'At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus,
saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?
2. And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set
him in the midst of them, 3. And said, Verily I say
unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little
children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
4. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this
little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of
heaven. 5. And whoso shall receive one such little
child in My name receiveth Me. 6. But whoso shall
offend one of these little ones which believe in Me,
it were better for him that a millstone were hanged
about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth
of the sea. 7. Woe unto the world because of offences!
for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to
that man by whom the offence cometh! 8. Wherefore if
thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and
cast them from thee; it is better for thee to enter
into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands
or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. 9. And
if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it
from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life
with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast
into hell fire. 10. Take heed that ye despise not one
of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in
heaven their angels do always behold the face of My
Father which is in heaven. 11. For the Son of Man is
come to save that which was lost. 12. How think ye? if
a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone
astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and
goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is
gone astray? 13. And if so be that he find it, verily
I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than
of the ninety and nine which went not astray. 14. Even
so it is not the will of your Father which is in
heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.'
--MATT. xviii. 1-14.
Mark tells us that the disciples, as they journeyed, had been
squabbling about pre-eminence in the kingdom, and that this
conversation was brought on by our Lord's question as to the subject
of their dispute. It seems at first sight to argue singular
insensibility that the first effect of His reiterated announcement
of His sufferings should have been their quarrelling for the lead;
but their behaviour is intelligible if we suppose that they regarded
the half-understood prophecies of His passion as indicating the
commencement of the short conflict which was to end in His Messianic
reign. So it was time for them to be getting ready and settling
precedence. The form of their question, in Matthew, connects it with
the miracle of the coin in the fish's mouth, in which there was a
very plain assertion of Christ's royal dignity, and a distinguishing
honour given to Peter. Probably the 'then' of the question means,
Since Peter is thus selected, are we to look to him as foremost?
Their conception of the kingdom and of rank in it is frankly and
entirely earthly. There are to be graded dignities, and these are to
depend on His mere will. Our Lord not only answers the letter of
their question, but cuts at the root of the temper which inspired
it.
I. He shows the conditions of entrance into and eminence in His
kingdom by a living example. There were always children at hand
round Him, when He wanted them. Their quick instinct for pure and
loving souls drew them to Him; and this little one was not afraid to
be taken by the hand, and to be afterwards caught up in His arms,
and pressed to His heart. One does not wonder that the legend that
he was Ignatius the martyr should have been current; for surely the
remembrance of that tender clasping arm and gentle breast would not
fade nor be fruitless. The disciples had made very sure that they
were to be in the kingdom, and that the only question concerning
them was how high up in it they were each to be. Christ's answer is
like a dash of cold water to that confidence. It is, in effect,
'Greatest in the kingdom! Make sure that you go in at all, first;
which you will never do, so long as you keep your present ambitious
minds.'
Verse 3 lays down the condition of entrance into the kingdom, from
which necessarily follows the condition of supremacy in it. What a
child is naturally, and without effort or merit, by reason of age
and position, we must become, if we are to pass the narrow portal
which admits into the large room. That 'becoming' is impossible
without a revolution in us. 'Be converted' is corrected, in the
Revised Version, into 'turn,' and rightly; for there is in the word
a distinct reference to the temper of the disciples as displayed by
their question. As long as they cherished it they could not even get
inside, to say nothing of winning promotion to dignities in the
kingdom. Their very question condemned them as incapable of
entrance. So there must be a radical change, not unaccompanied, of
course, with repentance, but mainly consisting in the substitution
of the child's temper for theirs. What is the temper thus enjoined?
We are to see here neither the entirely modern and shallow
sentimental way of looking at childhood, in which popular writers
indulge, nor the doctrine of its innocence. It is not Christ's
teaching, either that children are innocent, or that men enter the
kingdom by making themselves so. But the child is, by its very
position, lowly and modest, and makes no claims, and lives by
instinctive confidence, and does not care about honours, and has
these qualities which in us are virtues, and is not puffed up by
possessing them. That is the ideal which is realised more generally
in the child than analogous ideals are in mature manhood. Such
simplicity, modesty, humility, must be ours. We must be made small
ere we can enter that door. And as is the requirement for entrance,
so is it for eminence. The child does not humble himself, but is
humble by nature; but we must humble ourselves if we would be great.
Christ implies that there are degrees in the kingdom. It has a
nobility, but of such a kind that there may be many greatest; for
the principle of rank there is lowliness. We rise by sinking. The
deeper our consciousness of our own unworthiness and weakness, the
more capable are we of receiving the divine gifts, and therefore the
more fully shall we receive them. Rivers run in the hollows; the
mountain-tops are dry. God works with broken reeds, and the princes
in His realm are beggars taken from the dunghill. A lowliness which
made itself lowly for the sake of eminence would miss its aim, for
it would not be lowliness. The desire to be foremost must be cast
out, in order that it may be fulfilled.
II. The question has been answered, and our Lord passes to other
thoughts rising out of His answer. Verses 5 and 6 set forth
antithetically our duties to His little ones. He is not now speaking
of the child who served as a living parable to answer the question,
but of men who have made themselves like the child, as is plain from
the emphatic 'one _such_ child,' and from verse 6 ('which
_believe_ on Me').
The subject, then, of these verses is the blessedness of recognising
and welcoming Christlike lowly believers, and the fatal effect of
the opposite conduct. To 'receive one such little child in My name'
is just to have a sympathetic appreciation of, and to be ready to
welcome to heart and home, those who are lowly in their own and in
the world's estimate, but princes of Christ's court and kingdom.
Such welcome and furtherance will only be given by one who himself
has the same type of character in some degree. He who honours and
admires a certain kind of excellence has the roots of it in himself.
