“A Sin Almost Too Great For Words”: What does Matthew 18:6 Mean?
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”
It is sometimes said that all sins are equal in the sight of God, but it is not true. Some sins are more grievous than others.
In his essay entitled “Children”, originally written for A Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (ed. James Hastings, 1908), B. B. Warfield draws out various ways in which Jesus dignifies and elevates the condition of childhood. Like most of his writing, it is rigorous, perceptive, challenging, and heart warming.
One particular phrase from the essay has stayed with me.
In referring to Jesus’ warning in Matt 18:6 about causing “one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble”, Warfield describes the offence as “a sin almost too great for words.”
That is a good way of putting it. It captures the extraordinary gravity of Jesus’ warning. The sense is this: if we were faced with a choice of either causing a little one to stumble, or of having a millstone placed around our neck and being drowned at sea, we would be wise to choose the latter option.
These are, without doubt, some of the most frightening words in the Bible.
Who then are these “little ones”?
In the context, Jesus uses a child both as the mark of kingdom entry (18:3), and as the measure of kingdom status (18:4). In one sense, every believer in Jesus is a little one, someone who has become like a little child. But in another sense, the child stands for the believer of low status, the sort of person Jesus’ privileged twelve are tempted to look down on and despise (18:10), as they jockey for position in the kingdom (18:1).
It is this narrower sense that comes to the fore in context, since Jesus is speaking to his status-hungry inner circle. In the world, all Jesus’ disciples are vulnerable little ones (10:42). But in the church, Jesus’ little ones are those who either by nature (18:2) or choice (18:4) are lowly, weak, and vulnerable. Later on, Jesus will describe such disciples as “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” (Matt 25:40).
Here, causing to stumble (18:6) is contrasted with hospitable “welcoming” (18:5). It means to behave towards the little, vulnerable Christian in such a way that pushes them away from Christian faith, rather than warmly embraces them within the fellowship of faith. Either it means “despising” them (18:10), treating them with a heavy and harsh hand, the way worldly people of status treat those beneath them, or it means practicing sinful, damnable behaviour that is then copied by the impressionable.
Remember Jesus is speaking to his inner ring, those who have, and certainly will have, the power and authority to mistreat little, vulnerable disciples.
As Knox Chamblin says, “Jesus addresses the leaders themselves [emphasis original], starting with the twelve. They must deal gently with the ‘little children’ under their care. Let leaders beware lest, taking advantage of their people’s lowliness and submissiveness, they become pastoral tyrants or ecclesiastical despots.” (Matthew, Mentor, Vol 2, 875)
What Jesus wants his disciples to understand is that because little ones matter to God in a special way, they should matter to his disciples in a special way. This is emphasised in three ways:
To receive them is to receive Jesus himself (18:5)!
In heaven, they have special angelic representatives before God’s throne (18:10).
When they wander off, God the Father personally seeks them out, treasuring each one so much that he leaves the ninety nine for the sake of the one (18:12-14).
What this means is that if we cause one of these little ones to stumble, God takes it very, very personally indeed.
If you are a father and someone took your little daughter and abused her, how would you feel? You would feel rage. That gives you just an inkling of how God feels when anyone mistreats Jesus’ little ones.
At your church, in your fellowship of believers, in your Christian organisation, there are “little ones”. They may be children. They may be physically sick or weak. They may be financially poor. They may be ethnic or cultural outsiders. They may be weak in faith and conscience. They may be refugees. They may be traumatised from war, abuse, or shattering loss, suffering with severe mental and psychological scars. They are often two or more of these things at once.
Such little ones are vulnerable. Although in the world people often take advantage of such people, in the church they are to be afforded special dignity and care.
Twice in my life as an adult, I have known what it is, through force of circumstances, to be very little, weak and vulnerable. On one of those occasions, I was treated by Christian leaders with callousness and contempt. Eventually, after being pressured for months to sign an abuse NDA that would have been effective for life (I didn’t sign), I experienced such a deep, intense, destabilising, and lasting distress that it took me about three years to get back on an even keel.
Today I still feel the pain and suffer various repercussions. If I hadn’t, by God’s grace, been deeply planted in Christ, I don’t think I’d still be a Christian today.
So Jesus’ words make sense to me. I see how it is possible that little ones who believe in Jesus can be caused to irrevocably stumble and fall.
I don’t know whether the men who mistreated me have experienced God’s mercy in Christ. I have prayed often that they do. I know that, at least for now, they still enjoy the perks and power that come with status and authority. There are many men like them—in the inner ring, exercising considerable authority, authority that they have terribly misused, but to which they cling like a life raft.
I also know this. That none of us can take Jesus’ words too seriously. We should tremble before them. We should plead for mercy, and ask that God would make us as tender, careful, supportive, and encouraging as possible towards Jesus’ little ones. Because we will have to give account for how we have treated them.
If you are are thinking about trampling all over one of Christ’s little ones, I beg you to think again. You’d be better off with a millstone around your neck, plunged into the depths of the sea. Better off! Think about it.
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