Matthew 19:13-15 “Let the Little Children Come”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ The Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS,
03 Mar. 2013 and 13 August 2023

Translation

19:13 Then children were led toward Him

in order that He might place His hands upon and pray for them,

but the disciples reprimanded them.

19:14 Then Jesus said,

“Let go of the children

and stop hindering them from coming toward me,

for the kingdom of the heavens is [made up] of these sort [of individuals].

19:15 And after placing His hands upon them, He proceeded on from there.

Introduction

As we look at our next passage in Matthew, let us remember the context of it: Jesus has left His residence in the town of Capernaum at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, and He is heading toward Jerusalem. We are reading about several conversations He has along the way. Currently Jesus is in someone’s house talking with His disciples (Mark 10:10). In the latest dialogue, He has just affirmed both singleness and marriage when appropriate. Now, if you’re going to affirm marriage, you’re going to have to deal with children, so, appropriately enough, a dialogue regarding children comes next:

Exegesis

19:13 Then children were led toward Him in order that He might place His hands upon and pray for them, but the disciples reprimanded them.

Τοτε προσηνεχθη¹ αυτω παιδια ‘ινα τας χειρας επιθη αυτοις και προσευξηται. ‘Οι δε μαθηται επετιμησαν αυτοις.

• The word for “children” here in the Greek New Testament is “paidia,” which Matthew consistently used for young children.

  • It’s the word Matthew used of Jesus at around 1 year old when the magi visited Him and then Herod sent soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem (Mt. 2:8-14).

  • It is also the word used of Jesus when he was around 2 years old and Joseph moved the family back from Egypt to Israel (Mt. 2:20-21).

  • The word is later used by Matthew to refer to children that were old enough to talk and sing as they played games in the marketplace (11:16), and then at the feeding of the 5,000, of children who ate the bread and fish that Jesus provided (14:21).

  • In Luke 18:15, we see a parallel passage to Matthew 19:13 where Luke records that it was “βρεφη/ infants, babies” who were brought to Jesus to receive His touch. The Greek word brephe used in Luke’s account shows up only 5 other times in the Bible, always referring to a baby around the time of its birth².

  • Luke’s more specific term should govern the meaning of the more general term Matthew used. These were just babies.

• Only one chapter ago, Jesus had said to His disciples, “…whichever one [of you] will humble himself like this child (paidia), it is this man who is the greater one in the kingdom of the heavens, and whoever shall receive this child on the basis of my name is receiving me myself!” (Mt. 18:4-5, NAW) The disciples should have remembered this and received the children that were being led to Jesus! Why didn’t they?

  • Matthew may have felt some anxiety as babies were brought into the room, snot running from their noses, spitting drool all over the place, crying and making extraneous noise, their feet and hands dirty from playing in the dust. Matthew was probably one of the disciples who said, “Hey, I’m sorry, but Jesus is tired, and that’s why He’s resting here in the house (Mark 10:10). Furthermore, if we let you do this, then every parent in the country is going ask, and we’ll never see the end of it! Besides, Jesus is teaching us disciples important things; take your kids somewhere else to play; they are bothering us!”
    “But wait,” the mom says, “we wanted Jesus to pray for our children!”

• Notice that the children did not come of their own accord; they were “brought” or literally “led toward” Jesus. The children’s guardians or parents wanted Jesus to bless their children by laying His hands on them and praying for them. I suspect that these were the children of the family who was hosting them.

  • These parents had been blessed by Jesus’ healing and teaching ministry, and they wanted their children to “also” receive the same blessings they did (The word “also” is in Luke’s parallel account).

  • These parents believed that Jesus had the ability, as the Son of God, to command blessings upon children, or they wouldn’t have asked Jesus to bless them.

  • I can reach no other conclusion than that these were the children of believers.

  • So they brought their children to Jesus. These parents were doing the right thing.

  • In so doing, these parents set a powerful example to all of us who believe in Jesus: let us bring our children – and everybody else we love – to Jesus so that they can be blessed by Him just as we have been!

• But wait, mightn’t that have been a bit presumptuous? Was there any reason for these parents to hope that the blessings they experienced from God as a result of their own personal faith could ever be passed on to their children without their children first understanding the gospel message and expressing their own personal faith first? Actually yes. These parents had plenty of Biblical basis for expecting that Jesus could bring spiritual blessings to their children: (I only have time to mention a few, but there are many more!)

  • In Deut 4:37, God said, “because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their seed after them”³

  • Deut 7:9 Know therefore that Jehovah your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations,” not just to the one generation currently expressing faith in Him but to a thousand generations in a row! How can this be?

