Sometimes I cringe. I cringed a couple weeks ago when reading the children’s story during our worship service. The story was the delightful story of children playing with Jesus. The disciples were arguing with one another about who is the greatest in Jesus’ kingdom. In the story Jesus says to the disciples, “No matter how big you grow, never grow up so much that you lose your child’s heart: full of trust in God”. I cringe whenever I read this because it’s not what he said, but it is certainly what we think he said. Here’s the passage from Matthew 18:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:1-4 ESV
So often we hear or read a Scripture verse and we immediately assume we know what it says. In this case it’s clear that we must become like children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven, and what are children like? Well, they’re cute and squishy, but that’s not what he means, of course. We all recognize children are sweet and innocent and most of all, trusting. That last part is certainly true. What is sweeter than having a baby fall asleep in your arms without a care in the world? They are completely and utterly trusting you with their precious selves.
That is not what Jesus meant. Yes, children are delightful. They are sweet and there is a beautiful innocence about them, but the innocence comes from a lack of knowledge. As one former celebrity pastor once put it, your two-year-old would kill you, if he knew how! That may be a bit of an exaggeration but anyone who has dealt with an angry two-year-old recognizes where it comes from. If that isn’t what Jesus meant, then what did he mean?
This highlights the importance of studying not only the text of Scripture, but the historical background to a particular portion of Scripture. We believe in the perspicuity of Scripture, that Scripture is able to be understood by ordinary folk when it comes to the gospel of Jesus. The Westminster Confession of Faith explains:
VII. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.
Westminster Confession of Faith 1.7
So…what this means is not all Scripture is readily understood. The perspicuity or clarity of Scripture is seen in the gospel message being plain to all. Some Scriptures are harder to understand than others and require more rigorous study. One question that is always in my mind as I study the Scriptures is this: how did the original audience understand this text? What did it mean to them? What did it call them to do? How did they interpret the author’s words?
The problem for us is one of time and culture and one of a very different purpose in reading Scripture. So often we approach Scripture primarily from the perspective of application. What is this text telling me? How should I think about things in light of this text? God certainly speaks through his word and what he has to say to us through often leads to answering these sorts of questions but we tend to let application be the guiding principle of interpretation. This is why we tend to think Jesus said we should be innocent and trusting, like little children.
No one in the first century would have heard Jesus this way. In the ancient world children were valued not for their innocence but for their future productivity. They were valued because they were additional laborers, whether in the home or in the field. Children were seen by the people of Israel as a blessing from God, but not for their innocence and faith! They would one day contribute to the household.
How did the disciples understand what Jesus was saying? If we read the text we can see the context. What prompts Jesus to present a child as the model for entering the kingdom of heaven? The disciples wanted to know which of them would be the greatest. If the point he’s making with the child is child-like faith, what’s the connection, and how is it a rebuke of the disciples for their selfish ambition? New Testament scholar Michael Wilkins explains how they heard Jesus:
Jesus does not commend an inherent innocence of children. … Children were without right or significance apart from their future value to the family and were among the most powerless in society. Yet Jesus celebrates the weakness, defenselessness, and humility of children in contrast to the self-advancement displayed in the Twelve. If persons wish to enter the kingdom, they must turn away from their own power, aggressiveness, and self-seeking and call on God’s mercy to allow them to enter the kingdom of heaven. The child thus becomes a metaphor of the values of discipleship.
Michael J. Wilkins, ZIBBC
Rather than calling them to be sweet and innocent and have a “child-like faith”, Jesus is calling them to stop relying on themselves, to stop seeking their own advancement. As he says elsewhere, the one who seeks to save his own life will lose it but the one who loses his life will keep it. The kingdom of God is not about self-advancement. It’s not about living your best life now, with all the stuff. It’s not about being greater or more important or more significant than others. It’s not about being first but about being last.
In Mark 9 Mark tells this same story from a different perspective. Matthew begins with the disciples in Capernaum whereas Mark tells about their conversation on the way to Capernaum. They had been arguing.
And they came to Capernaum. And when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?” But they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. And he sat down and called the twelve. And he said to them, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”
Mark 9:33-35 ESV
Then Jesus calls a child and tells them to become like little children. The antidote to selfish ambition isn’t to become childlike, but to recognize you have no rights in the kingdom of God, beyond those rights that are granted to you. There are no natural-born children in the kingdom of God. All are adopted into God’s family and therefore have been chosen by him to be recipients of his mercy and grace. This leaves no room whatsoever for posturing and clamoring for position or status or influence.
In 1 Corinthians 3 Paul addresses the issue of division in the church. There was jealousy and strife. People were clamoring for status and position in the church. Paul pushes back hard against this and tells them they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God himself dwells in their midst. Why do they need to posture? The foolishness of this sort of posturing should be self-evident. He continues his thought in chapter 4, then asks two rhetorical questions:
What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?
1 Corinthians 4:7b ESV
He says, essentially, they entered the kingdom of God as babies, with everything they ever had given to them. No child is born holding some possession in his hand. From his first breath everything the child has is received. Remember Paul’s context: division. Posturing. An attitude of superiority. All of it comes crashing down with the reality that all they have was received as a gift to them. Therefore no one can boast! Except in the Lord.
The truth is God is our Father. We are his children. None of us has any rights that our Father has not given to us, and he has given us all things in Christ. What need is there for posturing or for carving out our own individual kingdoms? What need is there to try to gain more than we have been given?
The Lord Jesus says we must become like children in order to enter the kingdom of God. This means the only thing we can offer the Lord is what the Lord has already given us. The good news in all this is this is precisely what the Lord demands of us. He wants the stuff, whether resources like money or time, or life itself, to be given back to him for his purposes and for his glory. They aren’t ours anyway, for we are just, you know, children.