What Kids Think About God Matters

Sam Luce and Hunter Williams, How to Teach Kids Theology: Deep Truths for Growing Faith (New Growth, 2025)

A. W. Tozer once said, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” If that is even close to being true, then children need to be taught theology as much as anybody does. This book aims to equip people to do that: to “provide leaders with the principles and practices needed to teach biblical passages and stories to kids with theological conviction and competency.”

The result is commendable in several ways. The writers don’t suggest dumbing down the content; the writers treat children as people who need to know the deep things of God, not just life advice or instructions on good behavior. The writers use questions and (mis)understandings of real, specific children as springboards for talking about particular doctrines. There is a good balance between the conceptual and the practical. The authors highlight the importance of God’s big story in our communication of theology and do not shy away from difficult ideas or passages. They distinguish between central, debatable, and peripheral doctrines and reflect on how to differentiate between them and teach children accordingly. The children’s author in me appreciated these emphases and would love to see them accepted more widely.

At times I found myself puzzled. There is a whole chapter on the difference between “simplifying” the truth (which the authors see as a problem) and “distilling” it (which is their solution), involving distinctions which I found oversubtle and—ironically—a bit complicated. I am not sure why the authors insist that the primary point of the Good Samaritan is not that we should love our enemies, which seems to me to be Jesus’s punch line in Luke 10:37, but that “our enemy loved us.” I also thought the book would include more examples of how we can use visual illustrations, objects, life stories, and humor in our communication, and more reflection on the way Jesus himself used these tools. Nevertheless, there is plenty of wisdom to learn here.

Christopher Ash, The Psalms: A Christ-Centered Commentary (Crossway, 2024)

Christopher Ash has written a masterpiece: a four-volume commentary on the Psalter that is devotional, scholarly, searching, and delightful. Some commentaries aim at academics, some at pastors, and some at ordinary believers. Many of the best combine elements of all three. But Ash has done something remarkable by writing in a way that is well-versed in the scholarly literature and history of interpretation—much of which he discusses directly in the ground-clearing first volume—yet filled with devotional warmth, theological insight, pastoral application, and evident delight in Jesus Christ. My wife and I have been using it for our daily readings over the last year, sharing (and occasionally squabbling over custody of) each volume.

The secret sauce is the books’ Christ-centered approach to interpretation. For Ash, it is not just that the Psalms reveal Christ in a general, typological way. Nor is it that some Psalms are messianic (22, 31, 45, and so forth) and some are not. The key to the Psalter is that Christ is the primary speaker, singer, and prayer of every Psalm, including the laments, imprecations, confessions, and songs of praise. He prays Psalm 51 as the representative head of the church, confessing our sins as they are laid upon him and asking for mercy. He sings Psalm 95 as our corporate worship leader, summoning God’s people across time to join him in celebration and obedience. He prays Psalm 119 as a fellow meditator on the beauty, wisdom, and sufficiency of God’s Word. So when we read the Psalms, we read them not only as our words or those of the original author but also as those of Jesus.

The result is a doxological tour de force. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Martin Luther, The Freedom of a Christian (1520)

At the end of his life, Martin Luther said all his books could be burned except for two: The Bondage of the Will and The Small Catechism. I think he was wrong about that. For me, his most powerful and compelling work is The Freedom of a Christian, which was written in the maelstrom of 1520 as the Reformation was exploding across Germany, and which set out several of his key ideas in pamphlet form.

It opens with the magnificent paradox at the heart of Luther’s theology (and, he would argue, Paul’s): “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” The doctrine of justification by faith means Christians are the freest of kings and priests forever, with no human power over us and no need of any work to save us. That argument occupies the first half of the pamphlet. But that same gospel also makes us servants of all humanity, as Luther shows in the second half: “If we recognize the great and precious things which are given us, as Paul says, our hearts will be filled by the Holy Spirit with the love which makes us free, joyful, almighty workers and conquerors over all tribulations, servants of our neighbors, and yet lords of all.”

The Freedom of a Christian is a short, punchy, and readable statement of many of Luther’s most influential teachings, including the relationship between faith and works, the priesthood of all believers, the marriage analogy for union with Christ, and the oft-quoted idea that although God does not need our works, our neighbor does. If you haven’t read it yet, do yourself a favor.

Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Follow him on Twitter @AJWTheology.

">Christianity Today.