This passage can be confusing in a world of 400 dollar strollers, seven different kinds of Huggies and youth activists traveling around the world telling politicians how to run society, but the main thing Jesus was trying to get at in this passage is that children have nothing to claim.
A child, particularly a young child of course, hasn't accomplished anything or, in the case of an older child, what they have accomplished is so insignificant to the adult world as to be almost laughable.
For instance, if a nine year old walked into the offices of a Fortune 500 corporation and said he wanted to be the next CEO because this summer he had run a successful lemonade stand, he would be shown the door pretty quickly. That's the way the other religions of the world, as well as plenty of Christians, treat salvation. People think they deserve to get into Heaven because of whatever good deeds they've done and whatever bad deeds they haven't done.
To God, this is the equivalent of that nine year old lemonade stand owner wanting to be head of a multi-national corporation. Whatever good we've done is as filthy rags in God's eyes, and it's only by His common grace the sinner can perform any righteous acts in the first place.
Instead, God wants us to enter into a relationship with Him where we recognize our childlike dependency on Him for everything, not just on all the practical things we need to live everyday such as food, air and water, but on our need of Him to teach us how to be the kind of people we should be. This world is like a horribly dysfunctional family and God is a loving father who, through what His Son Jesus did for us on the cross, wants to adopt us and make us into productive members of His kingdom.
The difference is children eventually grow up and become independent from their parents whereas we never get to a point where we don't need the Father.
To learn more about this relationship, read the Bible and to learn about how to enter God's family with Him as your perfect, sinless father, see Acts 2 38.
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