So Matthew skips over some leadup to this exchange. Thinking back on this story, I recalled that they were arguing amongst themselves who will be greatest. Like which of the apostles was most holy. Matthew makes the question more general in his telling. Unsure why. Jesus having clear preference for 3 of them probably made some of them feel insecure and want to know where they stood. Jesus calls over a child to make His point and says you guys need to be more like this little dude. Become as children or you won’t enter the kingdom of heaven AT ALL. Rather than have great victories over foes or a big list of accomplishments, they need to accept their powerlessness in the world and understand their complete dependence on God. It’s not that kids are innately without sin or pure or something because they’re a kind of blank slate, not at all. He’s referring to their inability to make themselves great and their total reliance on their parents.

The disciples still didn’t really get it. They wanted to see who was the best among them in God’s eyes and He made it clear that their conception of what made someone great was not using the same metrics God is. You need to humble yourself. Children don’t have power, they don’t have influence or status. That you even seek for Jesus to tell you your prospective status says it all: you need humility. Here He switches to referring to those who follow Him as children and to receive them in His name receives Him.

Here we have the infamous and frequently misused line about the millstone. So usually you see this in the context of child abuse and specifically child sex abuse. Millstone necklaces for pedos and all. But that’s not at all what this is about. He just established that His followers are to be like children. So it follows that if His followers are children and someone causes them to sin and fall away from the faith, they have gravely sinned against God. In the way people try to use it, how does harming a child cause the child to sin against Jesus? Clearly not what’s being communicated. I think it’s obvious that Christians should have zero tolerance for child abuse, but find applicable scripture to support it.

He continues to say that whoever tempts the children to sin, woe upon them. Temptations to sin are unavoidable in this world (necessary) but if you’re the one bringing the temptation, judgement will be upon you. And as much as an individual is condemned for tempting another with sin, you’re still required to do what you can to avoid it. Similar to talking about lust in Matthew 5, Jesus again says it’s better to be without a hand or foot if that’s what’s going to make you sin than to keep your body whole and lose your soul.

We’re called to not despise the little ones, which again is referring to followers of Jesus (which will overlap with literal children, yes). You don’t have to try hard to find Christians despising each other, especially since this discussion is being held on twitter. Just go hop onto the timeline. Many accounts are DEDICATED to fostering hatred and calling it “discernment ministry”. This isn’t to say we can’t be critical of one another or identify serious threats to the church among her ranks, but the state of your heart matters and it needs to come from a place of loving correction. The line regarding “their angels” is interpreted depending on your denomination. If you’re Catholic, it points to the existence of a specific guardian angel assigned to you that simultaneously maintains a constant link to Heaven to stare at God. If you’re protestant …. Uh. Well my research (light, it’s 10pm cut me a break) suggests “Nuh uh, the Catholics are wrong. It just means angels are connected to humans and God, not on Earth looking after humans”. If you think there’s a difference there, awesome. It’s not a salvific matter so we’re moving on.

God places immense value on each of us. If just one of us wanders off, He has an interest in retrieving us. God rejoices over finding the lost one. A human shepherd will even cherish that one more than the behaved ones. If you’ve ever seen or personally experienced finding a dog that ran away, you know that moment is the most the dog has ever been loved. Everyone knows the joy of restoring that which has been lost.

Okay but God knows full well we’re going to sin. We’re going to wander off. What’s the plan? First step when someone sins is to try to address it privately. So back to the twitter Christian duels, if you believe them to be in error, your first effort should be to resolve it man to man, not through a call-out quote tweet in front of everyone. That’s not always possible, so there’s some understanding here. Maybe ask them to DM you. But you need to approach with humility and love and not with pride and wrath, despising them as Christ has previously warned against. That’s me. I mess this up all the time because I’m a hothead. But the point is to keep this person as a cherished brother, not to drag them and treat them as a communal punching bag. Now if they are stubborn or hostile, we escalate to the next phase. You bring one or two along to keep the matter relatively private still, but with some other people, it should become clear to the offending party that this isn’t just a personal dispute, there’s a 3rd party to act as a less biased judge. It could even turn out that the accuser was in the wrong, once some more objective people hear it out. If they’re in the wrong and still refuse to repent, it’s no longer a private matter and they go before the church body for a final judgement. If the masses see no issue, it’s dropped. If they do agree that the accused is wrong, this is it. They need to repent or kick rocks. This is the basis of excommunication. Now when Jesus says to treat them like a Gentile or tax collector, you’ll recall that He doesn’t mean for us to disrespect them or hate them, they’re just not one of us anymore. This is a last resort to quarantine a spiritually dangerous person from the church body until they come around, if they ever do. Even as they excommunicate a sinner in rebellion, Christian leaders should never despise those under their care. A prominent Lutheran podcaster was excommunicated (rightly, near as I can tell) and I saw a year later, influential pastors in his denomination celebrating as though it was a wedding anniversary. This is disgusting behavior. Excommunication suggests that the offender is on the path to Hell and we should never cheer that, especially from the office of pastor. The correct attitude is deep sorrow, not popping champagne.

Jesus presented to Peter and extends to all the apostles now the authority to decide who to include or remove from the body of the Church will be approved in Heaven. If they allow someone in or excommunicates them, that’s with Jesus’s own blessing. This leads into another misquoted verse: “Where two or 3 are gathered, I am with them”. This is NOT about your small Bible study or you and a friend having a chat being a substitute for the church body. This is about the apostles making massive decisions that would impact the next 2 thousand years of the faith and beyond. If they can come to a consensus and it’s not just one of them going rogue, Jesus is there to guide them in the right direction. This is to lighten the stress of being responsible for the forming and maintenance of what we call Christianity today.

Peter asks about how many times he should forgive someone, offering up 7 times, thinking it to be an exceedingly high number. Jewish tradition was 3 times, so this is over double the requirement. Jesus tells him “try 77 times”. Basically, you need to never stop forgiving them. Parable time! A lot of people owe money to the king. One guy owes what basically amounts to a billion dollars. You are NOT paying that back ever, this dude is in a bad place. Since he wouldn’t be able to sell it, protocol was that he would be sold, along with his wife and children but even this would hardly make a dent in what was owed. It would be settling for a pittance. So this servant begs for patience and promises to pay back everything with time (completely impossible). The king takes pity and just lets it go, forgiving his absurdly high debt. This is a metaphor for the catastrophic damage that the smallest of sins does to out relationship with God and His infinite capacity for completely undeserved mercy.
The servant goes out happy as can be celebrating his new debt free life. But he finds another servant, a peer, and shakes him down for $10. Choking the guy and demanding he pay up until he’s begging for patience, which is denied and he’s put in prison for the debt. The other servants see this and report back to a furious king. This man begged and pleaded for the king’s forgiveness and when it was time to show even the tiniest shred of mercy to a fellow servant, he refused. The king takes back the forgiveness and the debt is owed again and the man is sent to prison as deserved originally. When you look to that driver on the highway, the jerk at work, and even the abusive parent and say “I can’t forgive them” you are overlooking the massive debt you owe that has already been forgiven. You lack perspective and without realizing it, you’re claiming that you have a greater entitlement to honor and restitution than even God. Are you sure? So no, even forgiving a man 7 times is insufficient, your forgiveness needs to be total and from the heart.