Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions: What If I Sin Too Much—Will God Still Forgive Me?

This article is part of the Answering Kids’ Hardest Questions series.

True Repentance

What if I sin too much? Will God still forgive me? These kinds of questions are questions that kids ask all the time, and if they don’t verbally ask it, they're often thinking it as we’re working through discipline and teaching them right and wrong. And so it’s important for us as parents—which, if we’re honest, it's kind of hard for us sometimes to answer in a simple way because we’re often still wrestling through a lot of these questions ourselves.

So thinking through those even before our children ask these questions, or prefacing it when we’re talking with them, can be very helpful in helping them even understand the basic theological truth behind sin, behind God’s forgiveness. We know that he says that if we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us of our sins, and that we all fall short of God’s holiness. None of us can live up to his perfect standards—no matter what. And that will look a little different in what kind of child we’re talking to. We may have one of our kids who likes to push every single boundary. I will admit I was one of those. Or we have some who think they do a lot right. Or they may look at their sibling and think, Gosh, they’re always disobeying mom. At least I don’t do that.

So we’re going to be dealing with different kinds of hearts when we’re talking to our kids. But it’s helpful for us to talk to them, from the very beginning, of them understanding that, first of all, God loves you. He is not this big, scary heavenly Father up there looking down on them, disappointed in them all the time. And so to be able to help them first understand they are created in his image, they are loved, they are adored, they are cherished by their heavenly Father.

That is very important to start with that so that when we bring up the topic with sin—"Sweetie, you disobeyed mommy in this, which means you also disobeyed God ultimately, and that breaks God's commands." But there is nothing we can do that is going to be outside of the ability for God to forgive. And we can show them examples like the thief on the cross. He had sinned his whole life. He had completely gone against God’s law. And it wasn’t until literally his final breath on the cross, when Jesus talked to him and he saw that he was the the Son of God and he put his faith in him, and he said to the thief, “Today you wll be with me in paradise.”

That's a perfect example of no matter how much we have sinned up to that point, when we are able to see that we have truly fallen short of God’s holiness, we are able to come and repent. And explain what that means. What does repentance look like? We can all easily say, "I’m sorry," but sometimes we’re just sorry we got caught. We’re not always really sorry that we actually sinned and did what was against God’s law. And so being able to encourage them, on one hand, that God’s grace is sufficient to be able to bring them to him no matter what they have done, no matter how many times they have fallen short, that he wants them to come to him with forgiveness. But then also just to assure them that his forgiveness is fully complete.

I think there’s an aspect that we can struggle with, even as adults, but to help our children too to understand that part of the forgiveness is when we come to repentance, is being able to receive God’s forgiveness. Sometimes we can go on beating ourselves up, thinking that we don’t deserve it, that we’ve failed, we’ve fallen, we’re terrible people. And some of our kids can be extra hard on themselves. So to be able to assure them God has shown in his Word over and over that if we come with genuine repentance and say, "I know I was wrong. I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven. But I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins, which means he already lived the perfect life that I will never be able to live."

We need to help our children see repentance is seeing our sin, confessing our sin, receiving God’s forgiveness, and then turning from it.

And so there’s great freedom in knowing that we can come just as we are—with all of our fallen nature—and admit, "I was wrong. I messed up. I hurt somebody. I did what I know was wrong, and I need forgiveness." And then to be able to say, "Even though I know I don’t deserve it and I don't feel like I deserve it, I can have faith that Jesus has already completed the consequences I deserve on the cross. And so I can walk in the freedom of knowing that truth."

But then encouraging them too: What’s the other side of repentance to look like? It's to look like change. We can say we’re sorry all day long, but if we don’t really see that what we have done has hurt somebody or if we don’t grieve over that pain we caused and we don’t turn from it, then we have to ask, Is there genuine repentance in there, or is it just that I’m sorry I was in trouble? We need to help our children see repentance is seeing our sin, confessing our sin, receiving God’s forgiveness, and then turning from it.

In speaking of the Old Testament, I heard someone say it talks a lot about returning to God and how God often referred to repentance as “return to me.” And so part of that is turning from our sin and helping our children see the wrong they did.

Maybe you lied to Dad. Okay, what does that look like next time? How can I go about this next time? Maybe I’m afraid again, I’m going to get in trouble. But learning that last time, I tried to get out of it by lying and that didn’t go very well. So how can I change that choice next time and ask God’s help to be honest, even though I know those consequences feel scary, and to see that there’s actually great freedom in that?

Again, these are not easy questions, and often we have to repeat these things over and over again to our children and to ourselves. But the good news for us as parents is we are learning right along with our kids. And I think if we can be humble enough to acknowledge that to them, they will actually be much more likely to receive that truth from us.

Sarah Walton is the author of The Long Road Home: A Tale of Two Sons and a Father’s Never-Ending Love.

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