Teaching Kids About the Covenant of Grace with the Children's Catechism

In today’s lesson, we are covering three questions from the Children’s Catechism on the Covenant of Grace!

This post is in a series of posts working through the Children's Catechism! For more information, be sure to read the beginning of this earlier post.

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In case you missed it, an earlier set of questions (22-27, 41-42) covered the Covenant of Works and has a matching coloring sheet as the one you’ll get in this post! You can check out that post here to do them together!

Children’s Catechism Questions

Q. 43. With whom did God the Father make the covenant of grace?
A. With Christ, his eternal Son.

Q. 44. Whom did Christ represent in the covenant of grace?
A. His elect people.

Q. 45. What did Christ undertake in the covenant of grace?
A. To keep the whole law for his people, and to suffer the punishment due to their sins.

Pre-Reading for the Teacher

To do a little bit of homework before you work on these questions with your kids, I would recommend you read this quick article from Ligonier titled “What is the Covenant of Grace?” It pulls in Biblical and confessional examples to succinctly explain the Covenant of Grace.

The article itself is an excerpt from Daniel Hyde’s book, Welcome to a Reformed Church. Hopefully by reading this short summary ahead of time, you’ll be able to explain it to your kids in your own words and in a way that resonates with them.

This is one of the riches of reformed theology that we can teach our kids, that we can see in Scripture how God has always saved his people by grace through faith in Christ alone.

It is this very truth that reminds us that we must show grace to our kids when they just. keep. disobeying.

We are sinners. They are sinners. We are all in need of God’s grace.

Our attempts of law keeping (and as we parent, even our attempts at law teaching) will never make us right before God or allow us to be perfected here on Earth. It is only through the work of Christ that we can have peace with God. Praise be to God that we have such a Savior!

Discussion, Coloring Page, and Songs

With your kids, you can:

Talk through the questions.
Talk through and memorize Ephesians 1:4-5:
- “Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” (ESV)
- You can also grab this (and 39 other Scripture passages) in the pretty printable available here.
Color the Covenant of Grace Coloring Sheet which you can download for free from the Resource Library!
Listen to these songs:
- Ask Me Whooo Questions 46-48 (because the question numbering and wording is slightly different in that version - you can read more about that here)
- Although not about the Covenant of Grace specifically, this would be a good time to sing any hymns your kids know (or that you want them to know) with the word “grace” included. My kids are currently singing Grace Upon Grace and Come Thou Fount.