Impress God’s Law on Our Children
Yael Eckstein | June 2, 2023
These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. — Deuteronomy 6:6-7
As we celebrate the men in our lives this month, enjoy these devotions looking at the defining characteristics of godliness that we can glean from the biblical men of faith — and how we can pass on those values to our children.
Living in the modern world certainly has its advantages. I often think about this when I’m taking care of the laundry. It wasn’t so long ago that this chore involved painstaking labor and considerable time. Maybe if it were still that way, we’d simply own less clothing!
But one area of modern life that has definitely become more challenging is parenting. Before the internet and the spread of mass media, children were mostly insulated from the world outside their home and immediate community. This allowed parents a much greater degree of control over what their children were exposed to. And let’s be honest, today, that is a difficult battle.
For parents and grandparents, these challenges mean that we need to be even more diligent and mindful of how we are teaching our children.
Impress God’s Law on Our Children
When the Bible instructs us to educate our children, it uses an unusual word. We read in Deuteronomy chapter 6, “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”
The Hebrew for “impress them” is ve’shinantam. Other translations say, “teach diligently” or “repeat to your children,” or even “repeat again and again.” When you see a variety of translations for a word, you know it’s unusual.
Whatever translation we use, the meaning of the word goes beyond merely “teaching” in the conventional sense. The Bible is telling us that the education of our children requires something more.
The previous verse commands us to “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (6:5). So, the challenge is, how do we teach our children to love God?
We show our love for God not only by worshipping Him, but primarily by living according to His will. And the best way to teach this to our children is by our own behavior. Whether it’s volunteering for a local charity or simply being kind to strangers, when we demonstrate our own commitment to God, our children see that and will want to live that way as well.
This is what it means to “impress” God’s law on our children.
Your Turn:
Let’s be mindful of our words and deeds around the young people in our lives. And let’s take time to discuss matters of faith and values with our children, grandchildren, or the youth in our communities.