Ever since Eden, God has given children a crucial role in the coming of his kingdom. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring,” God told the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And so, ever since Eden, there has also been a long and desperate war on children.

The biblical story shows us just how ruthless this world’s anti-child forces can become: Pharaoh casting Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Demonic “gods” bidding parents to pass their children through fire (Jeremiah 19:4–5). Herod slaughtering Bethlehem’s boys (Matthew 2:16).

Our own society is not above such bloodshed: more than sixty million invisible headstones (from the last fifty years, and still counting) fill America’s fields. Much of the modern West’s aversion to children appears, however, in subtler forms. Today, we are having fewer children than ever, later than ever. We diminish, and sometimes outright despise, stay-at-home motherhood. And too often, we treat children as mere accessories to our individualism: valuable insofar as they buttress our personal identity and further our personal goals — otherwise, inconvenient.

As Christians, we may be tempted to assume that this war on children exists only out there. But even when we turn from the world of secular individualism and carefully consider ourselves — our hearts, our homes, our churches — we may find strange inclinations against children. We may discover that anti-child forces can hide in the most seemingly pro-child places. And we may realize, as Jesus’s disciples once did, that children need a larger place in our lives.

Pro-Child on Paper

As with most Christians today, the disciples of Jesus grew up in a largely pro-child culture. Their views of children may not have been as sentimental as ours sometimes are, but they knew kids played a key role in God’s purposes. They remembered God’s promise to send a serpent-crushing son (Genesis 3:15). They regularly recited the command to teach God’s word “diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). They cherished God’s faithfulness to a thousand generations (Exodus 34:7).

But then, one day, some actual children approach the disciples. And as Jesus watches how his men respond, he feels an emotion nowhere else attributed to him in the Gospels: indignation.

They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant. (Mark 10:13–14)

The disciples likely had the best of intentions. To them, these children (or their parents) were acting inappropriately; they were coming at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Not now, children — the Master has business to attend to. They were about to discover, however, that far from distracting the Master from his business, children lay near the heart of the Master’s business.

In the process, they also warn us that claiming a pro-child position does not mean living a pro-child life. You can theoretically value children and practically neglect them. You can say on paper, “Let the children come,” while saying with your posture, “Let the children keep their distance.” You can look with disdain on the anti-child forces in the world and, meanwhile, overlook the precious children in your midst.

We, like the disciples, may hold pro-child positions. Our churches may have pro-child programs. But actually being pro-child requires far more than a position or a program: it requires the very heart and posture of Christ.

Heart of Christ for Children

“Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love,” Herman Bavinck writes (The Christian Family, 43). And do we? Answering that question may require a closer look at our Lord’s response when the little children came to him.

How might we become more like this Man who made his home among the children, this almighty Lord of the little ones? Among the various pro-child postures we see in Mark 10:13–16, consider three.

1. Presence

First, Jesus created a warm and welcoming presence for children.

Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children. Young ones apparently hung around him with ease, such that he could spontaneously take a child “in his arms” while resting with his disciples in Capernaum (Mark 9:36). Later, as Jesus enters Jerusalem, children gladly follow him, shouting their hosannas (Matthew 21:15–16). And then in our scene, parents and children approach him apparently without hesitation (Mark 10:13).

“Something in the demeanor of Jesus suggested that this Lord was not too large for little children.”

What about Jesus communicated such an unthreatening welcome? We might note the times he helped and healed children, like the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:41–42) or the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:14–15). Yet these stories are also examples of a far larger pattern in Jesus’s ministry, which was noticeably bent toward those the world might consider “little”: lepers, demoniacs, tax collectors, prostitutes. He was not haughty, but associated with the lowly (Romans 12:16). And children, seeing this lover of lowliness, knew they were not too lowly for him.

If we too want to become a welcome presence for children, we might begin by bending ourselves toward lowliness in general. Upon entering our Sunday gatherings and small groups, and as we move through our cities, do we see the lost and lonely, the bruised and broken? Do we wrap gentleness around vulnerability and bestow honor on weakness? If so, children are likely to notice our humble, bent-down hearts, a presence low enough for them to reach.

2. Priority

Second, Jesus made children a practical priority, giving them generous amounts of his time and attention.

If anyone had good reason to shuffle past the children — “Sorry, kids, not now” — it was Jesus. No one had higher priorities or a loftier mission. No one’s time was more valuable. Yet no one gave his priorities or his time so patiently to those we might see as distractions. On his way to save the world, our Lord paused and “took [the children] in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:16). His life and ministry were full, but not too full for children.

