Digest of Biblical Civil Law

The Bible teaches that education is a parental function and God-centered, not a state function and state-centered.  Deut. 6:6-7 makes clear that education is not only a parental function, it must be anchored in the Word and Law of God.  This is what “raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4) means, a command also directed to the father.  In education, children are to be “under the hands of the father” (I Ch. 25:3,6).  The phrase “to pass one’s children through the fire to Molech” (Lev. 18:21, etc.) refers to devoting one’s children to the state, to acknowledging the priority of the state, as Rome later insisted.  The faithful of all ages reject such claims, proclaiming that “children are the heritage of the Lord” (Ps. 127:3), not wards of the state.
- Martin G. Selbrede, Education, Liberty, and the Bible, (October 2, 2008), at http://www.chalcedon.edu/papers/Education.pdf.