Grace Initiative - Forgiveness and Restoration, Matthew 18:10-13
In Ephesians chapter six Paul is teaching that we are all involved in a war—spiritual warfare, a war against invisible powers, against demonic forces—and that our defense is to put on the whole armor of God. The only part of that armor that can be used as a counter attack the machaira, which is called the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God. This is chosen by God to represent His Word; it is our weapon which we use to defend ourselves against the attacks of Satan and the world system.
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What we are going to see is Jesus teaching about God's grace, but teaching about the need for genuine humility, that in order to become a disciple one must be humble. That is not a requirement for salvation. The requirement for salvation, to be justified and have eternal life, and eternal destiny in heaven, is simply to believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, that He is the promised Messiah from the Old Testament, and that by faith alone in Christ alone we have eternal life.
That phrase is an important phrase. Faith alone means that we don't add words either on the front end or the back end of the gospel. A lot of people understand that you don't add words on the front end of the gospel. It is not a salvation by believing in Christ plus reforming reforming your life. It is not a salvation by believing in Christ and being a member of a specific denomination—there are some denominations who believe that they and they alone will go to heaven. It is not a belief in the cross plus baptism—there are some denominations who hold to baptismal regeneration. We don't believe that you are saved by faith plus anything. In fact, if you add anything to faith you destroy faith. Faith is focusing on Christ as the merit for our salvation, totally. His death on the cross is that which is meritorious. Faith is not meritorious; faith is something anybody can do. Salvation is faith alone, but it is faith alone in Christ alone.
We don't add works to the back door either. There is a whole group of Christians who emphasize that genuine faith, saving faith, is evidenced by works; and that if you don't have faith consistent with works then you don't have the right kind of faith. These folks even teach that you can have a faith in Jesus that doesn't save. This view is generally referred to as lordship salvation. Different denominations and legalism in the nineteenth century were often influenced by the theology of the English and American Puritans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who believed this: that you couldn't really know that you were saved unless you had works that were consistent. They looked to the works, not to Christ, for assurance of salvation. Some people called them experimental predestinarians. In other words, the only way you knew you were of the elect was if you had the right kinds of works.
We don't put works on the front end or the back end because salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. Works, the application of God's Word, only comes after we learn God's Word after we have been born again. They believe that but they never hear anything else, like the thief on the cross. They are saved because they believed in the gospel, the good news that Christ died for us. That is the most important issue that any of us can resolve in life; the issue of our eternal destiny.
But there is another challenge to those who have trusted in Christ as savior, and that is the challenge of discipleship, to grow and mature, to become a spiritually mature believer so that their life can glorify God, so that they can achieve God's plan and purpose in terms of their walk with Him. That is what Jesus is teaching His disciples in this section in Matthew chapter eighteen. He is talking to believers—not about how they become a believer but how they should live as believers, about the kind of character they should have and how they should relate to each other. That is fundamental.
So when we come to any chapter in the Bible we should ask the question: to whom is the writer speaking? Is he writing to believers or unbelievers? In terms of review, the disciples came to Jesus and wanted to know which of them would have the highest rank in the kingdom. So they are asking a question related to the future kingdom.
One of the things we have to clarify always is that in Matthew the kingdom always refers to the 1000-year rule of Jesus as the Messiah on the earth from Jerusalem. It is in fulfilment of a couple of hundred prophecies in the Old Testament related to Israel's restoration to the land, the King sitting upon the throne; it is the complete fulfilment of the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic and New covenants. These are all coming together when Jesus Christ returns and establishes His kingdom.
But when Jesus came to offer the kingdom the Jewish leadership rejected His claim to be Messiah, rejected the kingdom, and in Matthew chapter twelve Jesus took the kingdom away from them and in chapter thirteen began to teach His disciples in parables in order to cloak the truth from those from whom is had been taken. From that point on Jesus is really beginning to prepare the disciples for His death, burial and resurrection, and then in some ways for the coming church, although His real teaching on the church doesn't come until the upper room discourse.
