What Are the Qualifications for Entering the Kingdom of God?
Of Such Is the Kingdom!!
Published on Facebook, June 4, 2010
By Bud Powell
Guess
what? You had nothing to do with your first birth, and you have nothing to do
with your second. Your baptism doesn't celebrate your achievement; it celebrates
the promise of God.
How do people enter the kingdom of God? What are the qualifications for those
who enter? Jesus Himself gave us the answer. Two famous answers in the same
place in Luke's gospel.
Luke 1815 And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but
when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them unto
him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for
of such is the kingdom of God. 17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not
receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.
We know the question of the disciples because of the answer of the Jesus. The
disciples were under the Baptist error that only those with proud adult powers
were qualified to be children of God. Jesus said that His disciples, like the
Baptists, had it completely backwards. Children do not have to be grown up to
enter the family of God; adults have to become babes to enter. A helpless child
is a better model of one meeting the requirements than a seminary professor.
Sometimes what you do not do, speaks more volumes than what you do, and much
louder. Not baptizing babies shouts volumes to the world about the nature of
the church and the kingdom of God--and it DOESN'T say what they think it says.
It says, we are qualified and have met the requirements for entry.
"Of such is the kingdom of God," Jesus said, settling once and for
all whether or not babies should be baptized, for this account answers all the
objections that Baptists raise. It also answers a great many other questions
also.
This story of the infants being brought to Jesus followed immediately after a
parable of Jesus that taught exactly the same thing:
Luke 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the
other a publican.
11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I
am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this
publican.
12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes
unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other:
for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted.
Poor proud Pharisee was very full of himself and very sure that the kingdom of
God was getting a real prize in him. Not so the poor publican who was poor in spirit.
Jesus said that the poor in spirit are blessed because they will inherit the
earth.
No one enters the kingdom in maturity. Everyone is born into it as a helpless
child. All of God's people must be born of the Spirit, of which promise baptism
is the sign and seal, "not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God." John 1:13.
Repent your disobedience, you exclusive adult baptizers and end the exile of
your children from the kingdom of God: baptize them. Immediately!!! Remember
Zipporah.
