak, if he is boring, careless, or theologically thin, why would we imagine that children are the proper place for him to develop his craft? That may be how companies treat interns. It is a wicked way to treat covenant seed.

The nursery is not a dumping ground. The children’s classroom is not a rehearsal room for aspiring ministers. It is not the shallow end of church life where anything vaguely moral and mildly animated will do. These children are not church-adjacent. They are not decorative members of the covenant community. They are, as God said to Israel, children borne to Him.

And if that is true, then the strongest Bible teachers in the church should want to teach children. The most faithful, patient, joyful, and doctrinally solid saints should be eager to help shape them. We should not give the children our leftovers. We should not give them fog machines, sugar highs, and moralistic fluff. We should not feed them theological porridge because we assume they cannot digest meat.

Children can often understand far more than lazy adults suppose.

What they need is not dumbing down, but faithful translation. Not entertainment, but truth made clear. Not frantic energy, but holy gravity with warmth. A church’s view of children is revealed by what it gives them.

Child sacrifice is not only what happens when children are killed. It also happens when children are offered up—their minds, their imaginations, their loyalties, their attention, their loves—to gods that do not save. Molech asked for bodies. Modern idols are often content with souls.

Secular education says, “Give me your child, and I will teach him how to think without God.” Entertainment says, “Give me your child, and I will teach him what to laugh at, what to desire, and what to love.” Peer culture says, “Give me your child, and I will tell him who he is.” A lazy church says, “Give me your child, and I will keep him occupied until he is old enough for real ministry.”

And then we wonder why they grow up thin, distracted, worldly, and embarrassed by the faith.

So no, most Christian parents are not offering their children to literal fire. But many are offering them, piece by piece, to idols that are far more socially acceptable. The sacrifice is tidier now. It comes with report cards, streaming plans, extra-curricular schedules, and smiling branding. But heaven is not fooled by our improved packaging.

The question, then, is not whether we love children in the abstract. The question is whether we are willing to fight for them in practice, fight for their minds, fight for their imaginations, fight for their worship, fight for their education, fight for their joy, and fight for their future.

Because children matter too much to be offered to idols, however modern, however convenient, and however respectable those idols may appear.

Children as Gifts and Rewards

Psalm 127 provides one of the clearest statements about how God views children.

Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

— Psalm 127:3

Children are not described as obligations or inconveniences. They are described as gifts and rewards.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth.

— Psalm 127:4

Children are compared to arrows. Arrows extend the reach of the warrior. They are instruments through which influence travels farther than the warrior himself could reach. This image reminds us that children are meant to be sent into the world with purpose. They carry forward the work of those who came before them. A faithful generation raises the next generation.

The New Testament reinforces this same vision. At one point, people brought their children, even their babies, to Jesus so that He might bless them. The disciples, assuming that Jesus had more important matters to attend to, tried to send the children away. But Jesus responded firmly,

Permit the children to come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

— Luke 18:16

Mark’s account tells us that Jesus was indignant with the disciples. He rebuked them for treating children as though they were interruptions to the work of the kingdom. According to Jesus, the kingdom belongs to such as these.

Children are not distractions from kingdom work. They are central illustrations of it.

Jesus also issued one of the most severe warnings in Scripture regarding the treatment of children. In Matthew 18, He places a child before His disciples and says,

Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

— Matthew 18:5–6

Now theologians rightly point out that in this passage Jesus is not speaking only about literal children. The phrase “little ones who believe in me” includes young believers, new disciples who are spiritually immature and vulnerable. In other words, the child becomes a picture of the humble believer.

But it is important to notice how the metaphor works. Jesus does not begin with a theological abstraction about new converts. He begins with an actual child standing in front of them. The metaphor runs from the concrete to the spiritual, from the visible to the invisible. First comes the child. Then comes the convert. This order matters.

The warning only lands with its full force if we understand how serious it is to harm a literal child. Jesus is drawing on something every sane human being instinctively understands, harming a child is a monstrous crime. When a child is betrayed, corrupted, abused, or led astray, the outrage we feel is immediate and visceral. It strikes us as profoundly unjust because children are small, dependent, and entrusted to the care of others. Jesus takes that universally understood horror and says that if it is dreadful to harm a child, then it is even more dreadful to lead a young believer into sin. The weight of the judgment is so great that He says a terrible death would actually be preferable.