  • Deut. 29:14, 15 …I make this covenant and this oath… also with him that is not here with us today… 22 the generation to come, your children that shall rise up after you, and the foreigner that shall come from a far land… 29 The secret things belong unto Jehovah our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children. (Hold that thought until we see Peter quote this passage to an international audience in the book of Acts.)

  • Deut. 30:6 And Jehovah your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your children, to love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that your may live. (This is New Testament language!)

  • A thousand years later in the prophets, Malachi wrote, “…guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth... Did He not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? Godly offspring!” (Mal. 2:15, ESV)

  • In the New Testament, Peter preaches in Acts 2:33-39, “[you who repent and are baptized] shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto Him.”

  • That’s why Paul later on in 1 Cor. 7:14 states that the children of a believer are in a special relationship with God: they are “holy,” whereas the children of unbelievers are “unclean.”⁴

• Because these promises are not only for you who believe but also for the children of believers, believing parents are commanded by God to make every effort to teach the faith and cultivate it in their children: (Again, there is only time to mention a few)

  • Deut 4:9-10 Only take heed to yourself, and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things which your eyes saw, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but make them known unto your children and your children's children...”

  • Deut 6:4-9 “you shall love Jehovah your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when thou walk by the way, and when thou lie down, and when thou rise up…”

  • Deut 11:18-21 Therefore, lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul; and bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. And you shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. And write them upon the door-posts of your house, and upon your gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children…

  • Deut 31:10-13 “At the end of every seven years, in the set time of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before Jehovah your God in the place which He shall choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. [But hire babysitters for the little ones because they could never sit still long enough to listen to the whole Penteteuch read, and besides, they wouldn’t understand it anyway… NOT!] Assemble the people, the men and the women and the little ones, and thy sojourner that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear Jehovah your God, and observe to do all the words of this law; and that their children, who have not known, may hear, and learn to fear Jehovah your God...

  • Furthermore, God states it negatively, making the same point: Deut 7:1-5 You shall not intermarry with [the Caananites], giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, [Why?] for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of Jehovah would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire… Not only did God want His people to teach their children His ways, but He also wanted them to remove any competing religious influences so that the children would walk with God.

  • Deut 4:40 Therefore you shall keep His statutes and His commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you...

  • Is it any wonder then that in the New Testament, fathers are commanded, “provoke not your children to wrath: but raise them up in the chastening and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4)

  • Did those parents who brought their children to Jesus have any grounds to expect God to bless their children? You better believe it!

• But the disciples were not tuned in to all this. They rebuked these faith-filled parents for imposing upon Jesus to bless their children.

19:14 Then Jesus said, “Let go of the children and stop hindering them from coming toward me, for the kingdom of the heavens is [made up] of these sort [of individuals].”

‘ο δε Ιησους ειπεν ⁵ Αφετε τα παιδια και μη κωλυετε αυτα ελθειν προς με⁶ των γαρ τοιουτων εστιν ‘η βασιλεια των ουρανων.

• Jesus was “moved by indignation” (ATR) to see His disciples turning the children away (Mark 10:14).

  • Why should Jesus be angry about this? Because He intended for His blessings to flow to the children of those believers, and yet the disciples (who were supposed to be facilitating His will on earth) were doing the very opposite of what He wanted!

  • Are any of us ever guilty of that? Ouch!

• So Jesus yells two commands at His disciples which amount to the same thing stated positively and negatively:

  • aphete = suffer^KJV/ allow /let [go]/release these children. “Let your attitude toward those children and their parents be one of permission, welcome, and freedom of movement toward me!”

  • And, stated negatively: me kwluete = stop forbidding^KJV/hindering^NAS,NIV,ESV.

    • Elsewhere in the Bible this word is translated “hold back/ put restraints on/ keep away/ withhold/ prevent/ refuse.”

    • Thayer’s Greek lexicon traces the root of this to a word that means to punish by withholding privileges. The disciples were trying to punish these parents and children by “grounding” them from Jesus, and Jesus is saying, “Whoah! Don’t do that! They belong with me!”

    • “Stop doing those things that would get in the way of them coming toward me!” Is there anything that you are doing which might get in the way of the children in this church being blessed by Jesus?

