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False teachings are everywhere. Like unwanted ads popping up on your computer monitor, false teachers seem to creep out from behind every tree and rock in view. Turn on the radio and you will find false teaching. Sit in front of the TV and you will find more false teaching. And, of course, social media is full of it. Whether it’s Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), TikTok, or something else entirely, false teachers will make their presence known.
As parents, the task ahead of us can seem rather daunting. How do we protect our children from false teachers and teachings without overly sheltering them? How do we teach them the truth, while simultaneously preparing them to defend the truth? As loaded as these questions may be, the Bible—as always—is our greatest resource and treasure.
Train Those Kids Up!
Proverbs 22:6 tells us that we are to, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The first half of the verse is clearly a commandment, though the second half does raise a few questions. Regardless, let’s examine the whole verse.
To train up a child in the way he should go obviously means teaching your child about God, the gospel, and his/her need for both. Whether you’re raising sons or daughters, it is your God-given responsibility to teach them about the Lord and His Word. This is not a job that can be outsourced to Sunday school teachers, your pastor, or even a private school. While they can learn from these other sources, they ought to supplement the teaching that you yourself have given them. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
How did God, through Moses, direct parents to train their children? It began with the parents knowing the Lord. After all, you cannot hope to teach what you don’t know. Imagine trying to teach your children about a past president of the United States of America without knowing who they really were. It wouldn’t work, would it? How much more important it is to know the Lord!
You must love the Lord. If you don’t love Him, you won’t care for His Word, and you certainly won’t care to teach His Word to your children. They will also be able to tell whether you really care about what you’re teaching them, or if it bores you. You must love the Lord if you want to teach your children to do the same. Likewise, you must love the Truth.
The only way to protect children from false teachers and false teachings is if they know the truth of the Word. So, we begin to train them in the truth of the Word by “diligently teaching them to our children.” Think about that word “diligently”. Does it mean to do things carelessly or without concern? Of course not! It means to genuinely set yourself about a particular task in such a way that you recognize the vast importance of what you’re doing. It means to apply yourself with all the strength you can muster.
This is how we are teach children about God and His Word. We need to tell them of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who is three Persons but one God. We are to teach them the gospel and their need for salvation in Christ alone. We are to teach them the commandments of God and call them to follow Jesus wherever He leads—repenting when they fall short, and trusting that His grace is sufficient for all.
Then, we are to discuss this constantly. We aren’t Christians just on Sunday mornings, or for a few minutes each day when we sit down at the dinner table. Our worldview is to be baptized in Christ, saturated with Scripture. When we play with our kids, our playing ought to seek to glorify God. When we pray with our kids, we ought to seek to glorify God. When we drive our kids to practice, eat with our kids, go to the store with our kids, watch a movie with our kids, read a book with our kids, or any other number of things, we ought to seek to glorify God. Jesus and His Word must be at the center of it all.
Children must learn that it is not awkward, weird, forced, or strange to see Christ at the center of everything in their lives, or to be devoted to Him as Lord in all things.
Don’t Let Them Depart
The second half of Proverbs 22:6 tells us that if we train children up in the way in which they should go, that [when they are old] they will not depart from it. The majority of the time, we are quick to articulate a defense of this passage that goes something like this, “Proverbs is wisdom literature, and wisdom literature does not offer universal laws but principles by which we must live.” In other words, Scripture says here that our children won’t depart from the way they’re trained up, but does it really mean that? Don’t many children depart from the faith?
In one sense, this verse means exactly what it says. If your child is brought into covenant with God through salvation in Christ, they will genuinely never depart from the faith. Jesus loves them too much to let them go. All the false teaching in the world will be unable to pluck them from the hands of Christ.
But, on the other hand, have not some Christian parents done everything right and then, in the final analysis, their children remain unsaved? This is true, too, and we cannot deny that it is genuinely God’s prerogative to elect and save sinners. However, we must also remember the promise of Deuteronomy 7:9, which reminds us, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations.”
In other words, these verses are encouraging us to not only teach our children and pray for our children, but to entrust them into the hands of our faithful God, who is mighty to save them. Rather than being fearful of having children, we ought to be encouraged that God loves our children even more than we do. We ought to hope in the promises of God, knowing that as much as He has loved and saved us, so He has promised to be faithful to us and our households.
In turn, this helps us to trust that God will help to protect our children from the false teachers. We know, for example, “For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24). So, we do two things to keep our children from being led astray by the falsehoods of antichrists: (1) We train them in the Word; and (2) We pray for them to the Lord.
In a sense, it is your duty to tell your children that they’re going to be Christians. No, you can’t save them. Yes, you must call them to faith in Jesus and repentance of their sins. Yes, you must teach them every time an opportunity arises. Ultimately, your job is to live out your faith and say, “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). And, if you see them slipping, you reach out and grab them. As parents, we are to “have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh” (Jude 1:22-23).
Your job in the household, as parents, is to instruct your children in Christ. Paul once put it like this:
“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:11-14).
If you want your children to be protected from false teachings, you need to train them up. You need to pray for them. You need to model Christ-likeness. You also need to teach them about false teachings, so they know what to look out for. Our goal for our households and our children is to have a unified and mature faith that can stand against false doctrines.
Parenting is hard work. Keeping our children safe from false teaching is harder, still. But praise be to God, He is with us and has promised to be faithful to us and our children. Let us trust in Him.
False Teachers: Exposing the Wolves Among the Sheep
Jacob Tanner is a husband, father, and pastor, living in Pennsylvania. Holding to the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Jacob is focused on both evangelism and reformation. He is the founder of the Sound of Truth Ministries, where they have regular podcasts and preaches whenever the opportunity arises. His passion and motto are, “To know Christ and make Him known because He has made us His own.” He can be found spending time with his family or with a book in his hands in his free time.