In our own lives, prioritizing children calls for active planning, a willingness to devote portions of our schedule to play and pretend. But as Jesus shows us, prioritizing children also calls for responsive receiving, or what we might call living an interruptible life.

Children are master interrupters. Tugs on the jeans and cries from the crib, impulsive addresses and immodest stompings — kids have a way of ruining well-laid plans. The more like Jesus we become, however, the more readily we will embrace our ruined plans as part of God’s good plan. And we will remember that if Jesus could pause to linger with little children, then we too can pause our own important tasks, bend down on a knee, and give children the eye-level attention of Christ.

3. Prayer

Third, Jesus prayed and pursued children’s spiritual welfare.

When the children came to Jesus, he not only received them and held them; he not only looked at them and spoke to them. He also laid his hands on them and, in the presence of his Father, bestowed a benediction upon their little heads (Mark 10:16).

We don’t know how old the children were, but they were young enough to be brought by their parents (Mark 10:13). They were young enough, too, that the disciples apparently saw little spiritual potential in them. Not so with Jesus. The Lord who loves to the thousandth generation sees farther than we can: he can discern in a child’s face the future adult and budding disciple; he can plant seeds of prayer in fields that may not bear fruit for many years.

Do we invest such patient spiritual care in children? When we pray for our friends, do we bring their little ones, by name, before the throne of grace as well? Do we find creative ways not only to joke and play with the kids in our churches, but also to share Jesus with them in thoughtful, age-appropriate ways? And do our evangelistic efforts take into account the not-yet-believers walking knee-high among us?

Oh, that each of us, parents or not, would join the mothers and fathers in Mark 10, desperate to hand our children into the blessed arms of Christ. When we hear him say, “Let the children come,” may we respond, “We will bring them.”

Posture, Not Programs

If our treatment of children looks more like the disciples’ than our Lord’s, then our problem, at heart, is that we are not yet children at heart. “Let the children come to me,” he says, “for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Mark 10:14–15). We have become too big; we have outgrown grace. For the doorway into the kingdom is small — so small that we can enter only if we kneel to the height of a little child.

To oppose the anti-child forces in this world, we need more than a pro-life position, a high view of motherhood, and a robust Sunday school program. All these we may have and more, and yet still become the objects of Jesus’s indignation.

We need a posture, a spirit, a kinship with the living Christ, who left the highest place for the lowest, who became a child so we might become children of God. The more we love Jesus, the more we will love children. The more like him we become, the more powerfully will our presence, our priorities, and our prayers say, “Let the children come to him” — and the more the children will come.

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15875408/gods-righteous-judgment-on-christians-now

Why is unity in the church so hard? If you’re like me, this question can prompt tears.

Mentioning tears tells you I’m not talking about disunity in the church in general. I’m talking about disunity in churches we know and love, and between Christians we know and love.

And for the most part, I’m not talking about disunity fueled by higher-level disagreements over primary Christian doctrines (ones that define the bounds of Christianity) or even secondary doctrines (ones that define, say, the bounds of a denomination). I’m talking about the far more common kind of disunity fueled by the endless variety of conflicts that break apart relationships, and even whole churches, because earnest, sincere Christians fail to humbly, gently, patiently “[bear] with one another in love” and cease being “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:1–3).

If you’re like me, you’ve seen too much of this, and you wonder, sometimes with tears, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

But, if you’re like me, this question might also reveal misguided assumptions we have about what Christian unity is supposed to be like. What I found lurking behind my question (and I don’t think I’m unusual here) was this assumption: unity between Christians who love and trust Jesus, are filled by his Spirit, and largely agree theologically, should not be this hard. It seems reasonable on its face. But a reasonable assumption doesn’t make a right assumption, especially when the Bible doesn’t support it.

Unity Has Always Been Hard

Don’t get me wrong: God is all for unity between God’s children. Scripture describes the experience of unity as “good and pleasant” (Psalm 133:1), and it commands all Christians to diligently pursue “being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord” (Philippians 2:2).

“The Bible nowhere promises that the pursuit of unity won’t be as hard as it often is.”

But nowhere in the Bible does God promise that the pursuit of unity, even among real, Spirit-filled, earnest Christians, won’t be as hard as it often is — any more than it promises that battling our indwelling sin won’t be as hard as it often is, or that suffering won’t be as devastating as it is, or that the whole endeavor of Christian love (of which pursuing unity is one aspect) won’t be as costly and humanly impossible as it is.

