Loving One Another, Matthew 18:5-10
I've entitled this passage “Loving One Another”. Some of you may say, “I've just read this passage and it doesn't say anything about love”. That is true, it doesn't; but that is what it is about. That word love is one of the difficult words to define. It is not an emotion. Dictionaries always start by defining it as an emotion but in Scripture it is not an emotion, it is talking about a mindset, a mentality. It begins with God. The pattern comes from God who, the Scripture says, is love. There are only a few of God's attributes that are isolated in passages which say God is something. He defines what that is—God is holy; God is light; God is love. The best that I have been able to come up with is that love is a mentality directed towards other people whether you like them or not, whether you know them or not, that seeks the absolute best for them.
As soon as we use that word “best” it implies some system of values. If you are an immature believer or an unbeliever you will often think that what is best for somebody else is really what is best for you. Right? What's best for me is really what I want them to do. That is not really love. The description of love is that it is unselfish. It is not about me, it is about the other person and that which they need in the situation that I am able to provide no matter what it might cost me. That is what we see pictured by God the Father as he is willing to give His Son to die on the cross for our sins. It is what is depicted in the Lord Jesus Christ in Philippians chapter two, that He was not willing to hold on to His position, His prerogatives, His privileges in heaven, to grasp over them, but He was willing to obey God and enter into human history and live with mortal corrupt sinners, even to the point of going to the cross.
That is what love is. It has to do with not asserting our own rights, our own position, our own privileges, but focusing on the other person. That is essentially what this passage ends up talking about with reference to those who are focused on becoming disciples of Jesus Christ.
The important thing to understand here in context is the question: what is the basis for rankings in the kingdom of heaven? Remember that phrase kingdom of heaven doesn't refer to the spiritual kingdom; it refers to the future literal messianic kingdom when Jesus comes back to the earth and literally establishes His kingdom on the earth, when He as the greater son of David will rule and reign from Jerusalem. The answer focuses in verse four on the issue of humility: “Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
One aspect of humility is submission to authority. And that is what people tend to focus on. The other aspect that is present in Philippians 2:6 is that it is not asserting your own right, your own privileges, your own position. It is not seeking personal status or position for its own sake. Jesus, who is eternally God, eternally sovereign and worthy of all worship, did not regard equality with God something to be asserted. That is the focal point here is the analogy to humility. It is that in the society of that day children had no rights, no privileges; they had zero. Jesus is saying, you have just asked who is going to have the privileges and position in the kingdom, and I am telling you that unless you get rid of that kind of thinking where you are focusing on future privileges and position, that kind of thinking, you are not going to be anything in the kingdom.
Matthew 18:3 NASB “and said, 'Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children …' ” Who is He speaking to? He is speaking to his disciples who are already believers. He is not talking to unbelievers who need to convert to Christianity but to believers who have wrong-headed ideas and are seeking personal status, operating on their own self-absorbed arrogance. Unless you turn from that and turn to where you have a mentality of serving God where your own person position, prestige and recognition are not the issue because it is only at that point that you are going to be able to grown spiritually and eventually your service will be recognized in the kingdom.
Jesus said: “Unless you are like this child [a nobody] you are not going to enter the kingdom of heaven. As we have seen, that doesn't mean to get saved, be justified and avoid the lake of fire; that means to enter into the fullness, the richness of the abundant life of the kingdom of heaven.
From verse 5 Jesus is going to talk about the things that are positive, the positive relationship between the disciples. Then in verse 6 He talks about the negatives, which cover four verses. So the negatives and the warning in those four verses are much more significant in Jesus' thinking than the positives of verse 5.
Matthew 18:5 NASB “And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me”. That is the only verse that is talking about the positive. The rest of them strongly warn against the mistreatment of this child and the judgment is stated in extremely harsh language.
In most English translations is appears that He is still talking about that little child in front of Him. Many people take it to mean that that little child represents all children. So it appears in many translations that the maltreatment of any child will result in eternal condemnation and spending eternity in the lake of fire. At the end of verse seven is the warning that they will be cast into everlasting fire, and that is parallel to the last words in verse nine, translated usually “hell fire”. So it appears that no matter what else we do in life, if we are guilty of child abuse then it doesn't matter what else you do you are going to go to the lake of fire.
That seems quite confusing to a lot of readers because it runs counter to passages like Ephesians 2:8, 8; Titus 3:5, and many others that talk about the fact that we don't do anything or commit and kind of sin that can cause us to either lose our salvation or not be saved because Jesus paid the penalty for all sins, and we are saved simply by trusting in Him and Him alone. So what in the world is going on in this particular passage?
