11  Entering the  Kingdom  (18:1-4)

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (18:1-4)

Scripture describes and identifies the people of God by many names. But more frequently than anything else we are called children—children of promise, children of the day, children of the light, beloved children, dear children, and children of God.

As believers we can rejoice in the wonderful truth that, through Christ, we have become God’s own children, adopted through grace. Consequently, we bear the image of God’s family and are joint heirs with Jesus Christ of everything God possesses. We enjoy God’s love, care, protection, power, and other resources in abundance for all eternity.

But there is another side to our being children, and in Scripture believers are also referred to as children in the sense that we are incomplete, weak, dependent, undeveloped, unskilled, vulnerable, and immature.

Matthew 18 focuses on those immature, unperfected, childlike qualities that believers demonstrate as they mutually develop into conformity to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.

This chapter is a single discourse or sermon by our Lord on the specific theme of the childlikeness of the believer, speaking directly to the reality that we are spiritual children with all the weaknesses that childhood implies. It is also essential to see that the chapter teaches the church, as a group of spiritually unperfected children, how to get along with each other. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the single greatest discourse our Lord ever gave on life among the redeemed people in His church. Sadly, because it has been largely misinterpreted, its profound riches often have been lost. We shall attempt to recover these truths that are so vital, powerful, and needed by the church in every age and place.

The first lesson in this masterful sermon is that everyone who enters the kingdom does so as a child (vv. 1-4). Jesus then teaches that all of us in the kingdom must be treated as children (vv. 5-9), cared for as children (vv. 10-14), disciplined as children (vv. 15-20), and forgiven as children (vv. 21-35).

The setting for the sermon is indicated by the phrase at that time, which refers to a period soon after Jesus told Peter to go to the Sea of Galilee and retrieve the coin from the fish’s mouth (17:27). While Peter was paying the tax with the coin or, more likely, just after he returned, the rest of the disciples came to Jesus, possibly at Peter’s house in Capernaum.

The two scenes are closely connected in time and in thought. On the same day the disciples received the lesson on being citizens of the world they were given a series of lessons on the issues related to being children of God.

The Lord’s teaching was prompted by the disciples themselves, who asked Him a very selfish question that betrayed their sinful ambitions. We learn from Mark and Luke that the question, Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? resulted from an argument the Twelve had been having among themselves “as to which of them might be the greatest” (Luke 9:46; cf. Mark 9:34). Although He omnisciently knew what had happened, Jesus asked, “What were you discussing on the way?” They were so ashamed of their attitude and conversation that “they kept silent” (Mark 9:33-34).

Their embarrassed reticence shows they knew that what they had been doing was inconsistent with what their Master had been teaching on humility. But the fact that they nevertheless were arguing about their relative ranks in the kingdom shows they were making little effort to apply what they had been taught. They were as proud, self-seeking, self-sufficient, and ambitious as ever. In light of what they had been discussing and the way they phrased the question to Jesus, it is obvious they expected Him to name one of them as the greatest.

Just as they had heard but not really accepted what Jesus had been teaching about humility, they also had heard but not really accepted what He had been teaching about the kingdom. Much like those to whom Isaiah was sent to preach (Isa. 6:9), the disciples listened but did not perceive and looked but did not understand. They obviously still expected Jesus soon to set up an earthly kingdom, and each of them was hoping to have a high rank in that dominion. They were especially competitive about being number one.

Perhaps it was earlier that same day (see 17:22-23) that Jesus had told them (for the third time) about His impending suffering and death. Although they did not fully understand what He was saying to them (Mark 9:32), they should have sensed its gravity. And even though they were afraid to ask Jesus what He meant (v. 32b), it would seem they would have been discussing that issue rather than which of them was to be the greatest. They were so caught up in their own desire for prestige, glory, and personal aggrandizement that they were impervious to much of what Jesus said—even about His suffering, death, and resurrection. They demonstrated no concept of humility, very little compassion, and certainly no willingness to take up their own crosses and follow Christ to death as they had been taught (Matt. 10:38-39; 16:24-26).

