Who Does the Kingdom of God Belong To?

Who does the kingdom of God belong to? In Luke 18:15–17, Jesus welcomes children. He takes them up into his arms, blesses them, and declares that the kingdom of God exclusively belongs to those who are like little children. This is a difficult text for us to hear, for several reasons.

Sometimes this is due to over familiarity with this passage, such that it can seem quaint, cliché, or sentimental. But often we cannot hear it because we have become cynical. Rather than being attentive to God with earnestness and sincerity, we are jaded. Underneath our smirk, there might well be a broken heart. Due to our sin, our suffering, our broken dreams, or some combination of them all, being ‘child-like’ might feel hopelessly out of reach for us.

Differently, it can be hard to listen perceptively to this passage because of our attitudes towards children. 

On one hand, children and childhood are superficially idealized. Popular culture today often pays lip-service to children and childhood; in some ways ‘youth culture’ is increasingly becoming the culture of adults, from the ‘Disney adults’ trend to the juvenlization of American Christianity. Decades ago, concerns were being sounded about adolescence being extended well into adulthood for many. 

On the other, the shadow side of the trend above, children have been treated with contempt in both the ancient and modern worlds. In his 2005 book When Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, O. M. Bakke notes how the spread of Christianity overturned attitudes towards children in the Greco-Roman world, most notoriously the exposure of unwanted infants, and the several terrible ways that children were exploited. Sadly, in the modern world some of those attitudes towards children have re-emerged, especially when the value and worth of human beings is reduced to our ability to produce, consume, our expressive ourselves. 

Writing about the feast day of the Holy Innocents last year, Wes Hill notes from writer B. D. McClay’s bluntness about an uncomfortable but unavoidable observation, that people hate children. Not only in faraway places, but all too often in our local contexts in advanced industrial societies, the hospitality and care Jesus exhibits in this passage is denied. What is a child? What are children for? Are children’s qualities desirable, or undesirable? 

It is unsurprising, in their context, that the disciples rebuke those who are bringing children to Jesus; what is shocking is Jesus’s hospitality for these children. The church’s contemplation of what Jesus says and does with children in this passage ultimately led to the assumptions about childhood and rights for children that are common even to non-Christians in the Western world today. 

The narrative itself is ultimately quite simple. While Matthew and Mark include this story, Luke stresses that they are quite young children, “infants.” Helpless infants are being brought to Jesus. The disciples, astonishingly, rebuke this practice. Perhaps they are overly concerned with efficiency or optimizing Jesus’ time and energy. But Jesus is extremely inefficient. What kind of people does Jesus make time for? Here, Jesus welcomes very young children, declares the kingdom of God belongs “to such,” that is, to those who are children and those who are like children.” Mark adds an arresting image, that Jesus “took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (10:16). In this stunning moment, Jesus issues an astounding rebuke to the world in our conceitedness and pride: only those who receive the kingdom like a child enter it. How do we do that? We should be wary of drawing abstractions about children in general and then projecting those onto this passage, but we are given crucial context for discerning what it means to receive the kingdom like a child in the surrounding stories in Luke ch. 18. 

All of these stories are about the same basic thing: the posture of heart needed to receive God’s kingdom. In vv. 1–8, Luke introduces the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow by expressly telling us its main point: we “ought always to pray and not lose heart.” In vv. 9–14, Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector summons us not to trust in ourselves, but to come to God in an unassuming and unpresumptuous manner, with penitent hearts. In vv. 18–33, the story of the rich young ruler summons us to regard God as our chief treasure, and unconcerned with fleeting wealth. In vv. 35–43, the story of the blind beggar reveals a heart that is unconcerned with pleasing others. This one is especially notable, because it closely parallels Jesus’s encounter with the children. The blind man is crying out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He wants to see Jesus. And the people in front of him rebuke him. But rather than complying, he starts crying out even louder than before, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” This is certainly a moment of desperation on the part of this man; those rebuking him seem to think this is an embarrassing moment, or at least a highly inconvenient one, which he should be ashamed of. But they are wrong; Jesus explicitly commends his faith. All of this is crucial context for what it means to become like a child in vv. 15–17: namely, like a helpless and trusting child, the kingdom of God requires a heart that is persistent, penitent, and so captivated with Jesus as to be unconcerned with wealth or the opinions and opposition of other people. 

We become adopted children of God through our union with Christ. We who “by nature are children of wrath” (Eph 2:3) due to our sin become adopted sons and daughters of God by grace (Gal 4:4), because the Holy Spirit unites us with the only Son of God by nature, such that we now address God in him and with him, as “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15).

As the Hymn, “Jesus Friend of Little Children” notes, the incarnate Word knows what it is like to be a child. And as the Christmas hymn “Jesus, Joy of the Highest Heaven” sings, though the eternal Son of God took to himself a truly human nature, he knows what it is like to be a crying baby taking his first breath. As a child, he was “Held by His mother, helpless/ Close to her beating heart” so that you and I might no longer be strangers but become a child of God in him.

Consequently, in the mystery of the gospel, we mature through childlikeness. To be sure, God calls us to become mature in our faith, and naïve towards evil. Paul writes: “Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature” (1 Corinthians 14:20). Simultaneously, in a certain way we nonetheless should also to be infants towards the good, towards God our heavenly Father, like the children Jesus takes in his arms and blesses in this passage, to whom the kingdom belongs. 

For an example of how we miss this, there is a beautiful tradition of Christmas liturgies beginning with the majestic hymn: “Once in Royal David’s City.” Speaking about the mystery of the one who is “God and Lord of All” being born in a stable and placed in a manger, the third verse speaks about the relationship between Jesus and his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom he honour and watched and loved, and was loved by: 

And through all his wondrous childhood
he would honour and obey,
love and watch the lowly maiden,
in whose gentle arms he lay:
Christian children all must be
mild, obedient, good as he.

The immature will dismiss such lyrics as a paean for the young to comply with the fifth commandment and have good manners. However, the mature will perceive in these lines that “Christian children” actually refers to us; Christ’s “wondrous childhood” is paradigmatic for the whole of the Christian life, as we continually rediscover the depths of what it means to be a child of God. That is actually the secret to the verses which conclude the hymn, wherein we advance as children as we grow further up and further into the place where he is gone in heaven:

For he is our childhood's pattern,
day by day like us he grew,
he was little, weak, and helpless,
tears and smiles like us he knew;
and he feeleth for our sadness,
and he shareth in our gladness.

And our eyes at last shall see him,
through his own redeeming love,
for that child so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heaven above;
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.

Not in that poor lowly stable,
with the oxen standing by,
we shall see him; but in heaven,
set at God's right hand on high;
where like stars his children crowned
all in white shall wait around.

The posture of heart Jesus summons us towards is something so demanding that many of us can scarcely imagine it. Psalm 131 aids our hesitating imagination with an image of such tenderness and beauty that should stir us to reimagine our life before God: 

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the LORD from this time forth and forevermore.

Despite all we must forsake that hinders our attentiveness and vulnerability to God from being like a weaned child with its mother, the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.