At first blush, these two verses seem exceedingly incidental. Really, why bother? But I think there is something still worth noting here.
Note first: Back in 17:22, Jesus spoke – the most clearly to that point in time – about the immediate future. He said He was going to be delivered into the hands of men, killed, and then raised up three days later. This greatly distressed them the text says. But then the events of everyday life seem to push this revelation into the background. First there was the 2 drachma tax controversy, then the discussion over who was greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. And this led to Jesus’ extended discourse on humility and forgiveness.
And so it can be with us even now. The promises of Christ’s return, the resurrection, the new heavens and the new earth can easily be lost by us as having continuing importance in the ordering of our lives. As staggering as those realities are, they can be overshadowed by the stuff of everyday life. But not Jesus. He takes His sidestep to deal with the immediate, but as soon as He is finished with those, He is right back on track. He is still undeterred from His path to Jerusalem.
And I wonder in myself, am I so mindful of my own path to the Celestial City? Am I a traveling partner with Bunyan’s Christian? Yes, many things require our attention from all sides each and every day. But are we on our way home? Or has that idea been pushed so far back in our minds that it no longer informs our thoughts, actions and decisions?
Am I, are you – consciously proceeding toward Heaven? Is that our course? Are all other things dealt with, experienced and contexualized by where we are headed? For to lose sight of where we are going, is to wander aimlessly through life. And is this not behind the despair of so many – even professed Christians?
Are we consciously going home to be with Jesus? And do we remain aware that the only way there is through the cross?
Note second: No matter where Jesus is, or whatever else is going on, pouring our mercy and grace on others is never neglected.
Large crowds were following Him. And He was neither deterred by them, nor unmindful of them.
He might have been consumed in Himself with what was about to happen to Him. But no. Or, He might have been tempted to stop His journey to enjoy the attention of the crowds. But neither is true. He met them, and He continued on His way.
Note third: His ministry to these crowds, is a ministry to a throng of the unnamed. The common folk. There are no mentions of the healing of notable people. No mention of class, station nor even the particulars of the healings. It is simply recorded that this is what He did. They, unmindful of what awaited Him, were simply desiring their needs to be met. And in typical Jesus fashion, He just blessed them. He gave them what He had without pomp, ceremony or self-reference.
How sweet and how gracious and how willing to bless our Lord is.
And if He is not too busy, too distracted, too fixed on the Cross to stop and heal this nameless crowd, then how much more is He ready to hear the prayers and meet the needs of His people from His place beside the Father even today.
Oh Christian, come to Him with your needs.
Oh lost one, come to Him with your sin.
He is no further away than the cry of your heart .
There is a perceptible shift in Jesus’ teaching at this point. His topic is still sin, but it moves to the personal and away from the general. In the process, we enter into some concepts which have been greatly debated in every generation, and particularly ours.
Note first: Jesus’ opening reference here is to private sin, personal sin, not public.
When Paul rebukes Peter in Antioch (Acts 15 & Gal. 2), he does not go to him privately because the sin was done publicly. It wasn’t a personal offense but one that was broader, against the Gospel and the Church. Being such, its effect needed immediate attention – its harmfulness to the observers right then compelled an immediate and public response.
It is often heard today, when preachers or teachers say or do sinful and outrageous things, that they ought to be approached privately first. Not so. Public sin requires immediate, open and public rebuke – especially when it is on the part of those in leadership. So Paul by the Spirit will tell us, when dealing with the sins of those in the Eldership – “as for those who persist in sin, rebuke them in the presence of all, so that the rest may stand in fear.” (1 Tim. 5:17)
Jesus’ here is addressing when someone sins against YOU. Personally. Individually. And from what appears in the process He outlines – privately. We’ll see this more in Peter’s follow-up inquiry in 21-22 and Jesus’ subsequent parable.
Note second: This is an issue of real sin, not just hurt feelings.
Scripture elsewhere enjoins us to overlook slights and minor offenses. Prov. 10:12 “Hatred stirs up strife, but lovecovers all offenses.” 1 Pet. 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since lovecovers a multitude of sins.”
What Jesus is addressing here is more serious. It is not a disagreement over taste, opinions, or everyday knocks and bumps. As 1 Cor. will tell us, we are not to be litigious. Either inside or outside the Church. But especially among the brethren.
