The service of songs was held in the compound in Kaduna where the old man had lived for almost forty years. Canopies had been hired, plastic chairs filled the yard, and a choir from his church sang the hymns he had loved. His children had flown and driven in from Lagos, Abuja and Manchester. They had prepared their tributes carefully: his years as a mathematics teacher, his time as a church elder, the scholarships he had quietly paid for, the way he called each grandchild by a pet name.
Underneath the tributes, there was tension. The estate was small: the house itself, a plot of land in the village and a modest account at the bank. Already there had been sharp phone calls between two of the brothers about who should have what. The eldest son, who had inherited his father’s position as head of the family, was carrying the extra weight of feeling that his father’s name in the church and the community now depended on him.
Near the end of the evening, the master of ceremonies said that a neighbour had asked to speak. An elderly man in a white kaftan and cap stood up. Most of the children knew him only as Malam Hassan from the house next door.
He spoke slowly. “Your father and I were not always friends,” he said. “In 1989 he built the wall between our houses. He built it on my land, almost one metre inside. He also cut down my mango tree to do it. I was angry, but I did not want trouble with my neighbour, so I said nothing. For seven years we greeted each other only with our heads.”
He paused. “Then one evening in 1996, your father knocked on my gate. He said he had heard a sermon in his church about a man called Zacchaeus. He said, ‘Hassan, I wronged you, and I have come to make it right.’ The next month he paid labourers to pull down that part of the wall and build it again on the correct line. He paid me for the mango tree. And he asked me to forgive him.”
The old man looked around at the children. “I am not a Christian,” he said. “But from that day, I knew your father’s God was real. And from that day, he was my brother.”
The eldest daughter told me later that none of the children had ever heard the story.
What children actually inherit
In Nigeria, inheritance is usually a matter of property. Families speak of the family house, the land in the village, the shares, the business, the will. Inheritance disputes fill our courts and divide our families. Brothers stop speaking. Widows are pushed out of their homes. Children born outside a marriage appear at the funeral with lawyers. Many of us know families where the death of a father was followed by years of bitterness over what he left behind.
Material inheritance matters, and we will look at what Scripture says about it. But every parent leaves something far larger than an estate. Children inherit the way their parents handled money, conflict, failure and grief. They inherit habits of speech, attitudes toward work, patterns in marriage, ways of treating the poor, and an impression of what God is like. Long after the house has been sold and the money spent, these things remain.
PunchlineThe question is not whether you will leave a legacy. You certainly will. The question is what it will contain.
A good man leaveth an inheritance
The book of Proverbs speaks plainly about material provision:
A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.
In ancient Israel, inheritance was mainly land, and land was held as a sacred trust. When King Ahab tried to buy Naboth’s vineyard, Naboth refused: “The LORD forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee” (1 Kings 21:3). The land had been allotted by God to each family, and it was meant to pass from generation to generation.
So Scripture honours the parent who provides for the future. Paul writes that “if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (1 Timothy 5:8). Careful saving, wise investment, a properly written will, and clear arrangements that protect a spouse and children from dispute: these are acts of godly love, not worldliness. One of the kindest things a Christian parent can do is to put his affairs in order while he is alive, so that grief is not compounded by conflict.
But notice the subject of the proverb. “A good man leaveth an inheritance.” The man’s goodness comes first. And the inheritance reaches “his children’s children,” which suggests something more lasting than a sum of money. A grandchild may never see a naira of what his grandfather saved. He will almost certainly feel the effects of what his grandfather was.
Another proverb makes the connection explicit:
The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.
“The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.” Integrity is a kind of inheritance. A father who was honest in business leaves his children a name they can carry into any office. A mother who was faithful in her marriage leaves her daughters a picture of covenant love. “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1).
Telling the next generation
Psalm 78 is one of the longest psalms in the Bible, and its opening verses describe the most important inheritance a family can pass on:
Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old: Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD , and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done. For he established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children: That the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.
