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If you did not get last week’s post, that is where I provided the groundwork for today’s passage. I’ll begin with the passage and then work through it.

 “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)

This passage is a continuation from verses 1-4, “Who’s the Best“. It also extends beyond verse 14 with the parable of the lost sheep, so the meaning must align with each part.

Curious side note question? Have you ever seen a pastor claim that the way to receive Christ was to receive a “little one” (mìkros)? Welcome (doxomai) a child and we welcome Christ. This will tie into Christ’s teaching about “binding and loosing” coming up in verse 18. Jesus is revealing to his disciples that the Kingdom of God is not somewhere else or someday, but here…now. This “golden thread” must be maintained throughout this chapter. The reason this passage gets so misinterpreted is due to the time-line we have created for Heaven and Hell. They are taught as places we go after we die and not our state of consciousness here on earth.

A layer for my more biblically astute audience.

“Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more.” (Revelations 18:21)

(We know John is not talking about Babylon, but about Jerusalem prior to its fall in AD 70. See if you can integrate this into the larger theme.)

“Cause or temptation to sin”-(skandelizo)- If your English translation says cause or temptation to sin, it can be misleading. I’m convinced it’s an inserted bias in the ESV. The term means to “offend” but that doesn’t hold up through the whole text. I believe the best definition is “to trap” or “to trip up or cause a stumble.” Additionally, this passage is in the “aorist active & passive subjunctive”, indicating a present and continually ongoing process (actively and passively). By using cultural idioms, Jesus describes the advantage (sumphéro) for those causing the humble “unknower” to be trapped. “It’s advantageous that a donkey milestone…than constantly trapping these (pisteuóton)…faithers.”

More on the timeline. Just as Heaven and Hell aren’t “one-day when we die” places, so the “End times” aren’t exclusively future events. They are biblically and historically verifiable in Jesus life and the early church to AD70. In revelation 12:9-10, John describes Satan and his angels (in the same tense) as the one constantly deceiving (planáo) and accusing (kategoréo) “faithers“. In parallel fashion, revealing God’s kingdom and Christ’s authority/juristiction (èzousia) and this constant accuser is being thrown out (ébléthe). This is the same timeline, Jesus is tying the ongoing trap, as the same trap he faced in the desert at the hand of Satan, whose ézousia is running out of time.

I’ve concluded that the subject of this teaching isn’t so much other people, but Satan also. See if you agree. First, where and when does Satan cause a trap? Is it not within the mind of each person? In Jesus temptation story, Satan was trying to trap him with identity tests (to bow and take his name), and in Revelations, much is made of the number of his name, 666, and the parallel here is Jesus saying if we receive the small unknowers “in his name” then we access “his kingdom.”

“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!” (v.7)

“Oùai” (woe, horror, how terrible, disaster) for the world system due to those (Satan and his angels) causing traps. Indeed, causing traps is “ánágke“(inevitable, obligation, trouble) to happen, but how terrible to the person (anthropoi) through whom the trap happens.”

(Who is Jesus referring to? Go back to the above verse from Revelations 18:21)

Please fact check me, but I believe the larger context of Jesus’ message is to reveal how the spiritual (depth) dimension operates. Not only is he revealing how we access it (not when we die, but now) by either “unknowing” or “a trap,” but he’s explaining that drastic measures are needed to ensure we aren’t trapped into certainty and forsake smallness (humility). He’s offering spiritual direction.

“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.” (v. 8-9)

Jesus’ use of these cultural idioms proves he is NOT building a literal case for evangelicalism’s threat of eternal torture to those who use their hands, feet or eyes to commit sins. Whether Jesus is describing “pur aioniaon” (eternal fire) which he describes as “a place reserved for the Devil and his angel“s” (25:41)…(which btw supports my case as to the subject of this woe)… or if he is describing “géennan toū purós” (gahanna’s fire), he is NOT describing them, but using these idioms to contrast how these traps constantly invite our total ruin, and freeing ourselves through drastic conscious awareness, is how we are constantly entering life. It’s not one and done timeline, it’s a state of being small. And what humbles us more than being trapped?

If I put all these layers together, something amazing emerges. The mark of the beast is not some computer ID chip in the near future, it’s bowing in exchange for a pseudonym given by Satan’s exousian. The mark on the hand or foot is what we do or how we live/walk. The mark on the forehead is how we think. And who is more certain about God than the religious minded? My paraphrase of Jesus’ words are as follows:

“It’s really terrible, it’s horrific if you are caught in one of Satan and his angels many traps. If what you do our how you live causes you to become trapped, and lose sight of Christ, it is preferable that you are always entering your life (spiritual and actual) with a diminished capacity (imperfectly), than that you see yourself as fully capable and ultimately have it all destroyed. If how you think (eye is the lamp of the body-Matthew 6:22), if your understanding causes you to be trapped, it is preferable that you enter your life with partial understanding, then have to think of yourself as fully capable of seeing and have your life end up in the dump.”

Again, why is it inevitable that traps come? They are actually the means of humility. Trapped people are those who “…know not what they do.” Trapped people suffer for their lack of spiritual seeing. Trapped people make a waste of life, always entering the fire instead of life.

In a few verses, Jesus is going to add in v.10: “See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” He then tells the story of a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to find the lost “little one” and then says: “So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” He says this to illustrate his point that I hope to send you off with today:

The little ones, who take drastic measures in what they do, and how they think, striving to remain humble, not seeking to be the great ones, are constantly joining Christ in his kingdom each moment in conscious awareness. In this spiritual dimension (what I and others call contemplation) we remain small, teachable, humble and close in proximity to God. Little ones need not worry about heaven when they die, because they are already here.

By contrast, Jesus is not threatening people with going to Hell when they die. The person who acts and thinks, and lives under a pseudonym given by Satan and his angels, who sees him or herself as certain, correct, and little better than anyone else, is not going to hell, but is already living from the place reserved for the Devil and his angels. Pride is our living hell, not only for those trapped by it, but the entire world system, which perpetually brings hell into existence through the pride and evil within institutional power.

The contrast couldn’t be more stark.

May we follow Jesus’ invitation to enter our own dark closet of solitude, and sit still and humble, learning how to enter Christ’s kingdom by unknowing that for which we have become certain. Heaven comes to earth as we surrender our certainty.