The disciples here
still haven't figured out that the kingdom is going to be postponed. It took
them a while. In Acts chapter one when Jesus is about to ascend into heaven,
the last question they ask is: “Lord, is at this time you are going to restore
the kingdom?” They still understood it was a literal, physical kingdom and
Jesus didn't correct them; He just told them it is not yet time for them to
know the times and the seasons.
Jesus continues to
reach them about different aspects related to discipleship. In this chapter
we've seen that He takes a little boy and uses him as a training aid. It is
important to understand that when Jesus first takes him He is using him as a
visual aid to teach this principle related to the question of who is going to
have rank in the kingdom. In that culture at that time children had no
position, no place, no rank; they were not only better
seen and not heard, they were better not seen and not heard. They were nothing
in the culture; they were completely ignored and overlooked. Jesus is saying
that that is the kind of mentality they should have.
He is talking about not asserting one's self in terms of rank and privilege and that that is what it means to become humble like a little child. Then He is going to shift from talking about this physical little child, where He is no longer talking about physical children, to where He is talking about the spiritual little child/disciple who has humbled himself like the little child. From this point on when He talks about this little child of these little ones He is not talking about physical children, He is talking about disciples who have become like these little children. They have humbled themselves.
Then Jesus warns
there are serious consequences related to causing such a humble disciple to
have a blowout on the spiritual highway, to be completely derailed in their
spiritual growth. This is demonstrated by a significant set of words that are
repeated.
This discourse is all
about forgiveness and restoration, and we have to understand that this
forgiveness and restoration relates back to a sin. That sin is related to that
stumbling—causing someone to sin (KJV),
leading someone into apostasy and unbelief. It is causing someone to sin in a
profound way where they are completely derailed in the spiritual life, leading
someone completely away from the Lord in a path of disobedience or false
teaching.
It is talking about
three different circumstances in which someone can cause a disciple to be
distracted or derailed, or to defect from sound doctrine. In verse 6 it is
another alleged disciple who causes this young disciple to be led astray. The
verb form of the word SKANDALON means to to bring someone to a downfall, the acceptance of false
teaching or to sin. The noun refers to that someone who influences someone into
wrong beliefs or wrong action.
So in these examples
the focus is not just on a simple sin but to lead a disciple far astray so that
they are derailed in their spiritual life. This is a significant act that is
taking place.
The reason for saying that is because where Jesus is going once we get into verse 15 He starts talking about a subject that is often taken to refer to church discipline. It is often taught completely separate from the thought flow of this whole talk that Jesus has here. Jesus communicates to the disciples about how one disciple relates to another. You can't just jerk vv. 15-20 out of the text, it is a natural thought flow that goes through here.
So the first problem
is the other disciple who leads a young growing disciple astray and derails him
from spiritual growth. The second problem is the source of the kosmic system, spelled with a k because it is from the
Greek word KOSMOS, which describes the
worldly system, that system of thinking, that system of religion, that system
of philosophy that is completely set against the thinking of Scripture. So
Jesus says, 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!”
“Woe to that man”; it
is an individual, maybe a teacher, maybe a professor, maybe a friend or family
member who influences somebody in terms of their thinking to conform to the
world. Jesus says not to be conformed to the world, but this one influences the
believer to be conformed to the world, to become worldly, and thus to be
derailed in their spiritual life.
Then in verse 8 it is the personal responsibility. So it could be another growing disciple who causes the derailment, it could be influence from someone related to worldly thinking, philosophy, and they are derailed; or it could be your own sin nature. That is brought out in vv. 8, 9 where Jesus isn't talking mutilation but He is showing how dangerous our own sin nature is in tempting you and leading you astray so that you fall by the wayside and are no longer pursuing spiritual growth and spiritual maturity.
Matthew 18:10 NASB “See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven continually see the face of My Father who is in heaven.” The “little ones” is not talking about child abuse here. He is talking about abusing or leading another disciple astray and He says, “Don't treat them with disrespect”. It is the Greek word KATAPHRONEO, which means to despise someone, to show contempt or disregard for someone as if they are irrelevant and meaningless. They are trying to grow as a believer and you are just showing contempt for them by leading them astray.