Several months after this lesson in Capernaum, their selfish ambition was still very much evident. Probably at her sons’ instigation, the mother of James and John asked Jesus, “Command that in Your kingdom these two sons of mine may sit, one on Your right and one on Your left” (Matt. 20:20-21). The other disciples were indignant at the two brothers, but their indignation was not righteous but envious (v. 24).

It must have been especially painful to Jesus that, just as on the occasion recorded in chapter 18, this self-seeking request came immediately after He had predicted His suffering and death (20:19). There is no indication of sympathy, consolation, or grief concerning what their Lord was about to endure on their behalf and on the behalf of all the world. And on the night before He died, while He was eating the Last Supper with them, they were still arguing about their own greatness (Luke 22:24). Their insensitivity and selfishness is thus demonstrated as all the more sinful because it occurred at times when Jesus was speaking of His own suffering and death.

The rest of the disciples may have been jealous of Peter, knowing that he was the most intimate with Jesus and was always their chief spokesman. Peter was one of the three privileged to witness Jesus’ transfiguration, and only Peter had walked on the water or had his Temple tax miraculously provided. But it was also only Peter who had been told by Jesus, “Get behind Me, Satan” (Matt. 16:23), and perhaps the other disciples thought the number one position was not yet finalized.

The teaching here is desperately needed in the church today, where selfish ambition is widespread and obligation to perform our duty to fellow children of God is routinely ignored.

Like all of us, the disciples needed repeated lessons in humility, and here Jesus used a child as His illustration. And He called a child to Himself and set him before them.

Paidion identifies a very young child, sometimes even an infant. This particular child was perhaps a toddler, just old enough to run to Jesus when He called him to Himself. Because the group was likely in Peter’s house, the child may have belonged to Peter’s family and already been well known to Jesus. In any case, he readily responded and allowed himself to be taken up into Jesus’ arms (Mark 9:36). Jesus loved children and they loved Him, and as He sat before the disciples holding this small child in His arms, He had a beautiful setting in which to teach them profound lessons about the childlikeness of believers.

The essence of the first lesson is in verse three: Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. That is an absolute and far-reaching requirement of ultimate importance. Entrance into Christ’s kingdom demands childlikeness. There is no other way to receive the grace of salvation than as a child.

The kingdom of heaven, a phrase Matthew uses some 32 times, is synonymous with the kingdom of God. It had become common for Jews at the end of the Old Testament era, and especially during the intertestamental period, to substitute out of reverence the word heaven for the Hebrew tetragrammaton (YHWH), God’s covenant name (often rendered as Yahweh, or Jehovah). Used in that way, heaven was simply another way of saying God. Both phrases refer to the rule of God, kingdom of heaven emphasizing the sphere and character of His rule, and kingdom of God emphatically pointing to the ruler Himself. God rules His kingdom with heavenly principles and heavenly blessings and in heavenly power, majesty, and glory. Entering the kingdom means coming under the sovereign rule of God.

Our Lord is talking directly about entering God’s kingdom by faith, through salvation that will result in future millennial blessing and eternal glory. The phrase “enter the kingdom of heaven” is used three times in the book of Matthew (see also 7:21; 19:23-24) and in each case refers to personal salvation. It is the same experience as entering into life (18:8) and entering into the joy of the Lord (25:21).

The fact that a person must enter the kingdom assumes he is born outside of it under the rule of Satan and that he is not naturally a heavenly citizen under the rule of God. The purpose of the gospel is to show men how they may enter the kingdom and become its citizens, moving from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col. 1:13). It is God’s desire to have men come into His kingdom, and He does not wish “for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). The purpose of Christ’s ministry and the ministries of John the Baptist and the apostles was to call people to the kingdom. That is still the supreme task of the church.

The central focus of Matthew’s gospel is to draw men and women into the kingdom through faith in Jesus Christ, and that is doubtlessly one of the reasons the Holy Spirit placed this book at the beginning of the New Testament. Throughout his gospel, Matthew carefully and systematically presents the components of genuine belief.

The first component presented for entering the kingdom is repentance. The message of John the Baptist was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (3:2), and it was with that identical message that the Lord began His own ministry (4:17). The initial call for entering the kingdom was a call for people to recognize and repent of their sin, which involves genuine desire to turn away from it. This repentance is not a human work but a divine gift that only God can grant (see 2 Tim. 2:25).

