The following is adapted from an address delivered at the Annual Parent-Board Forum by Pastor Jon Mark Olesky on September 9, 2024, at Trinitas Christian School.

Parents interested in bringing their children to Trinitas Christian School are often asked “What do you want for your children before you shoot them out into the world? What’s your greatest aim and desire for them as they move toward adulthood?” Questions like these and others like “Do my desires for my children align with God’s desires for my children? or “What is God’s will for my child’s life?” are worthwhile not only when beginning at Trinitas but also repeatedly as our children mature. As I hope we would all agree, helping our children do the will of God is the ultimate purpose of Christian parenting.

Let us begin with a basic question but perhaps answer it in a way we may not have thought about before. What are our children? Well, they are certainly not angels, nor are they animals. Our children are human beings made in the image of the Eternal Divine Being, God. This means that they were created by God to be like God. “Be imitators of God,” is the command found in Ephesians 5:1.

Another way to speak of our aim for our human children is that they must become Fully Human. Those who have studied biblical anthropology know - and biblical theologians agree - there has only ever been one fully developed human and that is the second Adam, the one “born of a woman, born under the law,” the man, Christ Jesus.

If there is anything that should unite a school with so many ecumenical backgrounds it should be Person of Christ. All our represented churches affirm Jesus’ full Divinity and Humanity as revealed in Scripture and affirmed in historic creeds. We affirm the Nicaean Creed: Christ was “true God from true God, incarnate human.” We affirm the Council of Chalcedon that further clarified Jesus’ Person as fully Divine and fully Human. To lose either His Divinity or His Humanity results in the loss of the gospel...and our children with it.

The danger for Christianity in our day, the truth under attack, is Biblical Anthropology. Many proclaim to not know what a human is. Great confusion surrounds manhood and womanhood. To guard the gospel and our children, we must return to Genesis where we find Adam as first human, but even more importantly, we must proclaim the significance of Christ being fully human. Hebrews 2 tells us our whole salvation depends on human propitiation for sin and a human High Priest of God. As the Christmas hymn puts it, “Day by day, like us He grew… He feeleth for our sadness, and He shareth in our gladness.”

Luke 2:52 states “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” This little verse serves as a litmus test of orthodoxy regarding Christ’s Humanity. One of the unique aspects of this passage is that it meets our children where they are in terms of human development. It is one thing for our children to be told to “be like Jesus” when we read of him doing miracles, flipping tables, and preaching sermons. It is another thing to be told to “be like Christ” when we see him as a twelve-year-old, growing and developing as they are – yet without sin. For our children who are not yet out in the streets and public sphere, not yet off alone battling the devil in the wilderness, for those who are still in those developmental years of childhood and teenage years, the Bible speaks to them by showing the perfect human, the prototypical human, the fully developed and developing human.

When we begin to speak of Jesus’ Childhood Development we must be careful to avoid saying anything the Bible does not say. Yet, we can assert what the Bible does say beginning with Luke 2:52 “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.” From this we learn...

1. Jesus grew in stature. From the womb to birth, to a baby, as a little toddler, child, teenager, adult...but also, he would have developed skills in the workshop with Joseph. There would have been mental, physical, and emotional development occurring.

2. Jesus grew in favor with men and women (his peers, siblings). He must have been a blessing to be around. It was only later in His ministry that people seemed to turn against Him.

3. Jesus grew in wisdom. Certainly wisdom with basic things like hard work ethic and learning to work with his hands, but also in spiritual wisdom.

4. Jesus grew in favor with God. Bible believing Christians have always affirm that as the Incarnate Jesus experienced suffering, temptation (yet without sin), and ultimately went to the cross to win our salvation, He grew in Divine favor which deepened and matured as he obeyed the Father. In some sense, this was always true, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” But in another sense, God’s pleasure in His Son deepened as the Son obeyed the Father which culminated especially in His finishing the work He was sent to earth to achieve.

Having said that, we arrive at the main argument: All Christ’s adolescent growth and development was necessary for him to successfully execute his divine calling on earth. He had to grow. If it was necessary for Jesus Christ to grow in order to accomplish his work on earth, it is most certainly necessary for our children to grow to accomplish their God-ordained mission/purpose on this earth.

One of the aims of classical Christian Education is the formation of the whole person. We seek to train not merely the intellect or modify behavior, but the deeper affections of the whole embodied personhood of our students.

To accomplish that aim, let us apply the same four categories of the development of the fully embodied Jesus Christ to the development of our children.

1. Our children must grow in stature. Christians who only think about their child’s spiritual growth forget that Jesus himself needed to develop in stature. Our kids must grow in how they handle their emotions. They must grow in how they control their bodies by developing skill and strength so they can support a future family and bless others.
   
   

2. Our children must grow in wisdom. Ancient philosophers believed wisdom is the root of all other virtues. Everything good we want to our children to embody, begins with God-honoring wisdom. This was the aim the father in Proverbs had for his son and it should be the aim we have for our children also.

3. Our children must grow in favor with man. Modern parenting says, “protect your children from all difficult social situations” but wise parents help guide their children through difficult social situations. They certainly do not swoop in and immediately rescue them from these opportunities for growth. Jesus had to learn how to handle opposition, relational struggles, rejection, humiliation, while maintaining love for not only his friends but also his enemies. Our children must learn these things as well and gain favor with man. Because honoring authority is important to God, it is also important to us at Trinitas. “Honor your father and mother” is no small command in Scripture. In fact, it is the foundation for all social interaction with the other authority figures our children will encounter.

4. Our children must grow in favor with God. Most importantly, we want our children from their earliest age to enjoy the favor of God. Everything they do - all the Scripture memory, songs they sing, the Morning Meetings, daily Proverbs, corrections of disobedience, God-centered teaching in classroom – all of it is directed at this end. The ultimate aim of these formative spiritual disciplines is that - by God’s grace - our children will learn to enjoy walk in the favor of their God.

May the Lord enable each of us parents and our teachers and administrators to help our children grow in true Christ-likeness.

Pastor Olesky is a member of the Trinitas Board of Governors and an elder at The Cross Church, a Reformed Baptist congregation of which he is the founding and lead pastor since 2008. Jon Mark and his wife Priscila have three children; Noah, Cora, and Judah at Trinitas. They have been at the school for ten years.