Achieving Greatness ...

How do you measure greatness?  Is it in the singularity of doing something few, if any other, has ever done?  Does it take the field of sport to accomplish it?  Imagine the greatest athletes that come to mind; Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Jack Nicholson, perhaps Michael Phelps.  They did things few others appear as good at.  They set records.  And while all records are meant to be broken, the style and finesse and shear accomplishment is hard to dispute.  And every sport has them.  Or do you measure greatness in financial terms?  Would then Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg come to mind.  They are worth billions of dollars, and Warren and Bill have tremendous records of philanthropy they continue to improve.  Does that much money equate to greatness, and giving it away, even more?  Or perhaps do you lean to discovery and look at those who pioneered in the field of medicine as those who found what it means to be great.  Names like Louis Pasteur, Jonas Salk, Walter Reed, or Karl Landsteiner; people whose passion for discover was aimed at finding medical improvements to benefit the whole of us.

When you stack yourself against names like this, against accomplishments like this, or records like this; do you even begin to enter their league?  It is easy to accept the premise that it takes being unique in some fashion to be great.  It is hard to imagine being common, and still being considered great.  But Jesus may have the hardest of all premises for us to accept.  To lose all uniqueness, abandon all ideas of accomplishment, and measure our greatness in equal parts of humility and childlike trust.  The more humble; the more great.  The more childlike; the more great.  This is something ALL of us are capable of, it only requires a choice on our part to seek it.  We submit ourselves to Jesus, and He works this work within us.  There is nothing unique about it, in that everyone can/should be an equal participant.  There is no exclusive offer, just a common one, made to everyone.  If there is any exclusivity, it is that so many refuse the offer, and so few accept it.

This is hard for us to wrap our brains around.  But it might have even been harder for the Hebrews in the time of Christ to wrap their brains around, and Matthew was going to attempt to present this truth to them regardless.  Their system of caste was far more developed, and strict than anything we see today.  They had centuries of tradition, even the scripture seemed to support their premises, yet Jesus was about to turn their world, and ours, on its head.  The story begins in chapter eighteen of Matthew’s gospel.  It does not start out from a question of discovery, but more likely, from a question of ambition or greed.  Matthew picks up in verse 1 saying … “At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”  This was not about generic interest, this was purely about which one of them was to be greater than the others.  After all, you only need one governor, or one chief of the military, etc.  Not all 12 would likely get the same level of cushy job in the new Jesus administration.  And His transition to becoming King could not be too far away.

The answer would astound them all.  Mathew continues in verse 2 saying … “And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, [verse 3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  There was something far more insidious in the question the disciples posed than ambition from one over the other.  In that question lurked the ideas of self-reliance.  Each thought himself better than his contemporaries based on his innate abilities, perhaps drive, or passion, or steadfastness, or energy.  Each disciple assumed a position of greatness would come to them, based on what they had done to earn it, or would do to earn it.  And this disease of thinking infected their ideas of salvation – just as it has our own.  While we may not aspire to greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven, we still view it in our own world as being tied to the uniqueness of self.  And we foster those same ideas right into our salvation, that we can conquer our sin on our own, by our choice to simply sin no more.  We look to Christ as merely a partner in helping us do what we were meant to do.  We ask for Jesus to only “make up the difference between our best efforts and what is required of us”.  But that difference is more vast than our arrogance will allow us to believe.

The disciples shared our current line of thinking.  And so to begin Jesus counsels that we must ALL be “converted”.  Now keep in mind He was talking directly to His own disciples who were believers in Him, and had been following Him for several years now.  They had cast out demons, healed the sick, and learned from the mouth of God directly, along the way witnessing first hand the miracles of that transformative love in both body and soul.  But so far, refused to taste it.  They, like us, still clung to the notion of self-reliance as it relates to entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.  So Jesus begins by stripping them of the idea that “they had made it”, or, that they were ever going to make it on the path they were on.  We must ALL begin with conversion.  Letting go the notions of self-reliance, and begin to accept a role of complete dependence upon Jesus just as a 2 year old accepts the notion of complete dependence on his/her parents to survive.  Children do not do the work, they trust, and simply reap the benefits.  This was a concept those seeking greatness never saw coming.  If this was the standard, none of them would be great based on how they were thinking.  None of us will either.

Jesus continues in verse 4 saying … “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”  To become great begins with humility.  It begins with the recognition, that we have extreme need, and CANNOT fill this need ourselves.  We will never beat Satan at the sin game, he is much better than us, smarter than us, and knows how to play and win.  But Jesus beats him in a New-York-minute.  We must humble ourselves and admit we cannot win; and allow Jesus to win on our behalf.  We must stop fighting our sin, and let Jesus do the fighting on our behalf – allow Jesus to change what we like, which leads to changing what we do, which leads to changing how we love, how we think, and puts us back into harmony with the laws and precepts of our God.  ONLY then is obedience possible.  Everything else is distraction, and deception.  We kid ourselves, fool ourselves, and hold ourselves outside of the Kingdom because we refuse to accept this simple premise.  What Jesus lays out with respect to our conversion, is NOT an excuse to keep sinning, it is the only escape from sinning in the here and now.

