Listen to this post NOW on Beyond Everything Radio!

Modern evangelical Christianity is convinced the world is going to Hell, and has no greater focus than to try and help the world get to heaven through conversion to the Christian religion. To get the hellhound world to avoid eternal torture, one can pick Jesus’ team by joining the culturally contrived church in its game of Red Rover Red Rover. Every sermon closes with an invitation to accept Jesus into our hearts, but I’ve almost never heard them say: “If you want to go to heaven, become like a child.” And when this verse is taught, it is a passé verse about being a humble person, and never as a prerequisite for heaven. Why have we never heard of “Sola humilus”?

But Jesus seems to say something else. Something so much bigger.

“At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:1-4)

The Greek uses a term (où mé) which translates to “by no means” a person will (eisérxomai) which means “move into, begin to experience, happen, begin, or enter” the Kingdom of Heaven. This passage is written in the aorist tense, which means this verb has happened and is continuing to happen with no indication of when it stops happening. This is important because most evangelicals teach heaven as solely a future event which occurs after we die. By contrast the biblical revelation and teaching of Jesus is that heaven is here now, is experienced now and is entered now with no end to our moving into it. Entering heaven, according to Jesus, could not have been linked to joining the Christian religion, for it did not exist when he taught this to his disciples. So clearly, Jesus is saying something different about heaven than evangelicalism.

Let this soak in for a minute. Whose teaching on heaven do you actually prefer?

I know this is a bit of horse pill to swallow for some of you. I need you to loosen up your funderwear so you can see Jesus blueprint for his Church.

Jesus teaching is that the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven has come to earth, and is in the midst of us. It is here, now and not up there somewhere. These two kingdoms are always converging, and the challenge is to see and experience the Kingdom of God, to discover it, and practice our entry into it, because it provides the permanent and lasting freedom from the captivity of the kingdoms of this world. The disciples were not taught and never understood the kingdom as something religion would provide for them. We saw last week how experiencing the kingdom meant they would be outsiders from religion.

The surface level teaching of this passage is that the kingdom of heaven is counter intuitive. If someone wants to be great, they have to become like a child. We’ll see later in chapter 20 that Jesus says to be great, we must become a slave. Humility is a vital characteristic of someone who is kingdom minded. God gives grace to the humble and pride is spoken of in scripture as a profound sin and something which causes God to oppose us. (James 4:6, 1 Peter 5:5) Children are humble and not usually full of pride and so as a metaphor, this teachings does get us there.

But there seems to be more.

It occurs to me that the humility of a child is symbolic of how we are to approach life in this world. The goal on the surface is humility, but the true entrance to the kingdom is “unknowing.” A child is not living in his or her head nor has developed the distracting habits of scheming, judging, worrying, arguing, or plotting, but in wonder and being present in each moment, they experience life, not filter it out, they don’t label it, they simply…as this text says… “enter or experience heaven.” Experience is what makes children have a greater possession of the kingdom which is in the midst of us all and thus they are the greatest. The certain, the prideful, the figure outer can “by no means“ get in or begin experiencing heaven because they are stuck in what they know rather than “unknowing” and thus have the lowest possession and are the least in the kingdom.

This is why I think modern believers would do well to regain the practice of contemplation. There is an anonymous book I highly recommend entitled: “The Cloud of Unknowing” which will get you started.

Jesu adds more layers to this, and so will I.

“Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matthew 18:5-6)

To “accept” or “receive” a child ties into Jesus blueprint of “Binding and Loosing.” What we do to the humble “unknower” we also do to Christ. Evangelicalism is always begging people to receive Christ, but almost never to sit still, to shut our mouths, shut off our thinking, and just be with Christ in our life. To truly receive Christ is to unknow him and begin to experience him in and as our very life. To not be able to see Christ in our life is to reject or to cause a “skandelon” (give offense, to cause unbelief, or cause sin). The scandal of the kingdom of God is the movement from unknowing back into certainty.

The religious mind remains today as the most certain people we know?

Jesus then doubles down on the price a person pays for certainty. Namely that certainty is inevitable in world systems and manifests as propaganda, but then he makes each of us responsible to ensure our own certainty doesn’t cause one of these “little ones” (unknowers) to “skandolon” or cause unbelief, cause sin. (V. 18:6,7,8&9)

I’ll do my best to perform hermeneutical surgery on the tumor which has grown over the following verses in our minds.

“Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.” (Matthew 18:7-9)

I’ve spent years in this chapter striving to unearth the foundational teaching here. And the best I can do is to clarify a few things from the Greek which stand in contrast to the English translation and our mutated definition of these terms.

1. The word “Temptations” is not in the text. The word is the same word carried through this whole teaching on children, that of “skandolon” (cause of unbelief, cause offense) This is translated “cause of sin” because the biblical revelation is that sin is equivalent to “non-faith.” (Whatever does not precede from faith is sin-Romans). This is differentiated from hamartia, which is a general action which is sinful. This is not a teaching on lust sending a person to hell.
2. Skandolon is where we get our word for scandal, and it has a similar trajectory. “Something is happening that isn’t good…so take responsibility for this personally…”
3. The “hand” or “foot” in the same measure is not so much “what we do”, but “how we live” or “how we walk” or “how we do things.” (v.8)
4. The “eye” represents our understanding. (“The eye is the lamp of the body” -Matt 6:22). This is not so much about “what we see physically” (blepo) but “how we see” or understand. (v.9)
5. The Greek word “Zoe” doesn’t usually mean “eternal life” unless it has the modifier (aionion). In this verse it has a definite article which make is personal, so it is better translated as “your life” rather than “life or eternal life“. This changes our focus into how we live now.
6. We must be careful not to eisegete or insert Dante’s inferno definition of Hell into this passage (v8 and 9). The eternal fire, is an historical idiom referring to the city dump which is always burning the refuse. This is corroborated by the use of Gehenna, which is historically known as the city dump outside Jerusalem. The worm not dying or the fire not going out (Mark 9:48) was most likely a reference to the fact that there is always refuse being thrown into the Valley of Hinnon.

When we read the English words from a modern Western mind, we usually distort the teaching, so understanding takes work, but here is your proof that most of us get this wrong. Where are all the one eyed, one armed, people who say the Bible is to be taken literally? If this is the threat of a real Hell, where are the pastors who are gouging out their eyes? Where are the one-footed congregations?

Now if we are as careful as possible, we can put all of this into its more fitting context and mine out of it the warning it was intended to be. This is the best I’ve been able to do:

The context is that the humble “un knower” is the greatest in the Kingdom of God.

“The knower, the pride of certainty, is the hallmark of the kingdoms of this world, and one of the most terrible things that happens to us is that the system makes us proud and certain, and even more terrible is when we in turn and become proud and certain. It’s better to be drowned with a millstone around our neck than for our certainty to allow us to despise these “un knowers.” If our understanding (what we know) causes this scandal of certainty, we should do something drastic so that we don’t go through our life like that and have it all be a complete waste. If how we live is constantly looking down on others, we’d better do something drastic to change because nothing redeemable or real comes from proud living.”

I take from this a powerful blueprint for Jesus’ ecclesia. Namely, Christ is building a community of humble students, willing to learn from each other, by unknowing, but who are never certain, nor proud, nor dogmatic. They are a community of experience as well as knowledge, but this knowledge is tempered by humility and love.

So how does this compare to your church?