Count the generations in verses 5 and 6. “Our fathers” were commanded to make God’s works known “to their children.” Those children were to pass it on to “the generation to come,” the children “which should be born,” who would in turn “arise and declare them to their children.” Four generations are in view. The psalmist is thinking about great-grandchildren he will never meet.
And notice the purpose: “That they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.” The inheritance is a hope. The psalmist wants more than a record of history handed down. He wants each generation to trust God for itself.
There is something else in this psalm we should not miss. After these opening verses, Asaph goes on to tell the story of Israel’s history, and much of it is a story of failure. The next verse says the children should “not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation” (Psalm 78:8). The psalm recounts the rebellions in the wilderness, the forgetting of God’s works, the provoking of His anger, and alongside them, again and again, the mercy of God. The inheritance being handed down includes an honest account of where the fathers went wrong.
That is a word for Christian families. “We will not hide them from their children.” Tell your children the works of God in your life: how He saved you, how He provided, how He carried you through sickness and loss. And where appropriate, tell them also where you went wrong and how God met you there. A family history that contains only triumphs is hard to believe. A family history that contains failures and grace points children to the God who is faithful when people are not.
NuggetThe most lasting inheritance is a hope. What you leave in your children’s hearts about God will outlast anything you leave in their bank accounts.
Repaired wrongs outlast
The sermon that sent the old man in Kaduna to his neighbour’s gate was about a tax collector in Jericho. When Jesus invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ house, something changed in the man:
And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham.
Zacchaeus had grown rich by cheating his own people. When grace reached him, he did more than feel sorry. He made restitution, and he went far beyond what the law required. The law of Moses required that a man who had wronged another restore what he had taken and “add unto it the fifth part thereof” (Numbers 5:7). Zacchaeus promised fourfold, the penalty the law prescribed for a man who had stolen and slaughtered a sheep (Exodus 22:1). He treated his dishonest gain as theft and repaid it accordingly.
Then Jesus said, “This day is salvation come to this house.” The word house means household. Zacchaeus’ children, servants and relatives would live from that day in a home with a different name. The man who had been despised as a cheat became known as the one who gave back.
Zacchaeus did not make restitution in order to be saved. He made it because salvation had come to him. Grace reached him first, and repair was the fruit. That is the order for every believer.
Repaired wrongs often become one of the most powerful parts of a family’s legacy. Children who watch their parents apologise, repay debts, settle quarrels and reconcile with estranged relatives learn something that no sermon can teach them. They learn that faith changes conduct. They learn that a wrong does not have to be permanent. And sometimes, as in Kaduna, they discover years later that a single act of repair has shaped how a whole community sees their family and their God.
Is there a wrong in your life that you have never put right? A debt you have quietly left unpaid? A relative you have refused to speak to for years? A business partner you cheated? A fence, figurative or literal, that stands on someone else’s land? If there are children you have fathered and not acknowledged or provided for, face that honestly now, with wise counsel, rather than leaving your family to discover it at your funeral. These things will become part of your children’s inheritance whether you address them or not. Address them while you can.
Knowing of whom thou hast learned them
In his last letter, written from prison shortly before his execution, Paul encouraged Timothy to hold on to what he had received: “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (2 Timothy 3:14).
“Knowing of whom.” The truths Timothy learned came to him through people. Just before this, Paul reminds him, “thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience” (2 Timothy 3:10). Timothy had watched Paul live, suffer and keep the faith. And earlier in the letter Paul has recalled the faith that lived first in his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice. Part of what gave Timothy confidence in the truth was the integrity of the people who had taught it to him.
Then Paul adds, “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). From childhood, Timothy had been taught the Scriptures. That was the deepest part of his inheritance.
Notice what Paul says those Scriptures could do. They were “able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” The parents and teachers were the channel. The Scriptures were the means. Christ was the Saviour. A godly legacy points beyond the parent. The greatest thing a mother or father can leave is a child who knows where to find Christ in the Scriptures and trusts Him personally. No parent can give a child salvation. But a parent can place the Scriptures in a child’s hands, live the faith before his eyes, and pray that he will come to trust the Saviour for himself.
