#02 Jesus and children

[The great Advent promise in the Old Testament, some six hundred years before the birth of Jesus, reads, "For unto us a child shall be born, unto us a son shall be given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the Father of everlasting peace, the Prince of Peace" (Isa 9:6) How wonderful that the Advent promise is woven around the figure of a little child! All the other great religions began with the work of a man who had reached maturity, the so-called great founders of religions - Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed - became the leaders of a religious movement in their manhood, and Christianity began with a sweet, smiling, lovely child. It wasn't a new religion that began there, on Christmas Eve, with that little child, among or above all other religions, but something quite different: the kingdom of God began here on earth! Hence the many strange miracles around the manger at Bethlehem: the singing of the angelic host, the great, astonished adoration of the shepherds, and later of the wise men of the sunrise. That is why the Scriptures speak of such incomprehensible things as the conception of the Holy Spirit and the virgin birth, for the very birth of that child is the very birth of what our prophetic Word expresses: 'The people who walk in darkness shall see a great light; those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, light shall shine upon them' (Is 9:2). A heavenly light is shining in the valley of the shadow of death, that is, a new world is beginning in this old world. In Him and through Him the kingdom of God has come to us, so that into this earthly world of sin and death the pure, happy, bright, divine world of heaven has broken in and flooded. So with a child the kingdom of God began on earth.And now Jesus tells us in our basic verse that only with the spirit of a child can the kingdom of God be received: 'Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a child will by no means enter it'. A week ago today, in connection with this same Word, we spoke about bringing our children to Jesus. We ended then by saying that we adults must first become children if we do not want to block our children's path to the kingdom of God. Let this Word now show us adults the prerequisite and the key to the realisation of the kingdom of God, in us and around us: the need to become children.
Why does Jesus put the child before us, adults, for example? Oh, not because most of us think that the child is innocent - because just a week ago today we heard that the child is also a prisoner of sin, that he needs to be freed, that he needs to be seen as someone who needs to be rescued from the prison of death into which he was born - but because it is the child, the childlike state, that Jesus says is necessary for the kingdom of heaven! There is scarcely anything more sublime in this life on earth than a warm family home with loving parents, where and among whom one can truly be a child. Even if he is already out of it, he is surrounded from afar by the warmth of the love radiating from such a home. Even as an adult, how sublime it is to become a child again, even for a short time, in the old family home. To hear again the blessed, caressing voice saying, as it once did, "My dear son or daughter! Home, where I belong, where there is always a place for me, where I am best understood, most truly and unconditionally loved, where I am always most fully forgiven. An ageing man who was orphaned as a child once told me that, as a schoolboy, his heart was often broken when he saw one of his classmates walking hand in hand with his father. How many times he longed to have his little head stroked by a blessed hand, and to say to him, "My son! But he was to be a big boy very soon, and for a long, long life he missed never being anybody's little boy. We adults miss the same thing, that we are not children, little children compared to our Heavenly Father, but always too big, too clever, who do not need guidance, advice, instruction, fatherly care. We think we can manage our own affairs without Him. But there are only two possible attitudes towards God: either hostile or filial. We would do well to take a serious measure of our own attitude now!
What is the attitude of a child? Let us consider our basic idea! The disciples refused to let the little ones come to Jesus because they misjudged their Master. They thought their Master was a man of great learning whose job it was to teach. What do the children understand about the science of Jesus? They must be sent home and told by their parents to bring them to Jesus when their minds are sufficiently opened to receive the sublime teachings of Jesus. This misunderstanding of Jesus is still very common today. We believe that
Jesus' doctrines, teachings, great principles and theories are important. But that is not what is most important to us, it is Him, His person! Jesus' teachings and principles are invoked by people who have nothing to do with His divine person! It is true that the Lord Jesus was a teacher like no other in the world: "For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Mt 7,29). In Him, in His person, the kingdom of God has come to us. His presence means that God is here among us, and in His nearness man is sanctified! If one comes to Him like the little children in the story, who climbed up into His lap without a second thought, took His hand intimately, looked at Him with a pure, open gaze, so that one can seek the nearness of Jesus with such a kind, childlike trust, he lays his hand upon Him in blessedness. This is worth more than the most sublime sermon, than the most magnificent teaching. Do not think that you are a good Christian if you can explain everything to yourself intelligently and reasonably, if you can understand, say, the doctrine of predestination, or the book of Revelation. Your Christianity does not depend on understanding Jesus' theology well, but on sitting in his lap like a child, as whimsical and blurred as you are. Once you are there, and He enfolds you in His holy arms and blesses you with His pierced, bloody hands, then you begin to know Him truly. Then the divine mysteries of His teaching begin to be revealed to you, and you begin to experience the personal sanctifying work of Jesus.