Matthew 18:11 NASB [“For the Son of Man has come to
save that which was lost.]” Not in some of the older MSS but it is
in most MSS. It is an
almost verbatim statement from Luke 19:10. We must interpret this in terms of
context. In Luke it is clearly talking about Christ's role to pay the penalty
for sin on the cross, but that is not the context here in Matthew at all
because He is not talking to unbelievers. He is talking all the way through
here to believers and of the danger of leading another believer astray. In
context we see that the word “saved” [SOZO in the Greek], which sometimes means to deliver, to rescue from
danger, sometimes to heal. Here it means to rescue from the stumbling. The word
“lost” is the Greek word APOLLUMI, which in some contexts is used to refer to eternal perishing,
eternal punishment, but in this context it is about a 50-50 split that it is
talking about a physical disaster, or it could be talking about a spiritual
disaster in terms of one's spiritual life. But it is not a word that
automatically means that we are talking about eternal punishment and eternal
condemnation. So the Son of Man has come to save/rescue those who have been led
astray toward self-destruction in their spiritual life.
Next we have a three-verse parable, and the point that He goes on
to show is that every individual disciple is important to God. It doesn't
matter what you think about yourself, what matters is what God thinks about
you. Every child—i.e. every humble disciple who is growing (which is why we are
not to despise any one of these little ones)—is important to God, every
believer is important to God. What this passage shows is God's care and concern
for each believer.
When we get to verse 15 we are going to talk about the situation where another believer sins against him. That is just the next step in developing this. First we are going to see how God handles a situation when a growing disciple goes by the wayside, and how God initiates in His grace the search to bring them back into the fold. When we get into the next section, “if one believers sins against you,” this is what you are supposed to do to bring them back into the fold. It is the application of the parable.
The next thing that happens is Peter asks, “How many times should I forgive someone who sins against me?” And Jesus says, “Seventy times seven”. So each of these sections builds on the previous and we can't just separate them out, as is so often done, into individual statements. They must be understood together.
Jesus uses this parable, a parable that is not uncommon in the Old Testament or New Testament related to a shepherd and the sheep. Matthew 18:12 NASB “What do you think? If any man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go and search for the one that is straying?”
Notice some things about this particular setup. He talks about this man who is also the shepherd. The word for going astray is the the verb PLANAO, which means to go astray, to wander off, to deceive. It is the word “planet”. The ancient astronomers would see what looked like stars and they kind of wandered around and showed up in different places, so they were called planets. That is where this word came from. So this is describing a sheep that wanders off.
If you have ever seen these sheep in pastures with the shepherd in Israel the sheep stay pretty much together. They are down in valleys and low areas, and this sheep takes off. He doesn't just wander off, he has gone up into the mountains and taken a good hike away from everybody and distanced himself significantly from the rest of the flock. The owner-shepherd has to leave the 99 and goes to the mountains to seek the one that is straying.
To understand the parable we have to identify the players. The shepherd-owner relates to God the Father, or it could be the Lord Jesus Christ. John chapter ten talks about the Lord Jesus Christ as the great shepherd of the sheep. Then we have the straying sheep. This is the disciple that has been caused to stumble. He is the humble disciple, this little one who because the stumbling block has been put in front of him has been led astray by false teaching, false thinking, false behavior. He represents the believer who gets off track doctrinally, theologically and spiritually and is now living deeply embedded in carnality. He is living according to his sin nature. As Paul puts it, he is walking according to the flesh, the sin nature. He is not confessing sin, he is not abiding in Christ, he is not walking by the Spirit, he is not walking in the light of walking in the truth. It is not that he has committed a sin and hasn't confessed it yet, he will in another hour or two, or later in the day, but he has completely taken off and left his spiritual life behind him.