A second component of the faith that grants entrance to the kingdom is the recognition of spiritual bankruptcy. That, too, is a work of God, not man, because it is the Holy Spirit who convicts of sin (John 16:8-11). The Beatitudes begin with a call to humility, expressed there as poverty of spirit (Matt. 5:3). The person who genuinely wants to enter God’s kingdom sees himself as utterly unworthy and undeserving. His awareness of his sin brings guilt and frustration over his inadequacy to remove it. He knows that he cannot himself cleanse his sin and that he has nothing to offer God that could merit forgiveness for it. The Greek term behind “poor in spirit” refers to a beggar who has absolutely no resources of his own. Because the repentant and bankrupt person is deeply aware of his sin, he mourns over it (v. 4); because he has no righteousness of his own, he hungers and thirsts for God’s righteousness (v. 6); and because he cannot himself cleanse his sin, he longs for the purity of heart (v. 8) that only God can provide.

A third component of the faith that allows entering the kingdom is meekness, which is closely related to the sense of having nothing of value to offer God. Because of his sense of personal unworthiness, the humble and meek person neither claims nor demands anything of glory for himself. He is committed to fight for God’s causes, not his own.

The one who enters God’s kingdom also will have a desire and capacity to be obedient. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus declared, “but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21). Entering God’s kingdom is more than simply expressing the wish to be in it and having the conviction that Jesus is its Lord. The sovereign, saving God will produce in the soul a personal submission to Jesus as Lord and a new heart longing to obey His commands. The person who is unwilling to leave the things of the world for the things of the Lord has no genuine desire for salvation (8:19-22). Coming into the kingdom assumes by the very term that one comes under the rule of the Lord of that kingdom.

When Jesus called people to follow Him, He was calling them to salvation (cf. Matt. 19:21). The new birth makes people followers of Jesus. It would be more consistent with the method of our Lord if, instead of asking people to “make a decision for Christ,” modern evangelists would call them to turn from sin to follow the Lord’s leadership and turn over to Him the rule of their lives.

The one who enters God’s kingdom also is willing to make public confession of his desire to follow the Lord. “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men,” Jesus said, “I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (10:32-33).

The one who enters God’s kingdom is aware of his need to be self-denying. Jesus said, “He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it” (10:38-39).

Further in Matthew’s presentation of the faith that saves is the component of persistence. The Canaanite woman with the demon-possessed daughter did not give up when Jesus at first ignored her, when the disciples wanted to send her away, or even when Jesus reminded her that she was not an Israelite, one of God’s chosen people. She was willing to take even the Lord’s leftovers and would not give up until He had met her need. In response to her childlike persistence, Jesus said, “O woman, your faith is great; be it done for you as you wish” (15:28).

All of these components of the faith that God grants for salvation can be summed up in the first lesson Jesus teaches—the lesson of humility.

It is impossible to miss the fact that this teaching is directed at the disciples and implies they needed to hear and accept it. And from the argument among them that prompted this lesson from Jesus, it is obvious they were not living according to His standard of humility. They were manifesting pride and self-seeking. It may be that some of them were not yet in the kingdom (certainly this invitation was pertinent to the power-hungry, money-hungry Judas), and those who were in the kingdom had allowed their fallen flesh to dominate their attitudes. This makes the important statement that even though our hearts are in line with these principles of genuine saving faith at the time God graciously grants it to us, we fall often and easily to the power of sin that is still in us.

As He took the young child in His arms and held him up before the disciples, the Lord gathered up all those elements of salvation: “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The phrase are converted translates an aorist passive of streph, which elsewhere in the New Testament is always translated with an idea of “turning” or “turning around.” It means to make an about face and go in the opposite direction. Peter used a form of the term twice in his message shortly after Pentecost, as he called his hearers to “repent therefore and return, that your sins may be wiped away” and declared of Jesus that “God raised up His Servant, and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:19, 26). The term is used repeatedly in the book of Acts to speak of conversion (11:21; 15:19; 26:18, 20). Paul used the word when speaking of the Thessalonian believers, who had turned “to God from idols to serve a living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:9).

