Preaching the Gospel to Adults and the Law to Children?

I appre­ci­ated this reminder, while read­ing The Bro­ken­hearted Evan­ge­list, by Jeremy Walker.

Too often, we fall into the trap of preach­ing the gospel to adults and the law to chil­dren: “God wants you to be good boys and girls.” It is not that there is no truth in that state­ment, but with­out the right con­text and qual­i­fi­ca­tions it is a recipe for hope­less­ness. If you were speak­ing to an adult, to which of them would you sim­ply say, “This is the gospel: God wants you to be a good per­son”? That is not good news for any­one! Our chil­dren need the pure gospel just as much as any oth­ers and are no less capa­ble of receiv­ing and believ­ing it.