What David handed to Solomon
As King David lay dying, he called his son Solomon and gave him a charge:
I go the way of all the earth: be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man; And keep the charge of the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and his testimonies, as it is written in the law of Moses, that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself: That the LORD may continue his word which he spake concerning me, saying, If thy children take heed to their way, to walk before me in truth with all their heart and with all their soul, there shall not fail thee (said he) a man on the throne of Israel.
This is a beautiful charge. “Be thou strong therefore, and shew thyself a man; And keep the charge of the LORD thy God.” David points his son to God’s ways and to God’s promise. Every father could wish to say something similar to his children at the end of his life.
But David did not stop there. In the very next verses, he handed Solomon some unfinished business. He reminded him of what Joab had done and said, “let not his hoar head go down to the grave in peace” (1 Kings 2:6). Then he spoke of Shimei, the man who had cursed him during Absalom’s rebellion and to whom David had sworn that he would not put him to death. “Now therefore hold him not guiltless ... his hoar head bring thou down to the grave with blood” (1 Kings 2:9). In between, he asked Solomon to show kindness to the sons of Barzillai, who had helped him in his hour of need (1 Kings 2:7).
There are complex questions of justice and kingship in that chapter, and Bible teachers have weighed them differently. But at the level of family, the picture is striking. A father handed his son his gratitude, which was a good gift. He also handed him his grudges. Solomon began his reign carrying out the unfinished quarrels of his father.
Many parents do the same. We pass on our quarrels with the family across the road, our resentment toward the uncle who took the land, our bitterness toward the church that hurt us, our unfulfilled ambitions for the career we never had. We tell our children, in effect, “Finish what I could not finish. Avenge what I could not avenge.” Children were never meant to inherit a load like that.
Pass on your gratitude. Teach your children to honour those who were kind to your family. But settle your quarrels yourself, or lay them down before God, and do not hand them to your children to carry.
Free to receive the inheritance
A godly legacy is a gift to be received, not a debt to be repaid. Children should be free to receive the good that their parents lived without being charged with preserving their parents’ reputation.
That pressure is common. The son of a well-known pastor is expected to take over the ministry whether or not God has called him. The daughter of a respected judge is expected to study law. The eldest son is told, often explicitly, that the family name now rests on him. Sometimes children are even asked to keep a parent’s secrets, to cover up wrongdoing or silence a victim, so that the family’s reputation is protected. That last demand is never acceptable. No child should ever be asked to keep quiet about abuse or wrongdoing to protect a family name. Where harm has been done, it must be brought into the light and the vulnerable protected, with the involvement of the proper authorities.
Ezekiel addressed a related problem. The people of his day had a proverb that blamed their troubles on their parents’ sins. God answered:
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
“The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son.” Each person stands before God for himself. A father’s sin does not condemn his son, and a father’s righteousness does not save him. That works in both directions. Children are not doomed by their parents’ failures. Nor can they live on their parents’ faith. Each generation must come to God personally.
Parents can help here by saying it out loud. Many children have never heard their father or mother tell them, “You do not have to be me. You do not have to do what I did. I want you to follow Christ, and to become the person He made you to be.” Those words can lift a weight a child did not even know he was carrying. They release a son to enter the ministry if God calls him, or to become an engineer if He does not, without feeling that either choice is a betrayal.
This frees children from an impossible task. A son does not need to become his father in order to honour him. “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12) remains God’s command, and honouring them includes speaking well of them where we truthfully can, caring for them in old age and carrying forward the good they gave us. It does not include defending their wrongs or living their life instead of our own.
