Bible Commentaries – Matthew 19:14, Mark 10:14 and Luke 18:16

Here are excerpts from various Bible Commentaries:

Bible Knowledge Commentary

Matthew 19:13-15
Many parents were bringing children… to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples felt this was a waste of Jesus’ time. They began rebuking those bringing their children. Apparently the disciples had already forgotten what Jesus said earlier about the worth of children and the seriousness of causing them to fall (cf. 18:1-14). Jesus rebuked the disciples, telling them to let the little children come and not hinder them. The kingdom of heaven is not limited to adults who might be considered to be worth more than children. Anyone who comes to the Lord in faith is a worthy subject for the kingdom. This implies (19:15) that Jesus had time for all the children, for He did not depart from the region till He had blessed them all.

Mark 10:13-16
10:13. People—mothers, fathers, older children, and others—were bringing little children (paidia, those ranging from babies to preteens, cf. same word in 5:39; a different word brephē, meaning infants and young children, is used in Lk 18:15) to Jesus in order that He might touch them, a visible means of conveying God’s blessing on their future lives (cf. Mk 10:16). The disciples rebuked them (cf. 8:30,32-33) and tried to keep them from going to Jesus. They probably thought children were unimportant (cf. 9:36-37) and should not waste His time—another instance where they thought only in human-cultural categories (cf. 8:32-33; 9:33-37).
10:14. Jesus… was indignant (cf. v. 41) at the disciples’ interference (cf. 9:38). This verb of strong emotional reaction is unique to Mark who highlighted Jesus’ emotions more than the other Gospel writers (cf. 1:25,41,43; 3:5; 7:34; 8:12; 9:19). Jesus’ sharp double command—Let (lit., “start allowing”) the little children come to Me, and do not hinder (lit., “stop preventing”) them—was a rebuke to the disciples (who had rebuked the people!).
Jesus welcomed the children because the kingdom of God, God’s present spiritual rule in people’s lives (cf. comments on 1:14-15), belongs as a possession to such as these. All, including children, who come to Jesus in childlike trust and dependence, are given free access to Jesus.
10:15. In a solemn pronouncement (I tell you the truth; cf. 3:28) Jesus developed the truth in 10:14. Whoever will not receive God’s kingdom as a gift now with the trustful attitude of a child will never (emphatic negative, ou mē, “by no means”) enter it. He will be excluded from its future blessings, specifically eternal life (cf. vv. 17,23-26). God’s kingdom is not gained by human achievement or merit; it must be received as God’s gift through simple trust by those who acknowledge their inability to gain it any other way (cf. comments on 1:15).
10:16. Jesus’ loving action (cf. 9:36) vividly illustrated that His blessing is freely given to those who receive it trustingly. The intensive compound verb blessed (kateulogei, imperf., occurring only here in the NT) emphasizes the warmhearted fervor with which Jesus blessed each child who came to Him.

Luke 18:15-17
Luke placed this short section here to follow up on the message of the previous parable. Jesus had taught that it was necessary to be humble before God. In these verses He compared that humility to childlikeness: Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. In these words Jesus was stating that a person must come to Him in humility in order to enter the kingdom. Children come with expectation and excitement. They come realizing that they are not sufficient in themselves. They depend totally on others. If these same attitudes are not present in adults, they can never enter into the kingdom.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary: Old & New Testaments © 1983, 2000 Cook Communications Ministries

New Bible Commentary

Matthew 19:13-15
The disciples may have been simply insensitive and snobbish, or perhaps they were trying to protect Jesus from too much attention. At any rate, they had not yet absorbed his revolutionary scale of values, in which the ‘little ones’ were the greatest. To say that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these was not to declare the automatic salvation of all children, but rather (as in 18:1-5) to set up their lowly status as a model for discipleship.

Mark 10:13-16
(This passage comes immediately after Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce in Mark 10:1-12.)
By contrast to this severity (regarding Jesus’ teaching on marriage and divorce), Mark adds here a tender story of Jesus’ loving concern for little children. This is the other side of his stern words about the sanctity of marriage. Children, after all, are the greatest sufferers from divorce. But there is also another truth about God’s kingdom: only those who receive it with the simplicity and trust of children can enter it. This is one of the very few occasions where Mark records that Jesus was indignant, and it is interesting to see the cause. We might have thought that other matters were more important than the spiritual welfare of children, but Jesus valued them and often uses children as examples for us. Perhaps that is why the word ‘children’ is sometimes used to mean ‘simple believers’ in the gospels.

Luke 18:15-17
Luke alone refers to the children as babies. Touch implies that Jesus would place his hands on them and pray to God to bless them. In Mark the main point of the story is that the kingdom of God belongs to such as them, and this is emphasized by Jesus taking the children in his arms. Luke omitted this feature, not because he felt that it was an improper thing to record, but more probably because he wanted to concentrate attention on the lesson that the kingdom of God is only for those who are prepared to receive it like a little child in a humble and receptive frame of mind (cf. 18:14).

New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition © Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship, Leicester, England, 1953, 1954, 1970, 1994

The IVP Bible Background Commentary

Matthew 19:13-15
See comment on Mk 10:13-16 for more details; Matthew’s form of the story is abbreviated, but abbreviating such accounts was a common practice in ancient writing. Children were socially powerless and dependent. Some people in the *Old Testament would lay hands on others to bestow a blessing in prayer. Insensitive *disciples trying to keep from the master those seeking his help might remind Jewish hearers of Gehazi, a disciple of Elisha who eventually lost his position (2Ki 4:27; 5:27).

Mark 10:13-16
Images of the Kingdom
10:13. Children were loved but were socially powerless; the high infant mortality rate meant that they were physically powerless as well, many dying before attaining maturity. (In the poorest places, like Egypt, perhaps half of those born died by the age of twelve. Poorer *Gentile families often discarded babies if they thought they could not support them.) Eager to get on with the business of setting up the *kingdom, the *disciples have little time for people who do not wield political power.
10:14-15. Some thought that the *kingdom would be achieved by force of arms; others, by radical moral reform, and so on. But although Jewish people (unlike Greeks) respected humility, no one expected the kingdom to come by becoming powerless like children. The totally powerless can depend on no one but God.
10:16. In Genesis some of the patriarchs conferred blessings by the laying on of hands (Ge 48:14), and their prayers were answered. We may be sure that these children were truly blessed.

Luke 18:15-17
The Kingdom Is for Children
Children were people of no social status, and the *disciples would not want the important time of their *rabbi taken up with blessing them. But Jesus says that the *kingdom belongs to the nobodies, those who do not approach it on the merits of their own status.

The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament © 1993 by Craig S. Keener