• Next, Jesus gives the reason why His followers should take this attitude toward the children of believers. However, the wording in Greek could be interpreted two different ways, as reflected in the different versions of our English Bibles:

  • The KJV translated it “of such is the kingdom” (speaking of who is in the kingdom),

  • But the NAS, NIV, and ESV translated it, “to such belongs the kingdom” (speaking of ownership of the kingdom)

• I side with the KJV and interpret it as who the kingdom is made up of:

  • This kingdom of heaven is the same as the kingdom of God⁷, as the parallel accounts in Mark and Luke make clear. (Matthew, who pitched his gospel toward Jews followed the Jewish tradition of avoiding using the term “God” out of respect for the name of God, so he tended to say “heaven” instead.)

  • A kingdom can only be owned by a king, not by his subjects. A kingdom includes those who acknowledge the king to be king indeed – in this case God.

  • Mark and Luke’s parallel accounts mention an additional comment from Christ which seems to confirm my interpretation, “Whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall never enter it.” (Mk. 10:15/Lk. 18:17, NAW) This explanatory comment indicates that Jesus was speaking about who can enter the kingdom rather than who owns the kingdom: It is those who, in childlike fashion, humbly submit to Jesus as their king.

• Did Jesus mean then only adults who are like children in faith could be in the kingdom, but not these actual children themselves?

  • It stretches the limits of credulity for me to believe that Jesus would have used these children as an object lesson of who is in the kingdom while at the same time denying that they could actually be in the kingdom because they couldn’t articulate the theology of substitutionary atonement.

  • As Matthew Henry put it in his commentary, “‘Of such,’ not only ‘of such’ in disposition and affection (that might have served for a reason why doves or lambs should be brought to Him), but of such, in age, is the kingdom of heaven; to them pertain the privileges of visible church-membership, as among the Jews of old.”

19:15 Then after placing His hands upon them, He proceeded on from there.

και επιθεις αυτοις τας χειρας επορευθη εκειθεν.

• Jesus considered children who had not come to Him by their own will to be worthy of His welcome and blessing.

• Mark 10:16 adds that Jesus “took the children into His arms,” rather than merely blessing them at arm’s length. He enthusiastically received the children of these believers!

• Then Jesus epithet/ put^KJV/placed^NIV/lay^NAS,ESV [hands] on and prayed for them.

  • This may have included healing sick children (cf. Matt. 9:18), or simply praying blessings on them (Gen. 48:14).

  • Note that if Jesus were to lay both hands on each child (the word “hands” is plural in our text), then Jesus would have to have given individual attention to each child. This was not an impersonal, “God bless all these children” sort of prayer.

• Now, what sort of blessing would Jesus have prayed for a child?

  • Could He have, in good conscience, asked God to bless them if their eternal destiny were uncertain? Can you see Jesus hugging a child and saying, “O.K. little Joshua, I don’t know if you are going to choose me or not, so I don’t know if you are going to live long and have a happy life or not, but if you pray for me to come into your heart when you get old enough, then I will reward you with a long and happy life.”

  • Or how about this? “Oh Miriam, I can forsee that you are going to hell, so I’ll just pray for you to be able to grow long, beautiful fingernails.”

  • No, He said, “of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Whether you take that to mean that the kingdom of heaven is owned by such or whether you take it to mean that the kingdom of heaven is composed of such, He is saying that they are “in” and not to be considered as outside the kingdom of heaven, and His blessings would be commensurate with that.

• Matthew Henry noted in his commentary on this passage that once the children were blessed, Jesus’ mission was completed at that house: “As if He reckoned He had done enough there, when He had thus asserted the rights of the lambs of His flock, and made this provision for a succession of subjects in His kingdom.” It’s an interesting thought.

Applications

1. It is on this basis that many Christian parents baptize their children⁸,

   • recognizing their children to be included in the bounds of God’s kingdom (Mt. 19:14),

   • recognizing that their children are in a holy relationship with God (1 Cor. 7:14),

   • and recognizing that their children are expected recipients of the blessings of God as they are raised in His ways (Acts 2:39).

   • In infant baptism, the parents ask God to give their child a clean conscience through the work of Jesus Christ as per 1 Peter 3:21, and then trust the Holy Spirit to do that work in their child’s life.

   • Is it possible for a child to reject this inheritance and forfeit this promise? Of course. (Heb. 6:4-8 is used to argue against the perseverance of the saints, but I believe it refers to people like the children of believers who have tasted of the blessings of the Spirit yet reject the inheritance of their parent’s faith.)

   • The fact that some baptized people – even some baptized as adults – later reject Christianity does not ultimately compromise baptism. (When I did evangelism at the Chattanooga Flea Market on Sunday mornings just before our church worship service, it seemed like half of the people there were backslidden Baptists, and the other half were Seventh Day Adventists who went to church on Saturday!) We baptize people when the circumstances give the church every right to expect those recipients of baptism to be saved, but sometimes the chickens came home to roost and we realize that the recipient of baptism was not chosen by God for salvation after all, and through the process of church discipline, both the adult who made an empty confession of faith and the covenant-breaking child are cut off from the membership of the church (although we may still hope in the grace of God to bring them back⁹).

