17  Jesus Loves the  Little Children  (19:13-15)

Then some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” And after laying His hands on them, He departed from there. (19:13-15)

All children raised in a Christian home or who have attended Sunday school when they were young, long remember singing such songs as “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” Those lovely sentiments are based on clear biblical truth. Jesus does love little children, as this text from Matthew attests. The parents of these children wanted Jesus to touch them and bless them, and He was more than willing to accommodate that desire.

Some years ago, a family in our church experienced a great tragedy. The mother and the two daughters were planning to fly the next day to New Zealand to join the husband and father, who was on a preaching mission there. As the wife was learning some new crotchet stitches to use on the long flight, the girls went outside to play. A few moments later the mother heard the screeching of automobile tires, but since there was no sound of a crash she thought little of it—until her older daughter came running into the house crying that her sister, Tanya, had been hit by a car.

The girl was unconscious but showed no sign of serious injury. While the mother bent over her, Tanya breathed a heavy sigh and turned her head to the side. At the hospital the neurosurgeon told the mother that the girl had suffered massive brain damage and had little chance of surviving. Relatives and friends prayed fervently and the mother kept a vigil with her precious daughter throughout the night, praying with great intensity that God would spare and restore her daughter. But she also prayed that, above all, God’s will be done, even if it meant taking Tanya to be with Himself.

A relative who was a doctor explained that Tanya’s breathing and heartbeat were functioning at the hospital solely by artificial means. “Her body is being kept working,” he said, “but Tanya isn’t there anymore. She is with the Lord.” With a radiant face her mother said to the Lord, “Have thy will, not mine.” To her friends and loved ones she explained, “I shall not forsake my Lord; because if I did, I would be saying Tanya is gone forever. I [will] do as King David in the Old Testament had done when his child was taken. He washed his face, changed his clothes, and went about his business, satisfied that God knew best.”

At that moment she determined there would be no more begging God to bring her little girl back. Tanya was in the Lord’s care, and her mother believed she had entered His presence when, lying unconscious on the street, she sighed and turned her head. The mother testifies that she was filled with an inner strength that was foreign to her. She recalled that for several months previously Tanya had prayed, “Lord, I want to go and be with You while I’m young.” When her mother asked why she made that request, Tanya smiled and replied, “Because I want to sit on Jesus’ lap when I get there; and I don’t want to be too big.” On remembering those words, said the mother, “New assurance and peace surged through my sorrowful soul. I was refreshed with a joy that we were all in good hands and that God hadn’t forsaken us for an instant.”

That mother and the rest of the family could rejoice even in the death of that beloved little girl because they knew where she had gone. Because she had been led to the Savior, she was now gathered into His arms, where she had longed to be.

Every Christian parent should take deeply to heart Paul’s admonition to bring up their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). If the children die, parents know where they are. If the children live, parents know to Whom they belong and for Whom they live.

Perhaps only a short while after Jesus had finished teaching the Twelve about marriage, divorce, remarriage, and singleness (Matt. 19:3-12), another group of people then came seeking His ministry. At that time some children were brought to Him, doubtlessly by their parents. Both Mark and Luke use the imperfect tense (“they were bringing”), indicating a continuing process and likely an extended period of time (Mark 10:13; Luke 18:15). When word spread that Jesus was in the area, parents were drawn to this Teacher whose love of children had become known throughout Palestine (cf. 17:18; 18:2-3; John 4:50).

The Greek word used here for children was paidia, a term referring to young children from infancy through perhaps toddler age. In his parallel passage, Luke tells us “they were bringing even their babies” (18:15).

But the disciples resented the intrusion into their private time with Jesus, and they rebuked the parents. The Greek verb behind rebuked could carry the idea of threatening, and its being in the imperfect suggests that the rebuke was as continuous as the bringing. As more and more parents brought their children to Jesus, the disciples continued to try to repulse them. Obviously the Twelve, who had spent the better part of two years living with Jesus and hearing every word He spoke and observing everything He did, did not yet fully share His mind and heartbeat.