And ultimately, the deepest inheritance any believer receives does not come from human parents at all. David wrote:
The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
“The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance.” Whatever our parents left us, good or bad, much or little, the believer has received a greater portion. In Christ, we are heirs of God. Some readers received very little from their parents, or received mainly pain. You are not without an inheritance. “Yea, I have a goodly heritage.” The Lord Himself is your portion, and from Him you can begin to build a legacy for those who come after you, even if no one built one for you.
Building the inheritance now
A legacy is not created at a funeral. It is built in ordinary days, decades before the service of songs. A few practices help.
Tell the stories. Write down how you came to faith, how God has provided, how He has helped your family through hard seasons. Tell them at the dinner table. Let your grandchildren hear them. “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4).
PunchlineRepair what you can. Make a list of wrongs you have not addressed and begin, prayerfully and wisely, to put them right.
Put your affairs in order. Write a will. Make sure your spouse is protected. Make your wishes clear and fair, so that your children are not left to fight over what you leave.
Bless your children with words. Scripture records that “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come” and that Jacob, “when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph” (Hebrews 11:20-21). Do not wait until you are dying. Speak blessing over your children now, specifically and often.
Live generously where they can see it. Children notice whether their parents give cheerfully or grudgingly, whether the house is open to visitors, whether the domestic staff are treated with dignity, whether the widow down the road is remembered at Christmas. Paul reminded the Ephesian elders of the words of the Lord Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). A generous home teaches that lesson every week.
And keep pointing them to Christ. The best legacy you can leave is a child who trusts the Saviour you trusted.
If you are reading this late in life, with regrets about what your children have already seen, take heart. It is not too late to begin. King Manasseh had done enormous harm before he finally “humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers” (2 Chronicles 33:12). His repentance came very late, and it did not undo every consequence. But it was real, and God received him. A grandparent who begins to tell the truth, repair old wrongs and speak blessing over the family can still change what the next generation receives. Many grandchildren have been shaped by the last twenty years of a life more than by the first fifty.
Late that night, after the canopies had been taken down and the last guests had gone, the children sat together in their father’s sitting room. Nobody spoke for a long time.
Then the eldest son said, “I have been so worried about keeping Papa’s name. I was afraid that if I did not do everything the way he did, I would bring shame on him.” He laughed a little sadly. “And all this time, the most important thing he did, none of us even knew about.”
His sister reminded him of something their father had said to him in the hospital, a few weeks before he died. She had been in the room. Papa had taken his son’s hand and said, “Do not carry my name like a load. Carry Jesus. He will carry you.”
The two brothers who had been arguing about the plot in the village settled the matter quietly that week, with less heat than anyone expected. One of them told his sister, “After hearing Malam Hassan, I could not fight over land.”
The house in Kaduna has since been sold. The money has been divided and mostly spent. But the eldest daughter keeps a photograph on her phone, taken on the morning of the burial. It shows the wall between the two compounds, and on the other side of it, Hassan’s grandchildren climbing a young mango tree that her father paid for in 1996.
“That,” she told me, “is what Papa left us.”
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Apart from money and property, what are your children likely to inherit from you?
- Is there a wrong in your life that you have never put right, and what would it take to address it?
- Have you told your children the stories of God’s faithfulness in your life?
- Are there quarrels, grudges or ambitions you have been handing down to your children to carry?
- If you received little good from your own parents, how does knowing that the Lord is your portion change how you build a legacy for others?
This Week
This week, write down three stories of God’s faithfulness in your life and share at least one of them with your children or grandchildren. Then make a short, honest list of any wrongs you have left unaddressed: a debt, a broken relationship, an unfair arrangement. Choose one and take a first concrete step to put it right. If you have not yet written a will, set a date this month to begin.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for every good thing I have received from those who went before me, and thank You that You are the portion of my inheritance. Teach me to live in such a way that my children and their children will be blessed after me. Give me the courage to put right the wrongs I have left undone, and the humility to tell my children the truth about my failures and Your grace. Keep me from handing my quarrels and burdens to the next generation. Let my children receive my legacy as a gift and not a load, and let them come to trust Jesus Christ for themselves. In His name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.