My son spent much of his first few years sitting in the time out chair. He was an active kid and often learned his lessons the hard way. Throw a block at someone? Time-out. Knock your sister over? Time-out. Throw the cellphone in the toilet? Yep, you guessed it, time-out. He learned very quickly that if you do the crime, you do the time. For some reason that didn’t really stop his crimes. But he understood the process pretty well.
I still remember talking about Jesus with him when he was five. I figured he was too young to really understand, but I gave it a shot anyway. We talked about sin. Sin is the “bad choices we make,” I explained. “Do you ever do bad stuff?” I asked him. He looked straight at me. “Oh, yeah!” I remember him saying, very seriously, eyes big and round.
Bad stuff? Yeah, he got that. I had to fight not to smile.
“Well, when you do something bad, what happens?” I asked him.
“I go to timeout!” He said, matter-of-factly.
We talked some more about sin and how it separates us from God. I explained that the Bible says that the punishment for sin is death. But that Jesus took our punishment for us on the cross. A weighty topic for a five-year-old. I’m not sure I always fully comprehend it, and I’m way past five.
He looked at me with wonder on his little face. “Jesus took my timeout? Cool!” And like that, the little lightbulb went on. He totally understood how this whole Christianity thing worked. He got it. He wanted it.
I patted myself on the back. That was easy. I must be pretty good at this stuff, I thought.
It really is that simple. We do bad stuff. No one can deny that. No one is without sin. Romans 3:23 says “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We all deserve our punishment. But Jesus came and took that punishment in our place. He paid it, we don’t have to. That’s all there is to it. We just have to accept it. Someone taught me once, “Christianity is not about what you do or don’t do, it’s about what Jesus has already done.”
It’s so simple a five year old can get it. But yet, sometimes it seems so difficult that it’s hard for an adult to get it.
Tomorrow: Part 2. Good Girl/Bad Girl: When it doesn’t seem simple.