To understand that we have to address four basic questions. First of all we have to find out whom Jesus is speaking to. Is He talking to believers or unbelievers? It is obvious that He is talking to believers.
Who is the little child of whom Jesus is speaking? Is He still talking about the little boy in front of Him, or has He moved on to talk about spiritually the one who has become like this little child and is pursuing discipleship so he can enter the kingdom of heaven?
Third, when Jesus describes the threats to the person who causes harm to one of His disciples is the severity of the punishment to be understood literally, or is He speaking in hyperbole? He says, “it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea”. Or, “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.” If we take that literally it means that Jesus is affirming self-mutilation. Unfortunately in church history there have been those who took this literally.
And then we have the phrase to be cast into fiery hell. How are we to understand that? That leads us to the fourth question: what does Jesus mean when He says hell fire at the end of verse nine? To most English readers that means the lake of fire, but is that what the original language indicates? Is Jesus talking about the eternal lake of fire? It certainly looks that way because the parallel in verse 8 is the term “everlasting fire”, and so everlasting fire is true because the lake of fire is eternal punishment, so therefore He must be talking about eternal condemnation in the lake of fire. So it looks as if, if I don't love children then I can't be saved or I may lose my salvation.
Many people have taken this passage to mean that, and one of the things that is important is that we go back to basics in Bible study. There are three stages in Bible study. First of all, observation. What does the text say? If you don't look at what the text says and take time asking, what does that say, and you short circuit that, then when you get to the next question, what does it mean, you often end up misinterpreting the passage because you haven't taken enough time to understand what it means to begin with. Then the third stage is what does it mean to me? Application.
Howard Hendricks who taught Bible Study Methods at Dallas Seminary said that the biggest mistake that most people make when they are reading the Bible or trying to study the Bible is that they spend about five per cent of their time on observation and about ten percent on interpretation, and then the other eighty-five percent on what does it mean to me. They don't know what it ways; they don't know what it means, and they are immediately jumping to the question: it's all about me, so what does God want me to do from this passage?
So the reality is that if we spend about eighty-five per cent of our time on observation, answering the questions—what does it say? What does that grammatical structure indicate? Where are these places? Who is speaking? Who are they speaking to? Then the interpretation will become pretty obvious. It almost becomes a matter of falling off a log to answer the question, what does it mean? Because we really haven't understood what it says. Then the last five per cent is application. And that is also pretty obvious because once you really understand what it says it then become fairly clear (without a lot of work as to what it means) that what it means to me is painfully obvious at that point. So what we need to do is look at what the text says here as we answer these four questions, and then I think it is pretty simple to understand what the significance is that Jesus is addressing.
The first question we are addressing is, to whom is Jesus speaking? In verse one we read that the disciples came to Jesus. So we have Jesus and the twelve. In verse two we are told that He set the child in the midst of them. The “them” refers to the twelve. In verse three Jesus begins to speak to them and says, “Assuredly I say to you [the twelve] are converted and become as little children you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven”. Eleven of the twelve are already saved, justified and regenerate it can't mean that He is talking to them about how to become regenerate, justified and enter into heaven, because He is talking to people who have already done that. Converting refers not to converting to become a Christian but turning to obedience from disobedience, turning to humility and away from arrogance and self-centredness, seeking your own position in the kingdom.
The third thing we see is that whatever Jesus is talking about isn't about getting into heaven when you die and avoiding the lake of fire. So if He isn't talking about avoiding the lake of fire, then when He talks about everlasting fire in verse eight and hell fire in verse nine He is not talking about the lake of fire, despite what English translation seem to indicate, and if you have just about any study Bible, what that study Bible seems to indicate, and what a lot of commentaries seem to indicate.
The position that I take on this is not unique to me, it is a position that has been taught but it is a minority position. I think it is one that fits the context, and that is part of observation: really look at the context. Once you see who Jesus is talking to you recognize He can't be talking about issues of phase one salvation, getting into heaven and avoiding the lake of fire; He has to be talking about something else. Even though the language may make you think about the eternal lake of fire maybe you need to see if there is an alternate understanding that makes a little more sense. He is talking to believers about issues related to the Christian life.
The second area of questioning: Who is the little child of whom Jesus is speaking? Physically He starts off with this little boy, and then by verse 5 it seems He is no longer talking about the little boy; He has shifted. The little boy was a training aid, a visual aid that helped to understand what the spiritual disciple must do when he is pursuing discipleship and the kingdom of heaven. He is talking about discipleship.
