Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
John A Broadus
The repetition, suffer and forbid not, is highly emphatic. It was vividly remembered, ... Matthew, Mark, ... Luke gave the same words, with a slight difference of order. ‘Suffer’ is aorist ... simple action without the notion of continuance; ‘forbid’ is present tense, ‘do not be forbidding’ ... ‘... make practice of forbidding.’ The distinction obtains in Matthew, Mark ... Luke; and the difference was felt, for ... "D" has ... Matthew and Luke altered ‘forbid’ to aorist. To come unto me is a general expression, not necessarily denoting either unaided locomotion or conscious spiritual approach, both of which are here forbidden by ... ‘babes’ and ‘were brought’. The disciples rebuked the parents and thus repelled the children ... but there must be free access to him. What follows may grammatically be a reason for their coming, or a reason why the disciples must let them come, and not forbid them. The latter seems to be the thought.
For of such ... Here, as commonly, Matthew has ... ‘kingdom of heaven,’ Mark ... Luke, ‘... of God’ ... otherwise the phrase is identical in all three. For ‘of such is,’ ... ARV ... ‘to such belongeth,’ cf Mt 5:3, 10, Lk 6:20, Jas 2:5 (So Meyer, Grimm, Jelf). ... the difference is not important. ‘Such’ evidently means childlike persons, as ... previously taught ... 18:3 . The only question is whether it also means children. To understand it in both senses ... is very difficult. Morison argues that it means simply and exclusively children such as these and not childlike adults at all. There is plenty of warrant in usage for so understanding the word ‘such’; but does not the connection here in Mark and Luke absolutely require the sense of childlike persons? ... both add, ‘whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein.’ This is exactly what Jesus said on a former occasion, {18:3} when, as almost all ... agree, he was using the ... child ... as an illustration. Morison’s position is therefore untenable .... ‘Such’ certainly means childlike persons, and apparently does not mean children at all. So ... Memphitic, "for persons of this sort, theirs is the kingdom of heaven" ... Peshito ... "for those who are like them, theirs is the kingdom of heaven." All the Greek commentators explain it as meaning the childlike, none of them mentioning children as included, and several expressly stating the contrary. Nor does any Greek commentator ... we can find, mention infant baptism in connection with the passage, though they all practised that rite.
Origen speaks only of the childlike ...
Cyril: "The new-born child is a symbol of innocence; for the babe is as it were a new creature ... Christ does not wish us to be without intelligence when he says, ‘For to such belongs (or, of such is) the kingdom of heaven,’ but to be infants in evil, and in intelligence perfect (full grown)."
Chrysostom: "Teaching them (the disciples) to be lowly, and to trample under foot worldly pride, he receives them, and takes them in his arms, and to such as them promises the kingdom; which kind of thing he said before also," ie, in Mt 18:3f.
Theophylactus: "He did not say ‘these,’ but ‘such,’ ie, the simple the guileless, the innocent."
Euthymius: "He did not say ‘to these belongs the kingdom of heaven,’ but ‘to such,’ those who imitate the simplicity of these."
[Latin Opus Imperfectum] takes the occasion to exhort parents to bring their children incessantly to the priests, that they may put their hands on them and pray for them.
Even ... Jerome (followed by Bode), tells us: "He significantly said ‘such,’ not ‘these,’ in order to show that not age reigns, but character, and that the reward is promised to those who should have similar innocence and simplicity." ...
Tertullian and Augustine do mention, not this clause but that which precedes, in connection with infant baptism. Tertullian (on Baptism, 18) advises delay of baptism till there has been proper instruction, .... "Let them come, then, while they are growing up; let them come while they are learning, while they are being taught whither to come; let them be made Christians when they have become able to know Christ. Why does the innocent age hasten to remission of sins?" ... baptism is regarded by him and those he addresses as securing remission and making persons Christians.
... Cyprian ("to Fidus") and Origen (Rom 5 ... Homily 14 on Lk 2) give as the reason for infant baptism that the infants may receive remission of original sin, that the defilement of sin may be washed away through water and the Spirit, etc, but neither ... mentions this passage ..., nor does Origen mention infant baptism in his interpretation of this passage. ...
Augustine (Sermon 174) ... "No one passes from the first man (Adam) to the second (Christ) save through the sacrament of baptism. In little children born and not yet baptized, behold Adam; in little children born and baptized and therefore born again, behold Christ".... What is it that thou sayest, little children have no sin at all, not even original sin? What is it that thou sayest, but that they should not approach to Jesus? But Jesus cries out to thee, ‘Suffer the little ones to come to me.’ Augustine very frequently gives the same reason for infant baptism, ... but we have found no other instance in which he associates with it this passage.
Calvin ... "both children and those who are like them."
[J A] Alexander (on Mark): "More satisfactory is Calvin’s explanation of the sentence as referring both to children (ie ... believing children) and to those who are like them in their childlike qualities." But believing children are in the same position as believing adults; so this is virtually admitting that there is here no reference to infants who are incapable of belief. ... "The application of this passage to infant baptism, although scornfully rejected as absurd by its opponents, is entirely legitimate, not as an argument, but as an illustration of the spirit of the Christian system with respect to children."
Bengel ... "Grant that such as are like infants are meant, then much more infants themselves, who are such, have the kingdom of God, and should and can receive it by coming to Christ." ... he actually thinks it helps ... to add: "Many of those who were then infants, afterwards when grown up believed on Christ Jesus."
[H A W] Meyer: "Not little children, but men of a childlike disposition, Mt 18:3 f." ... to the same effect Fritzsche, Block, Lutteroth, Keim, Godet.
Olshausen: "Of that reference to infant baptism which it is so common to seek in this narrative, there is clearly not the slightest trace to be found. The Saviour sets the children before the apostles as symbols of spiritual regeneration, and of the simple childlike feeling therein imparted."
Geikie: "Let the little children come to me, ... the kingdom of heaven is given only to such as have a childlike spirit and nature like theirs."
To sum up
(a) There is no good ground for understanding ‘such’ as meaning children themselves, but only childlike believers ... No question is here made that those dying in infancy are saved. They are saved through the atonement of Christ and the work of the Spirit, but this must hold true of all alike, without reference to any ceremony and no matter whether their parents were believers, unbelievers or heathen. The Messianic kingdom is always spoken of in connection with, and seems naturally to imply, persons capable of conscious submission to Christ’s reign. It is here said to belong to, or consist of, the childlike, and (according to Mark and Luke) no others. If ‘such’ includes infants, it includes all infants, ... in what sort of sense does the Messianic kingdom belong to (or consist of) these?
(b) If it were supposed that ‘such’ does include literal children, it would not follow that infants ought to be baptized. There is here no allusion to baptism ... We know that at one period Jesus was baptizing ... many persons, {Jn 3:22 4:1f} but no-one questions that they were baptized as penitent believers in the Messianic reign. Infant baptism seems to have arisen afterwards from the belief that baptism was necessary to salvation ... only as an afterthought was ground for it sought in an inference from this passage. ....
