Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God. Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” (Luke 18:15-17)
How does a little child receive the kingdom of God? Do they go out and look for it? Do they listen to preachers and investigate their claims? Do they study The Case for Christ and then make a rational decision to invite Jesus into their heart, based on the reasonableness of the evidence presented? No. They do none of these things. They receive the faith by having it given to them through the means of God’s Word. They are passive in their conversion. This shouldn’t really surprise us. They are passive in their conversion, just like everyone else who is converted.
This is the same way all men are converted by God, by means of His Word. That’s kind of the point Jesus is making to His disciples. The infants, as St. Luke describes the children being brought to Jesus, are in the same situation as the rest of mankind. Their age is irrelevant. They are part of the group who needs the forgiveness of sins obtained through Jesus’ death and resurrection – the world. That means everyone. There are no exceptions.[1]
The problem is, we don’t like to think of babies as sinful. Babies are cute. How could something so cute be sinful and subject to God’s judgment? How is that fair? They haven’t done anything, good or bad; they pretty much just lay there. What sin have they committed? Infants are, like we adults are, corrupted by the sin of Adam. They are born dead in trespasses and sins.[2] Their sinful minds are hostile to God.[3] Their minds do not submit to God’s law, nor can they do so: But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.[4] Incidentally, as far as actual sinning goes, infants don’t have to be taught to be selfish. They are the definition of what the theologians called incurvatus in se - curved inward on oneself.
We were all born with a mind hostile to God, and with a heart inclined to evil, and this inclination to do evil is sin.[5] Consequently, left on our own to make a decision using our reason, whether or not to put our trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, we would all choose “not Jesus” every time. The part of mankind, infant and adult, that is needed to make a decision to believe in Jesus, the will, is the very thing that is broken. Our “chooser” doesn’t work. That is what it means to be dead in trespasses and sins.
But probably the most obvious evidence that infants are subject to sin, is the fact that they die. St. Paul says that the wages of sin is death.[6] That means that because we are corrupted by sin, we die, just like Adam in the Garden of Eden. If they were not corrupted by sin, they would not be subject to death.
So, since they are dead in sin, they need to be made alive in Christ, just like every other human being. And, since they cannot go to Christ, just like an unregenerate adult cannot go to Christ, He comes to them in His Word. He comes to them in His Word, attached to a physical element, water. Some way which we do not understand, by this washing of water and the word instituted by Christ,[7] the Holy Spirit comes to them and works faith in them. Incidentally, that’s how He brings you and me to the faith as well. He comes to us. He removes our old “chooser” that doesn’t work right and gives us a new one. He does it by water and the Word. Once we are made alive in Christ, He sustains us through that same Word, by proclaiming it to us, and feeding us with it – His real body and blood, for the forgiveness of our sins. Christ, who died to pay for the sins of the world and rose again from the dead on the third day, died and rose for you. He gives us these things He promises through His word preached, read, administered through the washing of Holy Baptism, and eaten and drunk in the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper.
Should we be surprised that God doesn’t do things the way we think He should? Christ tells us, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”[8] Praise be to Christ that they are.
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