Only a few days earlier Jesus had taken a young child in His arms in the disciples’ presence. Specifically for the sake of the disciples, who were in the midst of a dispute about who was the greatest in the kingdom, He had declared, “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:1-4). No doubt at countless other times the Twelve had witnessed similar expressions of Jesus’ tenderness and gentleness and His great patience with those who came to Him for help. They had seen His compassion pour out in an endless flow of healing, encouragement, and comfort.

They also knew that the Talmud taught Jewish parents to bring their children to respected rabbis for blessings and prayer. A father would customarily bring his infant child to the synagogue and pray for the child himself. He would then hand it to the elders, who would each hold it and pray for God’s blessing on the young life. Many churches today follow a somewhat similar pattern in prayerfully dedicating small children to the Lord.

Following in that tradition, those Jewish parents in Perea, “the region of Judea beyond the Jordan” (v. 1), brought their children to Jesus to be blessed. He not only was a popular, if controversial, rabbi known for His miracle working power but was also known for His compassion and His willingness to meet the needs of even the lowliest and most helpless people of society. If He were indeed the Messiah, as He claimed to be, those parents saw a marvelous opportunity to have their children blessed by the Lord’s own Anointed One, the Deliverer of Israel.

Because Jesus did not rebuke the parents or resist blessing their children, it is obvious that their motives were pure. They did not comprehend Jesus’ true greatness, and probably few if any, of them had put their trust in Him as Lord and Savior. But they recognized Him as a genuine teacher from God who loved them and who cared for their precious little ones. They therefore sought His intercession with God on their children’s behalf, in the hope that they might grow up as the Talmud admonished: strong in the law, faithful in marriage, and known by good works.

Jesus was not naively sentimental about children. Having created them, He well knew they are born with a sinful nature. Children have a certain innocence, but they are not sinless. He knew that they did not have to be taught to do wrong, that their little hearts were naturally bent toward evil. But He loved them with a special compassion and, because of their natural openness and trustfulness, He held them up as examples of the attitude required for kingdom citizenship (Matt. 18:3-5).

Those who share the mind of Christ share His concern and love for children. No church or Christian movement has prospered spiritually that has disregarded or neglected the care and training of its children. The heart that is warm toward the Lord will inevitably be warm toward children.

One writer has made this beautiful observation:

As the flower in the garden stretches toward the light of the sun, so there is in the child a mysterious inclination toward the eternal light. Have you ever noticed this mysterious thing that, when you tell the smallest child about God, it never asks with strangeness and wonder, “What or who is God? I have never seen Him”—but listens with shining face to the words as though they were soft loving sounds from the land of home? Or when you teach a child to fold its little hands in prayer, it does this as though it were a matter of course, as though there were opening for it that world of which it had been dreaming with longing and anticipation. Or tell them, these little ones, the stories of the Savior, show them the pictures with scenes and personages of the Bible [and] see how their pure eyes shine, how their little hearts beat. (R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1943], p. 743)

Jesus therefore said to the Twelve, and still says to His disciples today: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me. The Greek verb behind let . . . alone is in the aorist tense, whereas the verb behind do not hinder is in the present tense with a negative, indicating a call to stop something. The Lord was therefore saying, “Let the children alone, beginning immediately, and stop hindering them from coming to Me.”

From Mark we learn that Jesus was greatly indignant with the disciples (10:14). They frequently frustrated and disappointed the Lord by their insensitivity and selfishness, but this is one of only two or three occasions on which He actually became angry with them.

It is likely there were a number of reasons He was angry with them. He was angry because He loved little children with great affection, and He no doubt felt special compassion for them because of the sinful, painful, corrupt world into which they had been born and whose evils they would progressively have to face as they grew up. He was angry because He also loved parents and understood the special longings and anxieties they have for their children. He realized that loving little children was a way to their parents’ hearts. He was angry because no one, not even the tiniest infant, is outside the care and love of God. He was angry because of the disciples’ persistent spiritual dullness and hardness. And He doubtlessly was angry because the disciples presumed to determine who could and could not approach Him, the Christ and Son of God. It was neither within their prerogative nor their competency to make such choices. It was rank presumption for them to hinder the parents and their children from coming to Jesus. Specifically, He was angry because the kingdom of heaven belongs to, that is, it encompasses and is characterized by, children such as these.

