How to Explain the Ten Commandments to a Child

The coloring page comes home in the backpack on a Sunday afternoon, two gray tablets with ten short lines on them, folded twice. It sits on the counter under a permission slip until Tuesday, when your son looks up from his dinner and asks what adultery is.

Somebody has to answer, and it is you, and the rice is getting cold.

Start with the two halves, not the list

Here is the thing that makes explaining the Ten Commandments to a child manageable: do not lead with the ten. Lead with the two.

Someone once asked Jesus to name the most important commandment, and he did not pick one off the tablet. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” called that the first and greatest, then added, “And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” He finished with a line worth memorizing yourself: “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40).

That is your framework, and it is not one an adult invented for children. The first group of commandments is about loving God. The second group is about loving people. Once a child has those two hooks, the ten stop being a random list and start being the detail work.

Ministry Spark makes the same point for children’s ministry leaders: helping kids understand what it means to love and respect God and each other matters more than getting all ten memorized in order.

The plain English version

When you do walk through them, keep the wording short enough to say in one breath. Something close to this:

• God comes first. Nothing else takes his place.
• Do not make something else and treat it like God.
• Use God’s name carefully, not as a joke or an insult.
• Take one day a week to rest and remember him.
• Treat your mom and dad with respect.
• Do not take someone’s life.
• People who are married keep their promises to each other.
• Do not take what is not yours.
• Do not tell lies about other people.
• Do not spend your time wanting what other people have.

That is the whole list, and most kids can sit through it once.

You do not have to make all ten apply to a seven year old

This is where parents tie themselves in knots. Ministry Spark puts it plainly: there is no need to stretch the rules to have a more specific application to the lives of the children you are teaching.

So when the adultery question arrives at dinner, “people who are married keep their promises to each other” is not a dodge. It is a complete and accurate answer for a seven year old, and the natural follow-up is silence, because he was mostly asking what the long word meant.

Two of them, though, land squarely in a child’s actual week. Telling lies about other people is playground life. And wanting what other people have is arguably the most relevant commandment in the house, the one behind half the fights over a sibling’s birthday presents. Spend your time there.

Say why they were given before you say what they are

Read the sentence that comes before the list. God introduces himself first: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).

The rescue comes before the rules. He got them out first, and then told them how to live. That order is the entire difference between a God who tests you and a God who has already come for you, and children pick up on it faster than you would expect.

Children’s Ministry Deals frames the commandments to kids as operating instructions given for their safety and good, while being honest that nobody keeps them perfectly, which is exactly what points back to Jesus. Both halves belong in the conversation. Good rules, given in love, that none of us pull off.

Roughly what to say at each age

• 2 to 3: Two ideas only. God loves us, and he gave us good rules. Love God, be kind.
• 4 to 6: The concrete ones, in kid words: tell the truth, respect your parents, do not take things, God comes first.
• 7 to 8: All ten, once, in plain language, plus the two halves so the list has something to hang on.
• 8 and up: The rescue-before-rules order in Exodus 20:2, and the honest part about nobody keeping them perfectly.

Tonight

Tell the story before you touch the list. Moses, the mountain, the smoke, the whole nervous camp waiting at the bottom, and God writing his people ten good rules with his own finger. Stop there. The list keeps until tomorrow, and a child who first meets the commandments as a story about a God who showed up will hear them differently for years.

God’s Ten Best Rules is one of the 82 stories in Bedtime Bible Stories, written four separate times so the version your child hears actually fits their age, with three discussion questions for afterward.