If anything, the fact that the New Testament records so many Christians struggling and failing to be unified should tip us off that unity is anything but easy. We only need to read through the letters of Paul to see this. Here’s just a small sampling of how often he addresses the issue of unity:

He reproves the Corinthians for their “quarrelling” and “divisions” (1 Corinthians 1:10–11).
He warns the Galatians against the dangers of “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” (Galatians 5:20).
He entreats “Euodia and . . . Syntyche [in Philippi] to agree in the Lord” and pleads with others to intervene (Philippians 4:2).
He instructs the Colossians, “Forgive each other as the Lord has forgiven you” (Colossians 3:13).
And he exhorts the Ephesians not to indulge in “corrupting talk” so as to “not grieve the Holy Spirit of God,” and to put away “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander . . . along with all malice” (Ephesians 4:29–31).

I could quote many more. Which is why I say that the Bible doesn’t support our assumptions that Christian unity shouldn’t be as hard it is to attain and maintain. It’s been this hard since the earliest days of the church.

Why Unity Is Hard

Okay, so God doesn’t promise that unity won’t be hard — and, apparently, it’s always been hard. But that still leaves us with the question, “Why is unity in the church so hard?”

There are, of course, an endless number of factors. Consider that at any given time a church may be under heavy spiritual assault (Ephesians 6:12), infiltrated by wolves in sheep’s clothing (Acts 20:29), plagued by “rivalries, dissensions, divisions” stirred up by unbelievers who think they’re Christians (Galatians 5:19–21), trying to tempt immature believers to engage in partisan quarrels (1 Corinthians 3:1–4), and on and on.

But I’ll give two important high-level reasons we glean from Scripture for why unity in the church is as hard as it is — indeed, why, for our ultimate joy and his glory, God designed it to be as hard as it is.

Our Unity Refines Us

Scripture tells us that Jesus “himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). In other words, Jesus’s substitutionary, atoning death purchased the gift of our forgiveness (he “bore our sins”) and the gift of our holiness (“that we might die to sin and live to righteousness”). Our holiness is a gift of God’s grace. Which means anything God designs to transform us into the likeness of his holy Son is a great gift. But sanctifying gifts tend to arrive in painful packages, because learning to die to sin and live to righteousness is almost always hard and often painful.

“Our pursuit of unity is designed to give us many opportunities to die to our own sin and bear with the sin of others.”

That’s why “maintain[ing] the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) is usually hard. Paul says it requires that we “put off [our] old self, which belongs to [our] former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires” — die to sin — “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” — live to righteousness (Ephesians 4:22–24). Our pursuit of unity is designed to give us many opportunities to die to our own sin and bear with the sin of others.

Our Unity Exalts Christ

What image comes to mind when you hear Jesus’s words, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35)? I tend to imagine some kind of idyllic Christian community of love — a kind of Christian community I’ve never seen, even in Scripture, even in those first sweet chapters of Acts.

What image did Jesus have in mind? We can see it in the previous verse: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). Jesus was about to “lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And he told his friends (all of us) to love one another “just as I have loved you.” Jesus was envisioning a cruciform community of Christians whose sacrificial love for one another frequently required them to take “the form of a servant,” pick up their cross, and “count others more significant than [themselves]” (Philippians 2:3, 7).

The pursuit of unity is hard because the love of God is costly. The love of the Father and the Son was most clearly and climactically displayed on the cross, and so our love for one another is designed to publicly display Godlike love in the world. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16). That’s how all people will know we’re Jesus’s disciples.

Never Give Up

The pursuit of Christian unity in a local church is a high calling. It’s a means of our growing in Christlikeness through sanctification, and it’s a means of proclaiming the otherworldly love of Christ through demonstrating the otherworldly love of Christ in a love-starved world.

It can be a heartbreaking pursuit in view of how often we fail. But let’s keep it in perspective. It’s no less surprising that we too frequently fail to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, than that we too frequently fail to continually abide in Jesus (John 15:4), strive for holiness (Hebrews 12:14), pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), love our enemies (Luke 6:27), bless those who persecute us (Romans 12:14), or count it all joy when we experience various trials (James 1:2).

Let’s not allow our failures to obey to become excuses to keep disobeying. Let’s put the 1 John 1:9 grace of God on public display by confessing and repenting of our sins and receiving God’s and one another’s forgiveness. And then let’s put the tenacious, gracious love of God on display by resolving to never give up, “so far as it depends on [us]” (Romans 12:18), seeking to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”

Christian unity is a high call, and a hard call. In fact, it’s impossible apart from “the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:19), for apart from him we can do nothing (John 15:5). But that’s the way it’s supposed to be. For unity is not about fulfilling our idyllic expectations, but about displaying the reality of the redeeming, sanctifying love of God.