There is nothing in the text to indicate that, as some claim, Jesus was isolating these supposedly elect children from others who were nonelect. Furthermore, He makes no mention of baptism, parental covenant, parental faith, or ecclesiastical rite. Nor does He mention personal faith on the part of the children, who were probably too young to have exercised such belief. The Lord was simply saying that those children, representative of all children, were a picture of the humility, dependency, and trust of those of any age who enter His kingdom.

The kingdom of heaven is the sphere of God’s rule in Christ through gracious salvation. For those who have reached the age when personal saving faith can be exercised, the kingdom is entered only by a divinely illuminated understanding of what it means to trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The implication of such as these is that for those who, because of young age or mental deficiency, are incapable of exercising saving faith, God grants them, in the event of death, entrance into the kingdom by the sovereign operation of His grace. When children die before they reach the age of decision, they go into the presence of Jesus Christ, because they are under the special protection of the sovereign King.

It was that glorious and comforting truth that David expressed when he lost his infant son born to Bathsheba. “I shall go to him,” David said, “but he will not return to me” (2 Sam. 12:23). While that statement may indicate little more than a resignation to their both entering the realm of the dead, the personal pronouns I and him, as well as David’s confident belief in the life to come (see Acts 2:25-28; Ps. 16:8-11), lend credence to the idea that he was confident of personal consciousness and identity in the life to come. David knew that he himself belonged to God and would one day enter His presence, and he had equal confidence that, when he entered the Lord’s presence he would meet the little son who had preceded him there.

It is not that small children are regenerate and then lose their salvation if they do not later receive Christ as Lord and Savior. It is rather that His atoning death is applied on their behalf if they die before they are able to choose on their own. It may be that the infant mortality rate is so high in many countries where the gospel has not yet penetrated because the Lord is taking those little ones to Himself before they can grow up in a culture where it is so difficult to encounter the gospel and believe.

But what an awesome responsibility faces Christian parents to make sure that their children are taught about Christ and are led to receive Him as Savior when they are able to exercise saving faith.

Just as the children’s parents requested, Jesus laid His hands on them and blessed them. In Mark’s account of this incident (10:16), the Greek form behind “blessing” is intensive, indicating a passionate fervency. Jesus must have smiled with infinite kindness as He looked into the faces of those tiny children. We do not know the specific nature of His blessing, but we can surmise that He promised the provision of God on their behalf and the care of God over each one of them.

Luke reports that Jesus then declared, as He had a short while earlier, “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it at all” (Luke 18:17; cf. Matt. 18:3). In other words, the kingdom is populated by only two kinds of subjects, those who die while little children and those who come in the trusting and humble attitude of little children. Only those enter God’s kingdom who come to Him in the simplicity, openness, dependency, lack of pretension, and lack of hypocrisy of little children. As John Calvin commented, “The passage broadens to give kingdom citizenship to both children and those who are like them.”

Some years ago a young Hindu man from southern India named Paul Pillai was converted to Christ and received a call to reach the northern part of his country for Christ. After attending seminary in the United States, he returned to India and founded Grace Bible College, dedicated solely to training young men called to the ministry.

After graduation, students are helped by the school for a period of some six months in establishing a local church in a village or city. One of their most effective means of winning converts, however, is a children’s home. Orphaned and abandoned children are taken to the home, where they are fed, clothed, and sheltered. They attend public schools in order to keep identity with their own culture, but they are also given concentrated study in God’s Word. Although adult Hindus and Muslims are extremely difficult to evangelize, those young children are open to the gospel, and many of them confess Christ as Lord and Savior. A large percentage of the boys from that home go on to attend the Bible college and become effective evangelists and pastors. Because they were reached with the gospel at an early age, they were open and responsive to the claims of Christ.