Remember, Matthew is the Gospel of discipleship. The last commandment that Matthew records in Matthew 28:19, 20 is to go and make disciples by “baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them all that I have commanded you”. A disciple is more than a believer. A believer is a person who has trusted in Jesus Christ as savior. Over ninety-five times in the Gospel of John Jesus makes the issue believing in Him. He never says believe and be baptized, believe and change your life; He never even uses the word “repent”. When we come to the end of the Gospel of John, John says, “but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.” That is the gospel. And once you trust Christ as savior you are a believer but you are not yet a disciple. The question is, are you willing to take up the challenge to be a disciple.
A disciple is a believer who is not satisfied with simply being born again but wants to grow and mature and serve the Lord. A disciple was a term for a student, a learner, someone who was dedicated and committed to following the teachings of his teachers, and willing to do whatever he said to do. So Jesus is talking about discipleship here because it is those who are disciples who are going to enter the kingdom with this fullness that He talks about in this passage. He is talking to the twelve, specifically the eleven, and says this is what you need to do if you are really going to be true disciples. You can be a believer but not a disciple, but the issue is to be a disciple and fully enter into the kingdom.
The basic conclusion from these first two questions is that Jesus isn't talking about getting saved, not talking about getting into heaven; He is talking about spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. Are you willing to grow spiritually and grow to spiritual maturity and effectively serve the Lord? He is talking to the disciples about the seriousness and the consequences of being a disciple, and problems that can occur of you don't follow through with what Jesus said about the responsibilities of the disciple, especially in terms of love.
The third question: When Jesus describes the threats to the person who causes harm to one of His disciples, is the severity of this punishment to be understood literally? This is not just a millstone because a millstone could be small; you could use it in the kitchen. This is a donkey stone, one that is huge and outweighs a human being by maybe twice his weight. It was pulled around outdoors in a mill to crush the grain as it is pulled by a donkey. Or is Jesus speaking in hyperbole? He talks about cutting off the hand and plucking out the eye. This probably has some allusion to the fact that when the priest was ordained in the Old Testament he would take blood, which always signified sacrifice, and he would touch it to his ear lobe and to his hand and to his feet. It was a depiction of the fact that the blood of the sacrifice should impact how you think, what you do and where you go. So when Jesus says this it is an allusion to that, that every aspect of our life—what we think, what we do, where we go—needs to be impacted by the Word of God. He is indicating that these are areas that need to be straightened out or you are going to have serious consequences.
Proper interpretation of this passage means that we ought to understand it as hyperbole. It is a time-honored figure of speech and it is often used to stress the seriousness of something but it is not stressing the literal nature of something. Jesus is not commanding or endorsing self-mutilation, He is emphasizing the fact that as painful as it might be to lose your eye, your hand or your foot, the devastations of God's discipline in your life are going to be much worse.
What does Jesus mean when He uses the term “hell fire”? It looks like the lake of fire because, after all, it is in parallel construction to “everlasting fire” in verse eight. So what is this everlasting fire that Jesus is talking about? The phrase in verse nine of hell fire is a translation of the Greek GEHENNA, which is a simply a transliteration of the Hebrew word [a compound] gehinnom—ge = valley; hinnom = the name of a person. So this is identified as the Valley of Hinnom, the valley running along the south of the wall of Jerusalem. This was the area that was used at the time of Christ as the garbage dump. As people were trying to understand this analogy to the Valley of Hinnom they would often think, Ah, it's burning. They would take all the garbage out there and burn it, and so it was like a fire that always went on and on, and so they said it must be the lake of fire. However, when we look at the development of this term as a metaphor in Scripture we see that it was not used ever in the Old Testament as a reference to eternal punishment; it was used as a reference to temporal punishment, God's punishment in time of the Jewish people for their disobedience to Him. It was a picture of divine discipline on Israel for their spiritual failure. It is a picture of judgment and shame, God's judgment in time, not God's judgment in eternity.
When we get into the New Testament most English translations translate this as hell or hell fire, which seems to indicate it is the lake of fire. But from passages like Matthew 18:8 it appears because it is used in synonymous construction with eternal fire in Matthew 18:7 people think it refers to eternal fire. But eternal doesn't always mean eternal. Eternal fire sometimes refers to Gehenna, which is temporal, and sometimes it refers to the lake of fire. It is a generic term. The specific term that defines the topic is the term Gehenna. A rule of interpretation in Scripture is that you always define the general in terms of the more specific; you don't go the other way around.
