Real Hope: Jesus' Life & MinistryНамуна

Let the Little Children Come to Me

Your mind might be like mine. Different chunks of the Bible are strewn all over the place. I don’t always know what order to arrange these scriptures in, or how they fit together. Actually, are my recollections accurate or just impressions of God’s Word?

Children being brought to Jesus is one of the Bible bits swirling about some part of my brain. It’s a lovely scene of welcome – ‘Let the little children come to me’ – with the sour note of the disciples doing the opposite. But I get a shock when I go back to the Bible and see where this ‘kids and Christ’ moment shows up.

The brief interlude is sandwiched between one of the ‘divorce’ passages (Matthew 19:1–12) and the ‘rich young ruler’ (Matthew 19:16–30). On first glance, I scratch my head about what it’s doing here. Then I notice in the previous chapter that Jesus said, ‘you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’ unless you humble yourself like children (18:3–5).

As recorded throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus spoke a lot about what life is like in the kingdom of God. One marker of citizenship is not going after greatness as the disciples seemed to be doing earlier (Matthew 18:1). The ‘rich young ruler’ also appears consumed by what is great in the world’s sight. Instead, Jesus declares that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the other end of the spectrum – those who come humbly to Him, ‘such as these’.

Written by BEN MCEACHEN