A millstone was not a small stone. It was a massive grinding stone used by donkeys to crush grain. To have such a stone tied to one’s neck and be dragged headfirst into the depths of the sea would mean certain and terrible death. But that most horrible death would be better than the judgment awaiting someone who causes one of these little ones to stumble. The drowning is not the judgment. The drowning would be the lesser fate.

And this is precisely why the metaphor works the way it does. In order to understand how serious it is to corrupt a young believer, we must first understand how serious it is to harm a child. The spiritual warning stands upon the natural one. You cannot grasp the force of the metaphor unless you grasp the reality behind it. This is why Scripture repeatedly treats children as a sacred trust. They are small, impressionable, and dependent. They believe easily. They imitate quickly. They trust naturally. Because of this, they are capable of learning wisdom early, but they are also vulnerable to being led into foolishness early. Children are like fresh soil. Whatever seeds are planted there will grow.

And that is why Jesus speaks so strongly. Whoever receives a child in His name receives Him.

In other words, how we treat children reflects how we treat Christ Himself. Welcoming them, teaching them, nurturing them, and protecting them is not merely a social responsibility; it is an act of service to Christ.

But the opposite is also true. To corrupt them, mislead them, neglect them, or lead them into sin is not a small matter. It is an offense that provokes the judgment of God.

How Our Actions Show Children Matter

It is easy to say that children matter. The real question is whether our lives show that we believe it. Our actions reveal what we truly think about children.

First, how we receive them shows whether we believe they are a blessing. Scripture calls children a gift and a reward from the Lord (Psalm 127:3). Gifts are not received with hesitation or calculation but with gratitude. Yet many people treat children as disruptions to their plans as though they were something to delay, limit, or carefully control so that life can continue uninterrupted. If we truly believe children are blessings, we will welcome them gladly rather than merely tolerate them.

Second, how we treat them reveals our convictions. Children learn primarily through imitation. The Apostle Paul repeatedly calls believers to imitate godly examples, saying,

Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ

- 1 Corinthians 11:1

Children are always watching. They learn what faith looks like by observing their parents, teachers, and church. Adults are therefore not merely instructors but living examples. If we want children to grow in the faith, they must see that faith lived out consistently before them.

Third, how we discipline them shows whether we love them. Scripture teaches that discipline is a form of love.

The Lord your God was disciplining you just as a man disciplines his son

- Deuteronomy 8:5

those whom the Lord loves He disciplines

- Hebrews 12:6

Loving parents do not leave children to themselves but train them in wisdom. Discipline is not cruelty, it is formation. It shapes character and teaches children to live under God’s authority.

Fourth, how we teach them demonstrates our priorities. Paul commands fathers to bring their children up “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Children do not naturally grow into maturity. Their hearts and minds must be shaped intentionally. What they are taught at home, in church, and in school, will form the way they understand the world. If children truly matter, their education cannot be treated as an afterthought. Their minds must be grounded in truth.

Fifth, how we include them in worship reflects our understanding of God’s kingdom. Scripture reminds us that God uses even the praise of children.

From the mouth of infants and nursing babes You have established strength

- Psalm 8:2

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, it was the children who shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” recognising what many religious leaders refused to see. Children are not spectators in the life of faith, they are participants.

Finally, how we send them reveals our long-term vision. Psalm 127 compares children to arrows in the hand of a warrior. Arrows are not meant to remain forever in the quiver, they must be aimed and released. Parents spend years shaping their children—teaching them truth, forming their character, and preparing them for life. The goal is to send them into the world as faithful servants of Christ who will influence families, churches, and communities.

This is why Christian education matters so deeply. Schools like Covenant School should exist because children are not merely future members of the church, they are already part of God’s covenant community. Education must therefore do more than produce academic success. It must form disciples who understand God’s world and live faithfully within it.

In the end, children are not obstacles to the work of God. They are part of that work. They are gifts entrusted to families, arrows prepared for the future, and participants in God’s unfolding plan.

To receive them, train them, teach them, and send them faithfully is not merely a responsibility, it is a sacred calling.