This changes the nature of greatness from something only the few can do, to something anyone can do.  You are not limited by the muscles of your body, the size of your wallet, or the intellectual power of your mind.  You only need to be converted (change your thinking), and become like a 2-year-old who trusts his Parent (the heavenly One) completely, for everything.  God is NOT our partner, in our salvation.  He is the Author of it, and the Finisher of it.  We are the beneficiary of it.  We do nothing, but accept it, and allow Him to do all the work of it in us.  Jesus continues in verse 5 saying … “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.”  There is no such thing as “too young”, or too immature, to too dumb to follow Jesus.  Anyone, at any age, regardless of what we perceive as spiritual maturity or understanding is fully accepted by Jesus as a follower the second they choose to become one.  This idea turned on its head, the contemporary thinking that you had to study first, and upon gaining an understanding of scripture, only then could you join the ranks of the religious institution.  Jesus says no.  All you need is to trust Him and begin to love, and you are ready.  What children do best is to trust and love.  They love naturally; and are only taught to hate.

When we receive a child in the name of Jesus, we are receiving Jesus Himself.  This is no small promise.  This is the foundation of a church built upon love, transformative love, the love of Jesus Christ.  Jesus says to the sinner (and the saint), I love you, let me take your pain and the trail of death you have chosen from you.  When the sinner (or the saint) agrees to this, they need nothing more, to officially join the ranks of the church of Jesus.  No matter their age.  No matter their level of doctrinal understanding.  The rest of education can wait, the acceptance into the family of Jesus begins immediately.  The sinner (and us saints) begin every day forward with making this same choice – to love, and to allow His love to do the work it needs to do within us, to bring us into harmony with our God.  We should take joy in this.  We should have our arms ever outstretched to love sinners (even while still in their sin) and saints (even when they make repeated mistakes).  The love of our God is unconditional, and has the power to transform, all of us who still do not yet live rightly.  We need only focus on letting it do its work in us.  Submission based in a humility that recognizes its own need.

And what does the alternative look like?  Jesus continues in verse 6 saying … “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”  We, that is you or me, are NOT to “offend” one of the 2-year-old’s who belong to Jesus.  Better for us to keep our mouths shut.  Better for us to love in silence, than offer words of good intent, that have negative impact.  Better to be liberal with our love towards those who sin, than to restrict it, thinking we do them a service, we do not.  The loss, of causing a child of God to stumble or look away from God’s love is so profound it will one day break our perfected hearts.  Whether in this world, or the next, to look back and realize you had a key role in causing a precious child of God to turn away from God – because of what you said, or did – will cause a grief in you so deep you will wish you had been strapped to a millstone and throne into the sea before you caused that kind of damage to one who is now lost, at least in part, because of your role in their lives.  You may still be saved, this is not about “your” salvation.  But to know you caused the loss of another, will devastate you in a way NOTHING else ever will.  There is no greater grief.  I would expect weeping and gnashing of teeth over this one even from inside the walls of heaven.

Jesus continues in his warnings of what happens when we give ourselves not to Him, but to our own ideas of self-reliance and the evil it brings.  He continues in verse 7 saying … “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!”  This was a warning to Judas over his upcoming betrayal.  The betrayal of Judas was foretold by the prophets and it had to take place in order for scripture to be fulfilled, but the devastation to Judas would be crushing.  Jesus knew it, and this warning was to try to warn Judas about what it would do him.  But these same words were also meant for Peter.  The betrayal of Peter, by denying Christ, was not needed, it was chosen.  Peter too would be crushed by what he chose to do.  And these same words echo through the ages to you and I, for the constant failures we choose to embrace, and the stubborn refusals we hold to give up our ideas of self-reliance in our salvation.

Then Jesus speaks to us in an allegory we do not yet fully comprehend.  He continues in verse 8 saying … “Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. [verse 9] And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.”  Where it comes to offending a little child of God, how often do we find our feet or our hands engaged in activity that drives a child away from God.  While God is not our partner in salvation for He does it all; very often we have partners in our sins, real human partners.  We encourage each other in our sin, rationalizing our actions, and saying we can always ask for forgiveness later.  Better to lose hands and feet, than to be a partner in the demise of another child of God.  And our eyes.  How often do we train our eyes to find and see evil, most often because it appeals to us.  We look at other children of God, not as family, but as potential victims of our lust or our greed, or our avarice.  Better to pull out our own eyes, than to see other children of God in this way.  To embrace evil, is to embrace the pain of hell fire a long time before the flames ever touch our skin.  This is what Jesus is so desperate to help us avoid.  Protecting His little children from others even within the church is Him protecting you and me as well.

Finally Jesus brings it back to a more positive note as this encounter concludes in verse 10 saying … “ Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. [verse 11] For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost.”  Little children, of a very young age, in fact since they were born, already have guardian angels assigned to them.  Those angels behold the face of His Father which is in heaven.  When you despise the beloved of our God, you despise yourself, and face a grief in yourself you cannot now imagine.  We must all remember the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost.  Jesus is not talking about loving that which is easy to love, but that which is steeped in poo and very hard to love.  2-year-old’s very often make a mess in their diapers which no one, is too eager to have to clean up.  It smells.  It can make you nauseous.  When they have spread it all over their face and hands and clothing, that is how we look when covered in our sins.  But even in this condition, our Father loves us, enough to embrace us even then, clean us up meticulously until we shine like a new born day.  To avoid offending a sinner, even when they are still steeped in their sin, is the message from a Savior who came to save us ALL from those same sins, namely to save that which was lost.

And our Savior had much more to say …