Let the Children Come

Today’s Passage: Mark 10:13–16

Parents are bringing their little children to Jesus so that He will lay His hands on them and bless them, and the disciples turn them away. What happens next shows us Jesus first openly angry, and then wonderfully gentle, and both come from the same tender heart toward the small.

As you read, hold this: The kingdom cannot be earned. It is received like a child.

Mark 10:13–14 (BSB)

¹³ Now people were bringing the little children to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them, and the disciples rebuked those who brought them. ¹⁴ But when Jesus saw this, He was indignant and told them, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

The disciples are not trying to be cruel here. They think they are protecting the Master’s time, because children, in their world, simply did not matter enough to trouble a great teacher with them.

And so Jesus is indignant, which is to say openly angry, and the Gospels almost never show Him that way. Yet here He is, angry in defense of the smallest and least important people in the whole crowd. Let them come, He says, and do not stand in their way. Then comes the surprise that turns everything over: the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

Mark 10:15–16 (BSB)

¹⁵ Truly I tell you, anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” ¹⁶ And He took the children in His arms, placed His hands on them, and blessed them.

Now Jesus turns to everyone, opening with His most solemn words, truly I tell you. The kingdom must be received (δέχομαι) dechomai, pronounced DEH-khoh-my. Strong's G1209, to receive, take what is handed to you. This word means taking something handed to you, not something you went out and earned. Jesus is not asking us to earn the kingdom. He is asking us to open our hands and take it, the way a child takes a gift, with no plan to pay it back. , taken like a gift the way a child takes one, and taken gladly, simply, with no pretending that we have somehow paid for it.

A child does not check the price on a gift or offer to split the cost, and this is why the grown-up who insists on earning his way never gets in. It is not that the door is locked against him. It is that he keeps trying to buy what can only ever be given.

Then Mark leaves us with the picture to carry home, for Jesus takes the children in His arms and lays His hands on them and blesses them. Empty hands, and a Lord who gathers you up and holds you close. That is how the kingdom comes, and we can praise Him for it.

The kingdom cannot be earned. It is received like a child.

Personal Application

1. Where are you trying to earn what God is only ever waiting to give you as a gift?

2. What would open hands look like in that one place today?

Today’s decision: Thank God out loud for one gift you could never earn, and simply receive it today, the way a child receives, with open hands.

Pray to Close

The central truth: The kingdom cannot be earned. It is received like a child.

Give thanks: thank God that the kingdom comes as a gift, and that Jesus is never too busy for the small.

Ask: ask Him for a child’s open hands today, glad and simple and unashamed to receive.

Confess: tell Him about the pride in us that always wants to pay its own way.