Matthew 18 - Saving the 1% 

God’s relentless love

Don't be cruel to any of these little ones! I promise you their angels are always with my Father in heaven. Let me ask you this. What would you do if you had 100 sheep and one of them wandered off? Wouldn't you leave the 99 on the hillside and go look for the one that had wandered away? I am sure that finding it would make you happier than having the 99 that never wandered off. That's how it is with your Father in heaven. He doesn't want any of these little ones to be lost. (Matt 18:11- 4)

The word ‘mikron’ or ‘little one’ provides the link between Jesus’ encouragement to become little in the kingdom and his warning about the sin of leading members of the kingdom astray in the verses before, which we looked at a couple of weeks ago, and this well-known parable of the lost sheep. But is Jesus talking about sheep or the little ones of the kingdom? Whichever it is, there is a powerful message for us within this parable.

Not willing that any should perish

Let’s begin by correcting a misapprehension around the 99 that are left behind. The imagery that Jesus drew upon here is not a picture where the 99 are simply abandoned on a hillside. They would have been securely lodged in one of the stone sheep pens with the entrance sealed up with a barrier of stones. But to focus on that point would be missing the thrust of Jesus’ message, which I would suggest is this. My sense is that the thought of a 1% loss would not seem to be an enormous issue to most of us. But it is an aberration to Jesus – and that is reading it in our watered-down interpretation of the original. In the Greek, the word used for lost is ‘appollomee’ and it translates as ‘destroyed.’

Yet God is not willing that any should be destroyed.

What I see Jesus saying in this story is that God is not even willing to see 1% destroyed. He wants every single one of us to come into His kingdom. Yet we live in a Christian world where the prevailing thought seems to be that it is okay to let sinners perish! Where we can let 1% drift away, and not even be too fussed if that 1% becomes 2 or 3, or 10 or 20 per cent. The idea of a holy remnant has become our lingua franca. Perhaps it comes from the Calvinistic doctrine of the elect being those who alone are chosen. Yet God is not willing that any should be destroyed.

Judgment brings grief

Now, I am not dismissing the reality of God’s judgment; the judgment will come, But, that judgement is not God’s desire, it is not what he wants, nor what he is aiming for; the idea of judgment causes him to grieve.

And yet, having said all of this, Christianity is broadly split into two camps. One for whom the judgment cannot come soon enough, the other for whom there will never be a judgment and therefore we have licence to behave as we wish.

In God’s eyes we are not defined by what we have done or where we are coming from, not defined by where we are or what we are doing.

What I understand from this parable is that in God’s eyes we are not defined by what we have done or where we are coming from, not defined by where we are or what we are doing. In God’s eyes we are defined by whether we are willing to walk with Him. That means that members of the covenant community are not to employ the language of judgement, not to write-off anyone. We are to remember that it was Jesus who came to seek and save the lost, and that we are called to emulate him.

God’s relentless love is unreasonable, it is shocking and beyond our comprehension, yet this is what Jesus is teaching us. Do not even let 1% slip away. The kingdom is for everyone, and it will not be for lack of forgiveness on God’s part that all do not participate in its glorious culmination.

Healing the world

On reading this parable, it makes me reflect that God would have us in the world as mechanics, working to redeem people, places and circumstances. In Judaism there is a phrase ‘tikun ha’olam’ which literally means ‘healing the world’. It speaks of a desire to be light in a dark place, to be God’s arms and legs in this world. That is what Jesus would have us be in our witness to His grace. However, the reality is that we, like some of the Pharisees that Jesus engaged with, are happy seeing ourselves as judges, pronouncing on the sins and failing of those we encounter.

From that place of humility and intimacy with God, we can emulate our Lord and have a hunger to rescue even the 1%.

I remember from my childhood the term ‘there but for the grace of God go I’. It is a phrase that speaks of the recognition that without God’s grace we are without hope. Speaking out that phrase is an act of humility; and humility is a world away from the attitude that comes with judgment. Speaking out this phrase takes us into the space of humbling ourselves and in doing so, coming closer to the Lord. And from that place of humility and intimacy with God, we can emulate our Lord and have a hunger to rescue even the 1%.