It could also refer to some believers who think that the ket in the spiritual life is just confessing sin, so they spend all day long sinning and confessing, and are in a revolving door. The Scripture says we are to walk by the Spirit, abide in Christ, walk in the truth. Those terms walking and abiding imply being inside the house for a long time, whereas a lot of Christians have a revolving door at the front door and they are just spinning. They are just walking around in that revolving door. They confess sin, they confess sin … they are not going to go anywhere because they are just spinning.
Then there are the others who have just decided that is not going to work, so they just take off. This believer can be moral or immoral. There are a lot of believers who are out of fellowship, living according to the sin nature, and they are pretty moral because that is just their background, how they were trained, how their parents brought them up. The Pharisees were moral degenerates; they were very moral, but they were disobedient to God. They were legalistic. So you can have moral degenerates as well as immoral degenerates.
So this young humble disciple has been led astray. He has been influenced and now has rejected the Christian life and gone off and rejected God. Maybe he has just succumbed to arrogance, hatred, anger, resentment, bitterness; who knows what kinds of things are dominating the thinking in his soul. It could be lust—lust for pleasure.
We live in a culture that is motivated by pleasure, by entertainment to get away from the horrors and meaningless of life. Maybe they are lusting for power, for approval, for recognition. Some are using drugs and alcohol in order to deaden the pain of their lives because they are just miserable. Others are running after all kinds of different things trying to find peace and happiness in their life, rather than focusing on the Word of God. This is the believer living on the sin nature and not seeking happiness, peace and stability from God alone.
So he is out there in the mountains wandering around and God exercises the initiative of restoration.
This picture of the Lord Jesus Christ as a shepherd is used many times in Scripture. One of the most well known relating to Jesus as the good shepherd is in John 10:11-15. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. That is what we see in the parable of Matthew 18, that the shepherd is willing to leave the 99 under the care of an under shepherd and take off into the dangerous areas of the hills and mountains where lions, bears, wolves and who knows what, and calamities could befall them, to seek the one sheep that has wandered off. Jesus says, “But a hireling who doesn't have a stake in things—doesn't own the flock and isn't going to get anything out of it—is not the shepherd and he leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.” That is the one who is leading into false teaching, false doctrine.
The shepherd is willing to sacrifice his life for the sheep. So God is pictured in the parable in Matthew 18 as willing to encounter whatever dangers are necessary in order to find the Christian who has wandered off and restore him and bring him back. He is not seeking the sheep in order to punish him for leaving, He is seeking the sheep in order to bring him.
There are a lot of Christians who think they have done things that are too great for the grace of God and God could never forgive them, and they are out there wandering around in the hills and mountains. God is seeking to restore them and bring them back, and He may use one of us to do that.
Another picture of God as the shepherd is the well-known Psalm 23. “The Lord is my shepherd”, David wrote, “I shall not want.” This means that God supplies our needs. (Cf. Philippians 4:19) Then what we see in vv. 2, 3 is that God takes the grace initiative to feed us, to protect us, to restore us and to guide us. “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” This is the place where there is food, nourishment. We are to rest there where there is plenty of food. “He leads me beside the still waters”. He continues to protect and provide for us and to guide us. “He restores my soul”, so that no matter what has happened in our past there is restoration. God will forgive us, restore us, and provide for us. “He leads me in the paths of righteousness”--again the emphasis on God guiding us, and He does this “for His name's sake”. Then in verse four He is the one who protects us even from the wolves. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me”. Then He uses His staff and His rod the protect us and correct us, to keep us in line and keep us together. Then He supplies all of our needs, vv. 5, 6.
Then we have the passage is Ezekiel 34 and it is similar in language and tone to the parable in Matthew 18. However the context is different. Jesus said a lot of things in different contexts that sound similar. For example, we saw earlier “The Son of Man comes to seek and to save that which was lost”. In the Luke 19 passage if you just lift that out of context it could mean one thing or another thing. In the context of Luke 19 it is talking about justification; in the context of Matthew 18 it is talking about the restoration of those who are off the path.