If you find yourself constantly offended, embroiled regularly in conflict with others and needing to press your case over and over – perhaps the problem isn’t “them”.
Not long ago I watched an interview with a person who had been married four times. Their lament was that there are just too few good women out there. My thought was, the common denominator in these four failed marriages is – you. Maybe that should be considered?
That said, when we are sinned against, truly sinned against privately, and we cannot just let it go in grace or it proves to be a harmful pattern in the other’s life – we first needs be loving and concerned to cover the sin from other’s eyes, unless necessity forces us to at last bring it to the Church.
Note third: The grand object in Jesus’ approach is recovery, not vengeance.
As Spurgeon preached: “Whenever there is a child of God who has any defilement upon him, and you are able to point it out and rid him of it, submit to any degradation, put yourself in any position, sooner than that child of God should be the subject of sin.” (Spurgeon, C. H. 1865. “Jesus Washing His Disciples’ Feet.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, 11:72. London: Passmore & Alabaster.)
And that, is to be our first motivation in all of this. Not prosecuting a case so that they get their comeuppance. Not for revenge. But for restoration. Restoration of the relationship and recovery from a fall. So in vs. 15 – Jesus’ says this with the hope that you will gain back your brother.
Note fourth: Not all our efforts in this regard will be successful.
We have it in spades in the life of Christ Himself. He comes and tells He creations their sin against Him. And they refuse to be reconciled. So it may be with us.
But the object in vs. 16 is NOT, please hear this – NOT, to take two or three witnesses to back you up. No. We take others to hear the whole matter objectively from BOTH sides. So that those unacquainted with the issue might hear both parties unprejudiced.
In other words, this is to be done in a spirit of humility, owning that we might be wrong in bringing this charge. We must be willing to be reversed if the evidence should not substantiate our perspective. We may have seen wrongly, heard wrongly, concluded wrongly, and need to be corrected in our perceptions. We do not enter into such a process like charging bulls, but like humble supplicants, wanting to get things right between us once more.
Note fifth: It is only after a number of efforts at reconciliation are exhausted, and it is truly a serious matter, that we must bring the matter to the Church. Only after several others have weighed the matter, and called upon the offender to repent, and they have refused to do so. Only then is it brought before the assembly.
The picture is one of patient pleading with the sinner over time, followed by obstinate refusal.
The mechanism then, is to bring the matter before the Congregation.
And only then – if in the view of the gathered saints, the person still refuses to repent, then and only then, they are to be treated as a “Gentile and a tax collector.”
And what does that mean? Does it mean we wash our hands of them? No!
It means we take a bold refusal to repent of sin as an indicator that they are not manifesting the most foundational aspect of being a true Believer – repentance – and thus treat them as unconverted until they do. In other words, they become the object of our efforts to bring them to Gospel salvation. They are not enemies to be prosecuted, but unbelievers who need to be evangelized.
Note sixth: It is in this context that the grossly misused idea of binding and loosing comes into play.
The simple and straightforward idea here is: One who refuses to listen to the Church when reproved by the majority as to their sin – and thus will not repent – is to be “loosed” from the Church. Those who repent, remain “bound” together in love. And Heaven ratifies this action.
Jesus is telling them that when they deal rightly with those who will not hear and repent as unconverted – they will not be making a mistake. They can act with confidence. Heaven had reached the same conclusion even before they did.
And since such judgments are not matters of personal execution, but before a council of “two or three” and then the congregation who are gathered together to adjudicate the matter, they can be confident they act with Jesus’ authority in the matter. As though He were personally attending.
Note lastly: How far we are to go in dealing with one another’s sins.
For in this, we are made to reconsider the history of mankind, and especially God’s dealing with the Jewish nation throughout the ages, and how He sent prophet after prophet after prophet, and disciplines of all kinds – for hundreds of years – before the decimation of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar, and the centuries following before the last destruction of the Temple in 70 AD.
If God is so patient with His people over such great spans of time and concerning grave and damnable sins – then how patient are we to be with one another when personally sinned against?
This is now the third section dealing with the issue of seeking standing in the Kingdom of Heaven in comparison to others. We must not lose the train of thought Jesus is about, and does not complete until vs. 14. He has not started a new subject. And His words grow more dire.
Note first: How seriously we must take all sin, but especially the sin of seeking self aggrandizement.
