Talking with Your Kids about JesusSample

Day Five: The Death of Jesus—What Did Jesus’s Death Accomplish?

Scripture: Colossians 1:19-22, John 3:16, Romans 5:8

For Christians, the death of Jesus on the cross is a glorious display of God’s love. It’s where Jesus willingly gave His life as payment for our sins so we could be reconciled to God and have eternal life. While the death of Jesus was physically brutal, we see the beauty of its significance. At the same time, skeptics often see the cross as a bloody event Christians have strangely turned into something worth celebrating.

To help kids more deeply understand the cosmic significance of the cross, we need to clearly explain what His death accomplished. Yes, Jesus died a public and grotesque death. Yes, He was perceived to be a political and religious threat. But there’s so much more to this picture—the most important picture in history. In a world that often sees the ugly, we need to help our kids see the beauty. As the apostle Paul wrote, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).

Christians today sometimes reduce the significance of Jesus’s death on the cross to whatever it means to them personally; they don’t necessarily believe that His death had an objective meaning that’s true for all people. But the Bible tells us that Jesus’s death indeed accomplished some very specific and objective things:

1) Jesus’s death atoned for our sins (see yesterday’s reading).

2) Jesus’s death removed us from the curse of the Law (Galatians 3:13-14).

3) Jesus’s death reconciled us to God. Because our sins have been paid for, our relationship can be restored (Colossians 1:19-22).

4) Jesus’s death demonstrated God’s love (John 3:16).

5) Jesus’s death defeated the power of Satan (Colossians 2:13-15). Satan remains active in the world because the kingdom of God is not yet fully present (1 Peter 5:8), but the cross ensured the end to Satan’s story (Revelation 20:10).

6) Jesus’s death gave us eternal life (John 1:12; 3:16).

Helping our kids internalize that the God of the universe loves them so much that He humbled Himself to the point of death to accomplish these life-changing things invites them into a much more personal understanding of the cross. 

Ask your child how the cross was an expression of God’s love for us. What else did Jesus’s death on the cross accomplish?