   • But whether or not you go so far as to apply this principle of the inclusion of little children in the kingdom of heaven to baptizing your children, hear the words of A.T. Robertson, one of the most renowned scholars of N.T. Greek – and a Baptist who did not believe in infant baptism – in his commentary on this verse: “It is a tragedy to make children feel that they are in the way at home and at church.” “It is a tragedy to make children feel that they are in the way at home and at church.”

2. Let us bring our children – and everybody else we love – to Jesus so that they can be blessed by Him!¹⁰ How do we do that today? By bringing them to the Word of Christ and to the Body of Christ.

• This is why we include our children in our church. This Bible passage teaches us to consider our children part of the community of God’s people and to raise them in such a way that personal faith in Jesus is constantly nurtured in those children.

  • I want my children to sing the hymns along with me because I want them singing those songs from their hearts as adults to express their own faith.

  • I want my children to recite the Lord’s Prayer while they are children because I want them praying to God from their hearts according to God’s will, as adults.

  • I want my children to meet my Christian friends in church because I want them to have Christian friends as adults. Bring them to the Body of Christ!

• In parallel with that, let us bring our children (and other friends) to Jesus by exposing them to His word, the Bible – in church and in the home.

  • I want to discipline my children to avoid breaking the Ten Commandments so that they will desire to obey King Jesus as adults.

  • I want my children to hear the words of the Bible while they are little so that they will know God when they are adults.

  • But I can only teach so much with one sermon a week at church. I need the help of all the adults in this church to multiply the ministry of teaching God’s word so that everybody in this church is not only hearing God’s word on Sunday morning, but throughout the day every day, when they sit and when they lie down and when they walk by the way!

• “It is no wonder that the great mass of children are so wicked, when so few are put under the care of Christ by humble, praying, believing parents. Let every parent that fears God bring up his children in that fear; and, by baptism, let each be dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Whatever is solemnly consecrated to God abides under His protection and blessing.” ~Adam Clark For those who do not practice infant baptism, you can substitute “child dedication” in Dr. Clark’s statement and get much the same application. Jesus did not in fact baptize these children; all He did was bless them, so I recognize that it takes a step of inference to reach the paedobaptist position (just as it takes a step of inference to reach an anti-paedobaptist position). We can all bring our children to the Word of Christ and to the Body of Christ so that they will come to Christ themselves.

• “It is well for us, that Christ has more love and tenderness in him than the best of his disciples have. And let us learn of Him not to discountenance any willing well-meaning souls in their enquiries after Christ, though they are but weak.” ~Matthew Henry

3. Let us remove influences that could destroy our children’s faith.

• Why is it that 75% of Christian children leave the church? That’s what Dr. Voddie Baucham discovered after interviewing thousands of college kids with Southern Baptist backgrounds. I suggest that it is not only because their parents did not bring them to Christ, but also because there were stumbling blocks in their home life as well:

• Are your children spending time with people who can steer their faith off course? Are your children being influenced by books and movies and programs that ignore God and teach an unbiblical worldview? Get rid of those influences –better to enter heaven with one eye than keep both eyes and be cast into hell, right?!

  • By the way, our childrens’ faith is not merely protected by insulating them from ever hearing different ideas; it is not possible to control your children so tightly that they never hear any different ideas. Instead you can inoculate them against wrong ideas by discussing wrong ideas that they might encounter and preparing your children to resist those wrong ideas with the truth of God’s Word.

• In addition to outside influences that might hurt the faith of others, is there anything that you are doing which might get in the way of the children in this church being blessed by Jesus?

  • Our own hypocrisy, our unwillingness to trust God, and our disobedience to God can be huge barriers. Examine your life for anything you need to repent of.

  • Another thing that can cause our children to stray is busy-ness. If you are too busy at work and at watching the news, or too busy cooking and cleaning and typing on your computer, and if they are too busy with school and sports for you to teach them when you sit down to eat, when you sit around in the living room, when you walk by the way (or drive around), when you go to bed, and when you wake up, then you need to go to war against the busyness in order to nurture the souls of your children in the “discipline and instruction of the Lord”!

• Let us include children in the life of our church, pray for the children of the church, and do everything in our power to encourage them towards their own faith in Jesus.

Matthew 19:13-15 – Side-by-side Comparison of Text & Versions