If you work toward that end (if your hand causes you to sin); or if you walk in that direction (if your foot causes you to sin) – take drastic measures in dealing with this most pernicious and damnable desire. Better to lose anything else, no matter how dear or seemingly advantageous or necessary rather than lose your eternal soul to Hell for pursuing self.
Can Jesus be any more emphatic regarding our battle with sinful tendencies? I think not.
Note second: The only thing worse than giving into self-promotion and high standing in the eyes of others and before the Lord, is to pass on to others – to model or teach others – to seek the same!
Temptations come to everyone. But when we become the source of tempting others to sin – woe unto us!
The current trend to convince people that we are somehow worthy of grace, worthy to be saved, worthy of Christ’s blood, instead of leading people to understand that salvation and all that comes with it is by pure grace alone – fosters this notion and celebration of self.
So desperate are we to justify ourselves in some manner, no matter how paltry, that it can hardly be overstated. We constantly, incessantly compare ourselves to others so as to imagine ourselves not so bad, at least not as bad a X.
We comfort ourselves in our sins that they are not as dastardly, not as deserving of Hell as this one or that one. All because we do not truly know the depths of the sins we DO have, and because we do not recognize that outward sins are simply symptoms of the very same corruption. But how we love to note that other’s symptoms are worse than ours, imagining then that we are somehow inherently less sinful, less lost, and more easily salvable.
The truth is, if you or I were the only person alive, it would still take nothing less than the blood of the sin-less Son of God to reconcile us to the Father. Nothing less than Calvary and all its horrors. Nothing less than the incarnation, the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit.
Sin, no matter how little its manifestations, is nothing less than cosmic rebellion and deserving of eternal damnation.
Who will be greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?
Christ!
And Christ alone!
Note third: The denial of the flesh in resisting temptation is not a light thing.
It is:
a. Inevitable for all those who would follow Christ.
b. Powerful.
c. Personally costly to refuse.
d. Something which must be dealt with drastically.
e. It may leave us temporarily impaired of bereft of even something legitimate in our war against it.
f. Worth it.
Note fourth: How great then is our salvation. Indeed, how great is this Savior who delivers us from all the guilt and shame this sin brings with it, and then bestows upon poor Believers the eternal riches of glory that He Himself deserves and has won.
Worship Him today. For He is all our righteousness. He is all our holiness. He is all our reward.
In this most remarkable account, Jesus turns common thinking on its head. For in the world, vying for place, position or recognition is not just sought after, it is celebrated. It is the essence of competitive sports. It is how we seek promotion on the job. It fuels academicians to be sure they publish as often as they can. Even actors strive foe the Emmys, BAFTAs and Oscars even as muscians want Grammys, advertising execs Clios. How many Facebook, Instagram of TikTok followers? Even Pastors can seek status based upon congregation size, sermon videos watched etc.
Pride is a pervasive evil.
Don’t get me wrong, striving for excellence is good and right. Feeding off of the recognition is not. But we are a pride-based race. Humility is not prized. Status is.
Note first: What is it about these children? Simple, being great in the Kingdom isn’t even on their radar screen. They are just about the business of being – children. Some sort of ranking in Heaven or the Kingdom to come isn’t even glint in the far reaches of their sub-conscious. Status in the Kingdom is absolutely meaningless to to them.
And so it ought to be with us.
Yes, Scripture speaks of properly seeking rewards in Heaven – but never status. Ever.
Note second: The child was set in their midst by another, not by him or herself.
How is it that we are even in the Kingdom at all? By sovereign grace. Period. We must be set there by His sovereign hand. We have no merits to earn it; no power to accomplish it; no means to even recommend ourselves to it.
As Jesus took this little child, calling the child to Himself and putting the little one in their midst, so it is with our salvation.
Status has no place in the equation anywhere.
Note third: The child is humble. Not assuming he or she has anything to add, but looking to be added to.
More, for a child’s humility is best seen in utter and absolute dependence. And unless we are humbled to the very same degree of absolute dependence, we will not even be IN the kingdom. So, who might be the greatest in the Kingdom is just plain the wrong question.
Greatness in the kingdom is a matter of one’s realization of need of grace. Those are greatest in God’s eyes, (not man’s) who know their need the most, and look only to Him.
