Children in ancient society, Greco-Roman and Jewish alike, were there to be seen and not heard. They had no rights, no status. They did not matter very much until they grew up. So when the disciples shooed away people who were bringing little children to Jesus for his blessing, they were acting in a typically Jewish (and for that matter Gentile) manner.

However, on the Day of Atonement it was necessary to bring children to the elders for prayer and blessing: Mishnah tractate Sopherim 18.5.

The man is patronizing: no disciple in Matthew’s Gospel ever calls him ‘teacher’.

No doubt Jesus wanted to probe beneath the man’s bland exterior, and point him to the source of absolute goodness, God himself, from whom he was actually running away while seeking to establish himself by his good deeds. Matthew’s form of expression is not to avoid a seeming irreverence, but to lay stress on the good deeds this man was so proud of and to force him to recognize that they come from the one good God. Behind the good commandments that the man tries to keep, there is a good God—and what is he doing about God? His relationship with God is in disarray.

The Ten Commandments themselves were laid down for people who had experienced God’s rescue and wanted to respond worthily.

The ancient, non-canonical Gospel according to the Hebrews records this story with an illuminating expansion here. Although Jesus did not say these words, they may well indicate the point hidden beneath the surface in Matthew: ‘And the Lord said to him, “How sayest thou, ‘I have kept the law and the prophets?’ For it is written in the law, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’; and lo, many of thy brethren, sons of Abraham, are clad in filth, dying of hunger, and thine house is full of good things, and none of it goes out to them.” ’

Money was getting in the way between this man and the kingdom. He had to deal ruthlessly with the stumbling-block if he was serious in wanting to enter into life. He failed the test.

Sadly, this man missed zōē aiōnios, eternal life. The primary meaning of this phrase is not quantity but quality of life. It is not so much life that goes on and on, as a new quality of life, life released from materialism and selfishness to share the loving and self-giving life of God. John’s Gospel puts it so clearly: ‘This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.’ Instead, he went away with his possessions intact, but missing life. He went sorrowfully. To prefer riches to Jesus, our way to his, does not bring happiness. The thrust of the story is to teach that we gain eternal life only in the kingdom. And, as we have seen, the kingdom makes absolute claims on the disciple’s life. For this man the stumbling-block was his money. What is it for you?

It is frankly impossible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. And it is impossible (26) for a rich man to enter heaven. It can’t be done. And why not? Because money tends to make us selfish, materialistic, independent of God and of our fellows, and distracted with methods of retaining our wealth. Wealth leads to an overconfidence which is the very antithesis of the childlike spirit of trusting dependence on the goodness and mercy of God

A child was a person of no importance in Jewish society, subject to the authority of his elders, not taken seriously except as a responsibility, one to be looked after, not one to be looked up to. To turn and become like children is therefore a radical reorientation from the mentality of the rat-race to an acceptance of insignificance.

While it is the children themselves whom Jesus welcomes for their own sake, such also points beyond them to all those of whatever age whose acceptance of a childlike status makes them great in Jesus’ new value-scale, where the insignificant and rejected—the sick, outcast, Gentiles, women, children—achieve a new acceptance and importance. To lay hands on someone is normally in the Gospels associated with healing (several times in Mark, and cf. Matt. 9:18) but here it is more generally an act of identification and acceptance, not to mention a naturally affectionate response to children.

It was a sizeable establishment, the home also of Andrew (Mark 1:29) and of Peter’s mother-in-law. The fact that Peter kept this home (and, apparently, his fishing equipment: 17:27; John 21:3) indicates that the demand of 19:21; Luke 12:33, etc. did not apply literally to all disciples. Indeed the hospitality of such homes (cf. Luke 10:38–42) was the essential condition of Jesus’ chosen homeless way of life (v. 20); served also indicates literal provision of food, etc. (cf. 4:11, the same word).

‘That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command’