Five key words can prove helpful in giving guidance to parents and Christian workers in leading children to Christ. The first word is remember. We should remember that every child is created by God and, in that sense, already belongs to Him. “Thou didst form my inward parts,” the psalmist declared, “Thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. . . . I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. 139:13-14). All “children are a gift of the Lord; the fruit of the womb is a reward,” given to parents as gracious blessings (Ps. 127:3). It is God’s plan and desire that every child be returned to Him for His use. “Train up a child in the way he should go,” we are told in Proverbs, and “even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6).

A second key word is teach. Christian parents have the high calling of bringing up their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Timothy became especially useful to the Lord and to the apostle Paul in part because from childhood his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois, had taught him “the sacred writings which are able to give . . . the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15; cf. 1:5).

That pattern for godly instruction was set forth early in Israel’s history. Through Moses, God commanded His people to believe in and worship in the right way: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!” (Deut. 6:4). He also commanded them to personally and sincerely accept that truth with uncompromising conviction and devotion: “And you shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart” (vv. 5-6). More than that, they were commanded to teach godly truth and obedience to their children, talking about those things at home and in the community, from the time they arose until the time they went to bed (v. 7). God’s Word was to be taught to their children and exemplified before them.

As important as special times of family Bible study and prayer are, only consistent godly living by parents will clarify and cement God’s Word in their children’s minds, hearts, and lives. Parents should also provide visual reminders of God’s Word. Just as Israelites were to bind God’s Word on their hands and foreheads and write it on the their doorposts and gates (Deut. 6:8-9), so Christian parents can have Bible verses and plaques throughout the house to reinforce scriptural truths. When Bible stories and truths are sung, further reinforcement is given.

In that Deuteronomy passage God gave ancient Israel a final warning not to forget Him and His Word after they had come into the Promised Land and were surfeited with material blessings, “lest you forget the Lord who brought you from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” and “follow other gods, any of the gods of the people who surround you” (6:12, 14). Like their parents, children need to beware of the many false idols by which the world lures them away from the Lord.

A third key word is model Children not only need godly precepts put godly patterns. Eli the priest was a negative example to his two sons. Following the ungodly model of their father’s life, they went even to further extremes of immorality and sacrilege. When Eli rebuked them they paid no attention, partly because his rebuke was halfhearted and far too mild and partly because they had no respect for him due to his own compromised living (1 Sam. 2:12-25).

In a similar way, even the great David failed to be a godly example to his sons. His son Absalom was so wicked and rebellious that he sought to kill his father and usurp his throne. His son Solomon took hundreds of wives and concubines, including many foreigners whose pagan ways turned him from loyalty to the Lord. Not only was Solomon’s family shattered but also the kingdom. King Hezekiah disobeyed God’s instruction by showing the royal jewels to the king of Babylon, and his son Manasseh surpassed his father’s compromise and totally abandoned God’s law.

Writing in Eternity magazine (May 1979, p. 35), Tom Cowan observed,

Parents must be aware of the personal value of truth for their own sakes and not just for the sakes of their children. We cannot simply make a child believe in a truth because it’s good for them. Their perceptive spirits will sense when we are doing something to engineer or manipulate a certain response. Instead it is the authenticity of parental commitment to truth apart from the lives of children that brings the freedom to share and to pass on that truth to them. In other words, a mature motive for passing on truth is that as a parent I hold that truth to have value for my life, independent of my children and their response to it.

A fourth key word is love, so obviously imperative that little needs to be said about it. Only parents who lovingly weep with their children, rejoice with them, hurt with them, unselfishly serve them, show them genuine affection, and sacrifice for them will effectively influence them in the things of the Lord.

A final key word is trust. After parents have done everything humanly possible to raise their children in the way of the Lord, they must ultimately trust Him to make those efforts fruitful. Only the Holy Spirit can reach into the human heart, including the heart of a child, and only His power can give spiritual life and empower spiritual faithfulness.