Conversion is the other half of repentance. Repentance is being sorry for sin and turning away from it; conversion is the expression of will that fully turns from sin to the Lord. Psalm 51:13 alludes to these two halves of the turning when it declares, “and sinners will be converted to Thee.” Jesus’ use here of the passive voice indicates that the disciples could not be converted from sin to righteousness by their own efforts but needed someone else to turn them around. Although the response of a person’s will is required, only God has the power to convert.

To be converted requires people to become like children, Jesus explained. A little child is simple, dependent, helpless, unaffected, unpretentious, unambitious. Children are not sinless or naturally unselfish, and they display their fallen nature from the earliest age. But they are nevertheless naive and unassuming, trusting of others and without ambition for grandeur and greatness.

“It is the person who humbles himself as this child,” Jesus declared, “who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” The verb behind humbles is tapeino, which has the literal meaning of making low. In God’s eyes, the one who lowers himself is the one who is elevated; the one who genuinely considers himself to be the least is the one God considers to be the greatest. “The greatest among you shall be your servant,” Jesus told the self-righteous Pharisees. “And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matt. 23:11-12). The person who is not willing to humble himself as Jesus “humbled Himself” (Phil. 2:8) will have no place in Jesus’ kingdom. For self-righteous Jews who exalted themselves so highly as to think God was pleased with them for their own goodness, this was a shattering blow.

But Jesus makes clear that you rise higher in His kingdom as you go lower. The great Lutheran commentator R. C. H. Lenski has written, “He who thinks of making no claims shall have all that others claim and by claiming cannot obtain. . . . Only an empty vessel can God fill with his gifts. And the emptier we are of anything that is due to ourselves, the more can God pour into these vessels his eternal riches, honors, and glories” (The Interpretation of St. Matthew’s Gospel [Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1943], 683).

A little child makes no claims of worthiness or greatness. He simply submits to the care of his parents and others who love him, relying on them for all that he needs. He knows he cannot meet his own needs and has no resources to stay alive. That is the kind of humble submissiveness that results in greatness in God’s eyes and in His kingdom.

A number of years ago I ministered to a group of black schools in the south. At one rural elementary school, I presented a simple message about God’s love and the unique and lovely person of Jesus Christ, who especially loved children and died as a sacrifice for them on the cross to pay the punishment for all our sins. At the end of the message I asked, “How many of you would like to have Jesus live in your heart and forgive all your sin and desire to follow such a wonderful Lord and Savior and have Him take you to heaven some day?” To my amazement, every one of the one hundred or so hands in the room immediately went up. There was no skepticism, no doubting, no hesitation, no looking around to see how their friends would react. When the invitation was asked for, the heart of each one of those children was ready to respond positively to the claims of Jesus Christ. To be sure that they understood the commitment they were making, I asked, “Now how many of you are willing to let Jesus control your life and to obey whatever He says?” Again, every hand went up.

God knew the intent of their hearts and what that simple affirmation meant as a step toward Him. But what I saw was the illustration of saving faith. None of those children felt adequate in himself or so perfect as not to recognize sin and the need of forgiveness. None was reluctant to give his life to One who was so lovely and gracious and could provide all they would need in time and eternity. Nor were they reluctant to do what He asked them in obedience.

That is the kind of unpretentious, nonhypocritical, humble, childlike faith Jesus was talking about. That sort of response to His Son is the greatest in God’s sight. The greatest in the kingdom of heaven is the one who is humble, unaffected, genuinely sincere, undemanding, nonself-centered, receptive to whatever God offers, and eagerly obedient to whatever He commands.

The popular “gospels” that propagate self-fulfillment and personal success are the antithesis of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are a mockery of New Testament Christianity and strike at the heart of salvation and of Christian living. The Lord made no provision for the elevation of self, but rather declared unequivocally that the person who, on his own terms, “has found his life shall lose it” (Matt. 10:39). The way of self is the way of disqualification from the kingdom. Those who glorify self not only will not be great in the kingdom but will never enter it.

James presents an invitation to salvation that unarguably reiterates what our Lord demands in this passage of Matthew:

But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be miserable and mourn and weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you. (James 4:6-10)