Luke 18:15

And they were bringing unto him also their babes, that he should touch them: but when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them unto him, saying, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for to such belongeth the kingdom of God. For verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein.

BRINGING CHILDREN TO JESUS

This saying was commented upon under Matthew 19:13 and under Mark 10:13; and "Luke differs from Matthew only in the word which he uses for children."[22] Luke's word is "babes." See my Commentary on Matthew, my Commentary on Mark, (en loco). Summers said that the word here used for "babes" was used of "unborn and very young babies. Paul used it of Timothy who had received religious instruction from babyhood (2 Timothy 3:15)."[23]

It should be pointed out here, as Lamar said, that:

There is no baptism here, and no hint of any; and I think it is unfortunate that this beautiful and tender incident was ever transferred to the arena of controversy, especially as the lesson the Saviour draws from it is of so different a character.[24]

Ash said that "At this point the material unique to Luke comes to an end, and the Gospel resumes the outline found in Mark." This is not, however, strictly true; for, after recording the incident of the children being brought to Jesus, the account of the rich ruler, another prediction of his Passion, and the healing of the blind man at Jericho, Luke again resumes the narrative of two other episodes peculiar to himself, the story of Zacchaeus and the parable of the pounds. Also, there are some who believe, with good reason, that the prediction of the Passion here is not the third instance, as in the other synoptics, but a fourth, peculiar to Luke.

In the pericope before us, the harmony and agreement in the three synoptic accounts are as nearly perfect as could be imagined; but certain schools of criticism, intent on finding some disparity, have resorted to such a comment as this:

Both Matthew and Luke omit Mark's statement that Jesus was "much displeased" (with the disciples for rebuking the ones who brought the children), as well as the detail in Mark 10:16 that he embraced the children and blessed them. They hesitated to attribute the human emotions of anger and affection to the Lord of the church.[25]

There is positively no way that such a comment can be true. In this comment, there is the assumption that Matthew and Luke were ashamed of Mark's statement that Jesus was "displeased," the assumption that they "changed Mark" by omitting such a word, with the necessary corollaries that (a) they had Mark before them as they wrote, and (b) that they did not consider Mark inspired, plus still another assumption, the most amazing and arrogant of all, that Matthew and Luke considered the human emotions of anger and affection to be, in some unaccountable manner, UNWORTHY of the Lord of the church! There is no need to examine all of these subjective guesses, since all of them self-destruct upon a little reflection; but as an example of their reliability, we shall note just two of them.

1. The notion that Luke (and Matthew) considered anger and affection to be human emotions unworthy of the Lord of the church is a monstrous contradiction of Scriptural thought. The Old Testament refers to the anger of God literally hundred of times. "He is angry with the wicked every day"; and Luke recorded the parable of the slighted invitation in which the "master of the house" bears an analogy with the heavenly Father himself, saying, "The master of the house being angry," etc. (Luke 14:21); and in the parable of the pounds (Luke 19:12-27), in which the nobleman must be understood as Jesus Christ himself, the parable concludes with the words of Christ (the nobleman), "But those enemies that would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me!" It is as plain as the sun at perihelion at high noon on the equator that if Luke had edited Mark's Gospel to get out of it so mild a word as "displeased," he could never have recorded the two passages just cited.

2. As for the assumption that Mark was before Luke as he wrote his Gospel, such is disproved by the fact that he left out of his Gospel some 53 verses that are in Mark, and by the further fact that when Luke mentioned his sources, it is simply inconceivable that he would have left off mentioning Mark if indeed Mark was one of his sources (Luke 1:1-5). Many of the greatest scholars who ever lived have simply been unable to see Mark as a Lucan source, among them the immortal James MacKnight. The Markan theory is not merely unproved, but unprovable.

THE RICH YOUNG RULER

Note: this incident has already been commented upon fully in both Matthew (Matthew 19:16f) and Mark (Mark 10:17f), and for fuller discussion see in my Commentary on Matthew and my Commentary on Mark (en loco).

[22] Charles L. Childers, op. cit., p. 579.

[23] Ray Summers, op. cit., p. 211.

[24] J. S. Lamar, op. cit., p. 226.

[25] S. MacLean Gilmour, The Interpreter's Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1952), Vol. VIII, p. 311.