SHCOC Daily Bible Reading

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:1-5)? I am so glad the disciples ask Jesus the question. I think I would be too scared to ask. Jesus takes a child and uses the child as an object lesson. In the ancient world, children were low in the social hierarchy. They were weak and defenseless and had no rights. They could not stand up and demand anything, unlike today. As so often misinterpreted, Jesus is not telling us to be a child but He is showing us how children in this culture were insignificant. Jesus is calling us to become insignificant and to become dependent on Him. To become great in the kingdom of heaven is to become a minister to the insignificant. I call this the paradox of insignificance because we seek to make a name for ourselves and God calls us to be insignificant. We are called to repent and the difficulty with repentance is that it would make us insignificant. It would mean that we can’t make it on our own. In repentance, we learn to humble ourselves like a child and become dependent on God to save us. We are called to serve and to serve means we will be inconvenienced or made insignificant. The paradox of insignificance means we learn to be pick up our cross and die to ourselves for the sake of others. In the paradox of insignificance we see Jesus on the cross. Are you willing to become insignificant and dependent on God? It is difficult and there ain’t no easy way around it (Matthew 7:14).

Related posts:

1. Day 29: Matthew 18:7-20 – “Reconciliation”
2. Day 20: Matthew 13:1-23 — A Parable
3. Day 30: Matthew 18:21-35 — Do the math

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 05:00 and is filed under Discipleship, Matthew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.