Jeremiah 17:4 NASB “And you will, even of yourself, let go of your inheritance That I gave you; And I will make you serve your enemies In the land which you do not know [Babylon]; For you have kindled a fire in My anger Which will burn forever.” Does forever there mean forever and ever, for eternity? No, it just means for a really long time. God's anger against Israel was ameliorated seventy years later and He brought them back to their land.
What we see here is that Jesus is not warning that if you maltreat another disciple you will go to the lake of fire, He is saying you are going to bear the wrath of God in your life—divine discipline.
There is an example of this that Paul refers to in 1 Timothy about two false teachers called Hymenaeus and Alexander. Paul said” “I turned them over to Satan”. They didn't lose their salvation, but because of their apostasy and their false teaching that was leading so many Christians astray Paul turned them over to divine discipline to save them so that they would go through incredible suffering in this life because of their apostasy.
Let's
look at what is actually being said here. The background for this should be an
understanding of John 13:34, 35 NASB “A new commandment I give to
you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love
one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have
love for one another.” He is talking to the disciples. Judas is out of there by
this time. That love for one another isn't something that indicates you are a
believer; it indicates you are a disciple. That is what Jesus is talking about
in Matthew chapter eighteen; it means to be a disciple, and He gives us a
picture here of what love means.
Matthew 18:5 NASB “And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me.” “One such” or “such as this” is not referring to the physical boy but the little spiritual child who has humbled himself and is pursuing the kingdom. “Whoever receives another disciple in my name receives me”.
What
we learn from this is that disciples are to show acceptance. They are to
welcome other disciples and in some case show hospitality. Hospitality can be a
range of different things. It could be welcoming visitors to the church,
welcoming missionaries and inviting them to stay in your home, a range of
things.
Notice Hebrews 13:1, 2 NASB “Let love of the brethren continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Once again he is talking about love within the body of Christ. Who “entertained angels”? Lot in Sodom.
James 2:1-6. The people that James was writing to had a problem. They were snobs. If someone came into the congregation well dressed and looked like they were worth something everybody paid attention to them. But if somebody came in who was poor, a nobody, and didn't look as though they couldn't contribute financially to the health of the congregation, then they were ignored.
What Jesus is saying is that what matters is not a person's status in this life but their status in relationship to the kingdom. If somebody is a disciple pursuing spiritual growth then it doesn't matter what their life is like, what their education, finances, profession are like, they should all be equally welcomed: “did not God choose the poor of this world {to be} rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” –James 2:5.
Matthew 18:5 is parallel to what we read back in Matthew 10:40-42 NASB “He who receives you receives Me, and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me. He who receives a prophet in {the} name of a prophet shall receive a prophet’s reward; and he who receives a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man’s reward. And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward.”
Now the verses about the negatives. Matthew 18:6 NASB “but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” The word “stumble” is from the Greek word SKANDALIZO and it means a stumbling block, a term that was used to refer to a bait in a trap. The idea here is of something that causes a person to fall, to stumble, to be captured by sin. It is really talking about in context false teaching and apostasy. This is not a slight trip up; it is somebody who really falls by the wayside in his or her spiritual growth. They are caused to have a blow out in their spiritual growth. There is serious divine discipline for those who mislead through false teaching.
Matthew 18:7 NASB “Woe to the world because of {its} stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes!” The world is our external enemy. It is going to present these kinds of stumbling blocks—philosophies and religions that can distract. So there is a special judgment for the cosmic system. This is a warning to pastors. In James chapter three James warns that this is one reason not many are teachers because there is an additional judgment on teachers—that if they are not teaching accurately and what they teach misleads people, then there is special divine judgment.
Then He intensifies this by a very graphic hyperbole. Matthew 18:8 NASB “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire.” In other words, do whatever it takes to get rid of that source that is enticing you to stumble. [9] “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.” It is better for you to experience the fullness of God's blessing than to have those things in your life that cause you to stumble spiritually. “If your eye causes you to stumble”--what He is saying here is to pay attention to what you are looking at. As John says, it is the lust of the eye that is the source of temptation. We have to order and organize our lives in such a way to have the discipline to remove the things from our vision, from our thought, and from what we do that easily entice us to sin and to fall by the wayside spiritually. The person who puts those kinds of stumbling blocks in front of a growing disciple is going to reap divine judgment.
This is talking about the importance of our spiritual growth. It is not saying we need to do these things in order to be saved, but a saved person needs to address these issues of life so that they can grow spiritually.