It would seem at first sight that there is contradiction here with one of the well known part of the Bible: we know that in Matthew 18:3 Jesus says "become as little children", and here Paul says to us - "be no more children". We shall still return to this paradox in a few days, but let’s notice today that Jesus says we cannot enter the Kingdom without "childishness", but He says nowhere we should remain children.

The apostle Paul explains that Christian life is an obligatory growth, and moreover in the foremost - in love. We don’t have to crawl, but have to go, go to Christ, and we must have in us for that a very solid "vertebral column" of faith, capable of resisting the wind of false doctrines, temptations, delusions, longing to mislead us.

Two questions were asked: one the Savior asked the elders, and the other the elders asked the Savior, and neither received an answer. But how different the meaning of these two non-answers is! Above all, the motivation differs: fear for one's position in the first case, and messianic dignity in the second. But the main thing is that the silence of the teachers of the Law and the chief priests shows that they do not wish to accept either the Good News itself or God's help in understanding it, which the Forerunner manifests; their non-answer says nothing except that they do not believe.

Jesus' non-answer, by contrast, says a great deal. First, He affirms John's mission as Forerunner, proving that those who do not accept John do not accept Jesus either; and second, it is a prophecy about His own earthly end - an indication that it will be like John's. In other words, this reveals the most important thing about Christ's earthly ministry.

The question of authority concerned, of course, not the formal legal side, but the spiritual one. The people listening to Jesus, deeply religious people, ask it because they want to know where He gets the power by which He performs His miracles and healings. Jesus asks them a counterquestion that would seem unrelated to the topic: a question about the washings ("baptisms") that John performed. In reality, however, there is a connection, and it concerns the meaning of the question asked of Jesus, above all its spiritual meaning. Those listening to Jesus, representatives of religious authority and teachers of the Torah, called here "scribes," want to know from whom Jesus received the authorization that allows Him to do what He does.

It might seem strange to speak of authorization in the work of God, but religious consciousness always remains true to itself, and for a religious person even the action of God's power is genuine only when it fits within the framework of certain religious criteria. God can act only "correctly," and if there is a manifestation of power acting "incorrectly," then that power cannot be God's. The question asked of Jesus was precisely a question about criteria; they wanted Him to justify the "correctness" of the power by which He healed and worked miracles.

In such a context the counterquestion about John's washings was entirely appropriate. The point is not only that the power there and here was one and that its Source was one. The point is also the ability to see and recognize. The one who could not or would not see the spiritual authenticity and purity of what John was doing would not see the spiritual authenticity and purity of what the Savior was doing. Meanwhile, those listening to Jesus did not want to see the obvious. They were more concerned with what people would think of them than with the truth. In such a spiritual state one will not see what is real, and this is what Jesus points out to the priests and teachers of the Torah who are listening to Him.