But in the passage in Ezekiel 34:11 it focuses on God's initiative towards Israel, restoring them to the land and restoring them to their future destiny. The grace which will restore rebellious Israel to the promise of God and to the future plan that God has them, is the same grace that will restore us, no matter what we have done or what has happened.
Ezekiel 34:11 NASB “For thus says the Lord GOD, 'Behold, I Myself will search for My sheep and seek them out.'” This is God searching over the world to bring all the Jews back to the land but the principle is the same, and that is, God takes the initiative to seek those who have departed, those who have apostasized, those who are lost. [12] “As a shepherd cares for his herd in the day when he is among his scattered sheep, so I will care for My sheep and will deliver them from all the places to which they were scattered on a cloudy and gloomy day. [13] I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and bring them to their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the inhabited places of the land.” In other words, no matter what they have done—all the disobedience, all the rejection, murdering and executing God's Son who He sent to His people but His people did not receive Him. In spite of all that God shows grace and forgiveness and will bring them to their destiny.
And that is true for any of us. No matter what is on our back trail, no matter what we have done or what has happened, He is seeking to restore us, to forgive us and to put us back within the fold so that we can continue to grow and mature.
Ezekiel 34:14 NASB “I will feed them in a good pasture, and their grazing ground will be on the mountain heights of Israel. There they will lie down on good grazing ground and feed in rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. [15] I will feed My flock and I will lead them to rest,” declares the Lord GOD. [16] I will seek the lost, bring back the scattered, bind up the broken and strengthen the sick; but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with judgment.” We see the same themes there that we see in the parable in Matthew 18.
Matthew 18:13 NASB “If it turns out that he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine which have not gone astray.” That shows the positive mentality of God in bringing us back. He is not seeking to lower the boom; He is seeking to restore and to recover.
One of the things that happen in evangelical language is that we take biblical language and sort of distort it and it becomes a little confusing. Whenever we hear the word “lost” we think of somebody who is not saved, and whenever we hear the word “saved” we think of somebody who is not going to go to heave or is going to go to heaven. But the Bible uses these terms a little differently.
In Luke 15 there are three parables: the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son. Each of them are lost. A lot of people go here and say they are lost, not saved, and that these parables are about salvation, getting to heaven. They are not! In each case that which was lost was previously owned by the shepherd or the woman, or was part of the family of the father of the lost son. They are all talking about restoration and forgiveness; they are not talking about getting justified to go to heaven.
Luke 15:4-6 NASB “What man among you, if he has a hundred sheep and has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture and go after the one which is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost!’” The emphasis is on the joy here and the recovery. [7] “I tell you that in the same way, there will be {more} joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” That is not a lost sinner, it is someone who is already owned that goes out into the wilderness of disobedience, becomes a backslidden believer and has now been recovered.
Repentance isn't for salvation (John never mentions the word in the Gospel of John); repentance is changing your mind for recovery.
The parable of the lost coin is the second parable. Here is a woman who has ten silver coins but she loses one. She searches carefully and diligently until she finds it, but the coin was hers to begin with. So this is analogous to someone who is already a believer in the family of God who leaves in disobedience to go wandering out in the hills again. When she finds the coin, what does she do? Luke 15:9 NASB “When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’” The emphasis is on God's joy at our recovery. That is His grace; He is not seeking to punish us and to make us miserable. He is seeking to bring us back so that there will be joy in heaven.
The last parable is the parable of the prodigal son, as it is usually known, but it is the parable of the lost son. A man had two sons. One of them said he wanted his inheritance. He was given it and he took off and spent it, wasted it, gambled it away, and ends up where the only thing he can afford is to live in a pig stye. He comes to his senses one day and says he would rather be a slave in his father's house than be here and so he goes home. That is his confession of sin. When he comes back his father is not holding anything over his head, he just rejoices because he has come back.
So the emphasis in each of these is on the joy that God has when a lost sheep is recovered, not on God's desire to punish and condemn because we have failed. That is something important to remember because when we go to the next development in Matthew 18 where he talks about what our attitude should be towards another believer who sins against us.