posted by R. Fowler White
When Bible teaching and articles of the historic Christian faith are hard to understand, we sometimes hear words of reassurance directed to those who are struggling or confused: “Don’t worry … Jesus blesses those who are like a child as the greatest in God’s kingdom. If He blesses even a child with the simplest (most elementary), undeveloped understanding, He’ll bless you too.” Speaking for myself, when I’ve heard words like these offered to comfort the confused, they’re meant to communicate that it’s acceptable to settle for a child’s understanding of what the Bible teaches. Some go farther and say that it’s commendable to continue in the simplest, undeveloped understanding of the Christian faith. If you’ve heard (or said) words of reassurance like this, it’s worth pondering whether such words square with the passages that follow.
Take, for example, Matt 18:4, Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (cf. Mark 10:15 // Luke 18:17, Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it). What is it about a child that Jesus is commending here? Matthew tells us that He intends to identify who is greatest in the kingdom (Matt 18:1), and His answer is to present a child as the kingdom ideal. But what exactly is His point? There is a social context to take account of here. Ancient moral teachers, like modern ones, loved to trot out heroes—“the GOATs” (as in “the Greatest Of All Time”)—for their disciples to emulate. But Jesus’ ideal goes contrary to those expectations. He puts little ones (Matt 18:6) before us. What’s up with that? As our commentators remind us, children were the most powerless, vulnerable members of society, at the bottom of the pecking order, dependent on and subject to grownups, especially parents and perhaps pedagogues. Only with the help, direction, and resources of grownups did a child’s social standing and personal agency increase (i.e., develop and grow) with age. In this light, Jesus’ point is that the greatest in God’s kingdom have come to see their total inability in themselves and their utter dependence on God’s grace and mercy to gain access to His kingdom. Jesus commends childlikeness to His disciples, then, to compel us to become and stay humbled before God. His call here is to humility, not to immaturity (perpetual or otherwise). Everyone of us, then, who would be a disciple of God in Christ must be like the little ones before grownups: we must be and remain humbled before the God and Father of Jesus our Lord.
While Jesus requires childlike humility of His disciples, there is, at the same time, no commendation in Scripture for His disciples to remain undeveloped in their understanding of the faith as a child might be undeveloped. To the contrary, continuing to be a child in understanding is consistently blameworthy in Scripture. For instance, intractable immaturity is the root of carnality in the church at Corinth: 1 Cor 3:1-3, But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? Clearly, it was long past time for the infantile Corinthians to have grown up.
Moreover, failure to build on one’s childhood understanding (i.e., elementary understanding) of Christian truth is a dangerous condition for the Hebrew Christians who are addressed in Heb 5:11–6:1: About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. The author’s point is apparent: regression back to basic doctrinal principles (5:12; 6:1), let alone stagnation in them, is a blameworthy state to be in.
In fact, so concerned are the Apostles for those who remain children in their understanding that they present that condition as a disordered state in which they forbid us to stay and out of which they require us to grow. Notice these texts from Paul and Peter: 1 Cor 14:20, Brothers, do not be children in your thinking. Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature. … 1 Pet 2:2-3, Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. … 2 Pet 3:17-18, Therefore, dear friends, … be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stable position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The Apostles’ concern is plain enough: the danger of intractable immaturity is not just that it’s apathy on the way to instability; no, it’s complacency on the road to apostasy.
No doubt Bible teaching and articles of the historic Christian faith can be hard to understand, and the Apostles themselves recognize these challenges (2 Pet 3:16; Heb 5:11). It is, however, poor and even irresponsible counsel simply to console those who lack understanding with the sentiment that it’s acceptable and even commendable to remain confused and settled in undeveloped understanding. No, it is a state in which we’re forbidden to stay. It’s a condition out of which we’re required to grow. And this we will do if God permits. Building on the basic principles in humility before Him, the fruit of our discipleship will be that we are no longer toddlers, tossed about and swept along by every wind of doctrine in the trickery of men, in cunning, for their deceitful designs (Eph 4:14; translation by S. M. Baugh, Ephesians [Evangelical Exegetical Commentary], p. 319).
David Gadbois
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