Childhood is an unconditional, trusting, sincere surrender to the parent, the greater, the wiser. A child lets his mother feed him, undress or clothe him, put him to bed, play in front of his mother, sleep in front of her, or build a sandcastle. If he has been hurt, he runs to his parent and lets his tears dry, and if his mother kisses his sore little finger, it really does not hurt him any more. If his hand is dirty, he holds it up to his mother to wash it, if his clothes are soiled or torn, he knows that loving parental hands can mend everything. To be a child is to allow God to treat us as his mother and father treat their child. All your sins and mistakes, all the troubles you have made with clumsy hands, all the pain you have caused yourself or received from others, all the terrors you fear, are no longer such a perilous and irredeemable matter as soon as you become a child! Is there a difference between a child breaking a vase and an adult? It makes a difference to God! If you want to be a child, if you are truly a child of God, then all the harm and damage you have done can still be undone! Only those who want to grow out of His hand at all costs, who want to know everything better than Him, who don't need to talk to Him about their things, or who don't trust the Father to forgive them, are the ones God can't deal with. Or like Adam and Eve of old: they hide from Him or are hypocrites before Him! To be a child is to trust in the Father without limit - that is, through sin and death!
Whoever wants to be a child before God, must not at all costs want to appear an adult before Him! Nor do we like a child who is brought up by his parents to have unnaturally large habits and movements. Nor is it pleasing to God if His children behave in ways that are not worthy of a child. Let me not claim any merit before Him, let me not for my own goodness seem righteous before Him! For a child receives nothing not because he deserves it, but because he is loved! There is no piety or vanity of spirit that is fit for God. If a child very consciously wants to be graceful, charming and kind, he will achieve the opposite. For the charm of every child lasts only so long as it is done unconsciously and without calculation. Nothing is true that is forced, least of all religiousness!
And one more thing. There are children who are no longer children: they are precocious, too clever, and have seen and heard too much. He still looks like a child on the outside, but he lacks the naivety of a child. Very early on, he looked behind the curtain of his knowledge of right and wrong and became enlightened. He thought he had something to gain, but he only lost. There is nothing sadder and more wicked than to have dirty, earthy mud thrown into the fresh dew of the morning by cruel hands! Yet this is what happened to God's dear naive children there in Paradise, when they plucked the first fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The serpent, Satan, spoiled everything and destroyed the very thing that was God's purest, deepest delight. It hurt the Heavenly Father that his children were no longer children!
So now we understand why it is so important to God that we become children again. Why everything that comes from a childlike spirit is important. Because the more one becomes a child in relation to God, the more one draws closer again to the lost Paradise. The sincere, intimate, childlike state with God is the return to the lost Paradise, or as Jesus says: the Kingdom of God! "Unless you are converted and become like little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven", says Jesus (Mt 18,3).
But how can one who has once been enlightened become a child again, for the naivety of childhood that has been lost can never be made undefeated! Yes, it is indeed impossible, unless we are born again by God's wonderful work of regeneration. Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he will not see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3) God can give you, an enlightened adult, a new, childlike soul; God can make you, too, a sweet child of his. But this lost childlike spirit God has bought for us at a very high price: the blood of Jesus Christ! The merit of Christ is that, in spite of our sin and disobedience, we do not have to hide from God, as the first pair of men did after the Fall. We can call God our Father again. Being born again is something of a miracle that happens through faith in Christ the Saviour, the result of which is becoming a child again, becoming a child of God.
This is what Jesus came for, this is what he brought us, this is how the kingdom of God was brought near in him! It is to this kingdom that you belong! Here you are truly at home, this is your home. Here you too will find peace, fatherly consolation, forgiving love, blessed care, a Father always ready to help and to have mercy, as a happy child again, a child redeemed by the blood of Christ, a rich and happy Father!
Amen.
Date: 28 November 1948.