Charles Ellicott Commentary Matthew 18

Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Mark records more fully that the disciples had disputed about this along the way. Knowing their thoughts (Luke 9:47), our Lord asked them what they had been debating, and they then became silent.

We may well believe that the promise made to Peter and the special choice of the three for closer fellowship, as in the recent Transfiguration, gave rise to these rival claims. Those who were less distinguished, perhaps, looked on this preference with jealousy. Meanwhile, within the inner circle, the ambition of the two sons of Zebedee to sit on their Lord’s right hand and on His left in His kingdom (Matthew 20:23) made them unwilling to concede the primacy of Peter.

Jesus called a little child unto him. As the conversation was “in the house” (Mark 9:33), and that house was probably Peter’s, the child may have been one of his.

As in similar incidents (Matthew 19:13; Matthew 21:15–16), we may recognize in our Lord’s act a recognition of the special beauty of childhood, and a tender love for the gracious trust and freedom from rivalry it shows when the taint of egotism is still undeveloped.

Mark adds that He folded His arms around the child in loving fondness and, before doing so, uttered the warning words: If any one will (wishes to) be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all. A later tradition of the Eastern Church identified the child with Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, interpreting the name he gave himself, Θεοφόρος (Theophoros), in a passive sense as “one who had been carried or borne by God.” Ignatius himself, however, used it in its active sense: “one who carries God within him.”

Unless you are converted—The English word expresses the force of the Greek, but the “conversion” spoken of was not used in the definite, half-technical sense of later religious experiences. What was needed was that they should “turn” from their self-seeking ambition and, in this respect, regain the relative blamelessness of children.

You shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven—The force of the words as spoken to the Twelve can hardly be exaggerated. They were disputing about precedence in the kingdom, and in that very dispute they were showing that they were not truly in it. It was essentially spiritual, and its first condition was the abnegation of self. Even the chief of the Apostles was self-excluded when he gloried in his primacy. The words at least help us to understand the more mysterious language of the “new birth” of water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5), a teaching that at least one of the disputants must, in all likelihood, have heard.

Whoever, therefore, humbles himself—This, then, was the answer to the question, “Who will be the greatest?” The secret of true greatness lies in the unconsciousness of being great, which takes the lowest position as its rightful place. For a person to “humble himself” with the purpose of attaining greatness would be self-defeating and would reduce humility to a hypocrisy. The “pride that apes humility,” the false lowliness of Colossians 2:18, is even more hateful and contemptible than open self-assertion.

As this little child—What was to be the result of a deliberate act in the disciples was found naturally in the child. They were to make themselves lowly as he was lowly. The transition from the plural to the singular gives an almost dramatic vividness to the form of our Lord’s teaching. We seem to see the child shrinking timidly, with a blushing face and downcast eyes, from the notice thus drawn to him.

Whoso shall receive one such little child — The words are memorable as the first utterance of the truth later proclaimed as the law of final judgment (Matthew 25:40), and as giving that law the widest possible range of universality. No child of man is excluded from those whom Christ calls His brothers.