This account comes right on the heels of Jesus’, Peter, James and John descending the Mount of Transfiguration. That context helps us understand the depth of Jesus’ cry in v.17 “how long?”
Note first: What an expression of Jesus’ personal grief over the ravages of sin in the human race emerges here.
And can you imagine the jolt of this scene on His humanity? He has just been glorified before 3 of His disciples, and in communion with Moses and Elijah in this glorified state – only to plunge back into a context where sin has brought demonic torture to a little boy, and the state of His own disciple’s faith is so poor, they are unable to offer any help.
I wonder if we share the same when we see such suffering?
But we need to drill down and really grasp what grieves Him so. He tells us plainly: Unbelief. That men are faithless, denying God, refusing to believe His truth and the Gospel of the Kingdom.
I fear that we are (I am) more grieved by the results of faithlessness (like what produces such aberrations as demon possession, war, rape, murder etc.) than we are by faithlessness itself.
As long as faithless people don’t bother us, we don’t seem to mind their faithlessness.
We ignore the most tragic part of their condition – while He grieved it above all else.
What does He call this condition? Twisted or perverse. Because to be oriented this way is to be upside down from the heart and mind of God.
PRAYER: Oh Father, make me grieve the unbelief of men more than the mere acts which vex me most. Give me your heart and mind. For it will drive my energies to see the Gospel is preached more than any other approach to society’s ills. Yes, Jesus healed the boy, but what of those around? And what is healing if we are left in eternal darkness from the face of God in Jesus Christ. Keep us from putting temporal band-aids on the eternally terminal cancer of the soul. Let your glory in Jesus be known. Let your Gospel be preached. Let me be a messenger who boldly, clearly and endlessly proclaims the forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ name – and reconciliation to you through the Cross.
He grieves. Deeply. And sighs out His exasperation in the moment. It is stunning.
Note second: We must never let the doctrine of God’s impassibility (that God is not driven by external impacts upon His emotions) bleed over into imagining God is unfeeling altogether. Mercy and compassion are not stoical. God is not emotionless, but neither is He driven by or subject to His emotions. He is Lord over Himself. As Paul teaches us by the Spirit in Galatians 5, one fruit of the Spirit is self-control – which must be in perfect form in the One in whose image we are made.
And it is why some branches of Christianity err so greatly in thinking the Spirit brings a lack of self-control – like being “drunk in the Spirit”. He makes us more like the Redeemer, not less. And Jesus was never, ever, under any consideration, out of control.
Note third: We are wont to think of faith in terms of quantity. Perhaps we think this way because we conceive of Jesus’ word regarding “little” faith – as though that is quantitative. Here, Jesus dispels that idea completely.
It is not that the disciples needed greater faith, they (and we) only need faith but the size of the tiny mustard seed -that will do. It is rather that faith must be exercised, rested fully upon God. Indeed, the word rendered “little” here is more often translated “few” in the New Testament.
Some commentators note that the idea is that their faith was poor. It’s size was irrelevant. It’s quality was the issue.
In this case (as is often true of ours) faith was not utilized everywhere it could be.
We believe for this, but not for that. We trust God in some things, but not in all things. We only believe in a few areas, not in many. Oh Father, grant that our eyes might be opened, to trust you in everything, everywhere, at all times. For it is not our faith in and of itself that accomplishes anything – but the One we have faith in – You.
Note fourth: The idea here of moving mountains is simply a figure of speech, a euphemism for doing the impossible. What is normally impossible, may be possible when we believe God and obey accordingly.
It should be noted that neither Jesus, an apostle nor any others after them ever moved a single mountain. Physical mountains are not the point.
Note too, how this has to do with carrying out Christ’s commission, not miracles on demand for our own purposes. In doing His work, furthering His cause, carrying out His will, we have unbounded ability, if we will but trust His promises – trust Him.
Lenski differentiates between saving faith – which is permanent – and “charismatic faith” which would be that of those in Matt. 7 who will prophesy, cast out demons and do other mighty works, but who in the end will be found to not be “known” by Christ as His after all. Such “faith” may come and go. And it is not inherently salvific.
How we need to be sure we are Christ’s agents carrying out Christ’s work according to Christ’s means and methods. Then, in serving Him believing His will will prevail, we can go forward trusting that He can move mountains indeed.
ResponsiveReiding 