A possible artist lies in him who thrills at the sight or hearing of
fair things painted or sung. Our admiration is an index of our
aspiration, and our aspiration is a prophecy of our attainment. So
it will be a little one's heart which will welcome the little ones,
and a lover of Christ who receives them in His name. The reception
includes all forms of sympathy and aid. 'In My name' is equivalent
to 'for the sake of My revealed character,' and refers both to the
receiver and to the received. The blessedness of such reception, so
far as the receiver is concerned, is not merely that he thereby
comes into happy relations with Christ's foremost servants, but that
he gets Christ Himself into his heart. If with true appreciation of
the beauty of such a childlike disposition, I open my heart or my
hand to its possessor, I do thereby enlarge my capacity for my own
possession of Christ, who dwells in His child, and who comes with
him where He is welcomed. There is no surer way of securing Him for
our own than the loving reception of His children. Whoso lodges the
King's favourites will not be left unvisited by the King. To
recognise and reverence the greatest in the kingdom is to be oneself
a member of their company, and a sharer in their prerogatives.
On the other hand, the antithesis of 'receiving' is 'causing to
stumble,' by which is meant giving occasion for moral fall. That
would be done by contests about pre-eminence, by arrogance, by
non-recognition. The atmosphere of carnality and selfishness in
which the disciples were moving, as their question showed, would
stifle the tender life of any lowly believer who found himself in
it; and they were not only injuring themselves, but becoming
stumbling-blocks to others, by their ambition. How much of the
present life of average Christians is condemned on the same
ground! It is a good test of our Christian character to ask--would
it help or hinder a lowly believer to live beside us? How many
professing Christians are really, though unconsciously, doing
their utmost to pull down their more Christlike brethren to their
own low level! The worldliness and selfish ambitions of the Church
are responsible for the stumbling of many who would else have been
of Christ's 'little ones.' But perhaps we are rather to think of
deliberate and consciously laid stumbling-blocks. Knowingly to try
to make a good man fall, or to stain a more than usually pure
Christian character, is surely the very height of malice, and
presupposes such a deadly hatred of goodness and of Christ that no
fate can be worse than the possession of such a temper. To be
flung into the sea, like a dog, with a stone round his neck, would
be better for a man than to live to do such a thing. The deed
itself, apart from any other future retribution, is its own
punishment; yet our Lord's solemn words not only point to such a
future retribution, which is infinitely more terrible than the
miserable fate described would be for the body, but to the
consequences of the act, as so bad in its blind hatred of the
highest type of character, and in its conscious preference of evil,
as well as so fatal in its consequences, that it were better to die
drowned than to live so.
III. Verses 10-14 set forth the honour and dignity of Christ's
'little ones.' Clearly the application of the designation in these
closing verses is exclusively to His lowly followers. The warning
not to despise them is needed at all times, and, perhaps, seldom
more, even by Christians, than now, when so many causes induce a far
too high estimate of the world's great ones, and modest, humble
godliness looks as dull and sober as some russet-coated little bird
among gorgeous cockatoos and birds of paradise. The world's standard
is only too current in the Church; and it needs a spirit kept in
harmony with Christ's spirit, and some degree of the child-nature in
ourselves, to preserve us from overlooking the delicate hidden
beauties and unworldly greatness of His truest disciples.
The exhortation is enforced by two considerations,--a glimpse into
heaven, and a parable. Fair interpretation can scarcely deny that
Christ here teaches that His children are under angel-guardianship.
We should neither busy ourselves in curious inferences from His
reticent words, nor try to blink their plain meaning, but rather
mark their connection and purpose here. He has been teaching that
pre-eminence belongs to the childlike spirit. He here opens a door
into the court of the heavenly King, and shows us that, as the
little ones are foremost in the kingdom of heaven, so the angels who
watch over them are nearest the throne in heaven itself. The
representation is moulded on the usages of Eastern courts, and
similar language in the Old Testament describes the principal
courtiers as 'the men who see the King's face continually.' So high
is the honour in which the little ones are held, that the highest
angels are set to guard them, and whatever may be thought of them on
earth, the loftiest of creatures are glad to serve and keep them.
Following the Revised Version we omit verse 11. If it were genuine,
the connection would be that such despising contradicted the purpose
of Christ's mission; and the 'for' would refer back to the
injunction, not to the glimpse into heaven which enforced it.
The exhortation is further confirmed by the parable of the ninety
and nine, which is found, slightly modified in form and in another
connection, in Luke xv. Its point here is to show the importance of
the little ones as the objects of the seeking love of God, and as so
precious to Him that their recovery rejoices His heart. Of course,
if verse 11 be genuine, the Shepherd is Christ; but, if we omit it,
the application of the parable in verse 14 as illustrating the
loving will of God becomes more direct. In that case God is the
owner of the sheep. Christ does not emphasise His own love or share
in the work, reference to which was not relevant to His purpose,
but, leaving that in shadow, casts all the light on the loving
divine will, which counts the little ones as so precious that, if
even one of them wanders, all heaven's powers are sent forth to find
and recover it. The reference does not seem to be so much to the one
great act by which, in Christ's incarnation and sacrifice, a sinful
world has been sought and redeemed, as to the numberless acts by
which God, in His providence and grace, restores the souls of those
humble ones if ever they go astray. For the connection requires that
the wandering sheep here should, when it wanders, be 'one of these
little ones'; and the parable is introduced to illustrate the truth
that, because they belong to that number, the least of them is too
precious to God to be allowed to wander away and be lost. They have
for their keepers the angels of the presence; they have God Himself,
in His yearning love and manifold methods of restoration, to look
for them, if ever they are lost, and to bring them back to the fold.
Therefore, 'see that ye despise not one of these little ones,' each
of whom is held by the divine will in the grasp of an individualising
love which nothing can loosen.