Jesus called the child to Himself, and He put the child in the midst of His disciples. And so does He also call you to become like a child — to become His disciple — by the humility of repentance.
But first of all, the Son of God Himself became a little Child, not just metaphorically, but in fact. That is where the Gospel According to St. Matthew begins, and over and over again in those first couple chapters of the Gospel we hear the Lord Jesus described as “the Child.” For so He was, conceived and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not only that, but, having become true Man, He humbled Himself, taking on the form of a Servant, coming in the likeness of fallen, sinful, mortal flesh. And He became obedient, unto His sacrificial death upon the Cross for your salvation.
It is precisely by His Cross and in His Resurrection that you are born again as a child of God by way of your Holy Baptism. Named by Him, adopted by His Father, anointed by His Holy Spirit, you have become a dear little child of God in Christ Jesus. You are humbled and exalted in Him. Not just once-upon-a-time, but your Baptism retains an ongoing, daily, and lifelong significance, whereby you die and rise with Christ each day by repentance and faith in His forgiveness of sins. And thus do you continue to live and abide as a little child of God within His Kingdom of Heaven.
The greatness of such a little child in the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus describes in this Holy Gospel, is the greatness of humility in the presence of God. He’s not talking here about modesty, far less about any false modesty, but about the genuine need and real dependence of a little child.
The fact is that, before God, you and everyone else alike have such dependence and need. But in the arrogance and pride of your sin, you do not recognize or acknowledge your need for the Lord or your utter dependence on Him. Thus, you must be called and brought to the humility of a little child by the preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Little children must also be called and brought to the humility of repentance and faith in order to enter and abide within the Kingdom of Heaven. But their day-to-day existence and survival in this body and life on earth are an indication of what it means and what it looks like for you or anyone to live as a child of God, regardless of your age, abilities, achievements, or circumstances. Just as a little child must depend on his father and mother for food and clothing, shelter and protection, discipline and education, so must every Christian depend on the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and upon His Holy Christian Church, for the salvation and eternal life of body and soul.
So, too, the ongoing care that little children need also includes the love and mercy and forgiveness of their parents. For it is not only the case that little children can do nothing to care for themselves, but they sin against their parents, siblings, and family in all sorts of ways, which increase as they get older. To continue serving and providing for them requires daily forbearance and forgiveness.
By the same token, to be sure, parents and other authorities, all adults and older children, are no less in need of forgiveness from God and from their neighbors on a daily and ongoing basis. And to maintain the responsibility of caring for their children requires discipline, correction, training, repentance, and effort. For none of us, by sinful nature, consistently does what is good and right.
Discipline, correction, and training also belong to the care that children of all ages need from their parents. They need to be taught the difference between right and wrong, to carry out their duties, to recognize the consequences of their choices, decisions, and actions, and to know how to live, to love and serve their neighbors, to repent of their sins, and to forgive those who sin against them. Some of this they may learn the hard way, by trial and error, as do we all to a certain extent. But much of it must be taught, and ideally it should all be taught and exemplified by their own parents.
To live as a little child of God within His Kingdom, likewise, requires His gracious forgiveness of sins and His providential care of both body and soul (for both this life and the Life everlasting) — and also His paternal correction, loving discipline, and patient training in both faith and love.
Within His Kingdom — His Household and Family — you and your brothers and sisters in Christ are all alike in your need for Him and in His grace toward you. You all have one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father, one Holy Spirit, one Name with which you have been named, and one Gospel of forgiveness, life, and salvation. As children living in the same Household and having the same Father, born from the same Womb, washed in the same Tub, and eating at the same Table, you are all alike the little children of God, no matter the differences between you.
Therefore, love and care for each other, as your Father in heaven loves and cares for each of you in body and soul, in grace, mercy, and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord. In this fallen and perishing world, that loving care — of God for you, and of His children for each other — centers in the forgiveness of sins. Indeed, there is nothing more characteristic and definitive of the Church on earth than the forgiveness of sins. It is the coin of the realm, the economy of God’s Kingdom, to forgive sins, to show mercy, to have compassion, and to love even those who sin against you.
But such forgiveness does not excuse, ignore, or make light of sin. The world does have that sort of “forgiveness,” which deals in “second chances,” makes excuses, rationalizes circumstances, and may at times choose to overlook faults or wrongdoing. But genuine forgiveness does not excuse sin or rationalize its reasons. It does not ignore sin or take it lightly. Real forgiveness confronts sin head-on and removes it by the Cross of Christ, by His atoning sacrifice, by way of repentance and faith in His forgiveness of sins, unto newness of life in His Resurrection from the dead. And it is thus administered and exercised along with the loving discipline of a father for his children.
Which is to say that, in those places where the Lord your God has given you authority over others, or where He has made you responsible for the care of others, there is also a need for discipline — exercised in love and with forgiveness. I’m not talking about punitive retribution, but about a kind of discipline that seeks to protect and serve the one who is disciplined (and his neighbors, also).
A father disciplines his son, in order to protect his son from harm and danger — and to protect his other children (and other neighbors) from his son. He thereby teaches and trains his son in the way of life and love. And he does so in and with the forgiveness of sins. That is, when he teaches his son to do differently than he has done, it is not because the sin is retained and remembered and is going to be brought back as an accusation in the future. It is rather that, along with the forgiveness of the sin, the sin will not be permitted to continue ruling and dominating the life of the child.
So, too, the governing authorities are God’s ministers, whereby He does punish sin, He punishes evildoers, in order to protect and serve everyone. It is in love that He thereby restrains and limits wickedness; not as though He were petty or vindictive, but precisely because wickedness and evil are harmful — in both body and soul — to those who sin and to those who are sinned against.
Think about it. No parent would stand back and watch a little child reach for an open flame or run toward a busy street and not do or say anything to stop the child. No, love compels the father or mother to act immediately, to keep the child from mortal harm and danger. Such obvious things are simply examples and analogies, but they do help to give a sense of why correction, discipline, and the preaching of repentance are so important and so necessary. If only we took the eternal harm and danger of sin as seriously as the temporal threats of fires and traffic and so forth.
That is why God’s Law must be preached. Not as though the Law would save you or anyone else, but that the Law of God must do its own proper work of guarding and protecting His children from sin and every evil, and so also driving the lost and erring to the genuine humility of repentance — to recognize their need, their weakness, and the danger they are in — and to rely upon His help.
As a Christian, you do this for yourself, or so you should. For the Lord has taught you to examine yourself in the light of His Commandments, to acknowledge and confess your sins according to His Word, and to seek out His forgiveness in the Ministry of His Gospel. You likewise discipline your flesh, your body and life in this world, your words and your actions, in accordance with the Word of the Lord and your own calling and station in life. Not as though to save yourself, which is neither possible nor necessary, but because you belong to the Lord, your Savior, and His Word is Spirit, Truth, and Life, whereby you live in faith and love within His Household and Family.
Above all, you train and discipline yourself to live and abide in God’s Kingdom, not by your own wisdom, reason, or strength, but by repentance and faith in the Gospel. And it is in the same spirit and for the same purpose that you call your brother or sister to repentance, so that your brother or sister might also live by the same grace as yourself, in the same Body of Christ Jesus, as a member of the same Household and Family of God, as a beloved child of the same God and Father.
So it is that Christ Jesus has taken His stand with sinners (even you), especially beginning in the Jordan River when He submitted Himself to a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He had no sins of His own, but He took His stand with sinners — not to condone sin — but to atone for the sins of the world, and to deliver the world from the bondage and consequences of sin.
And as He was baptized with and for sinners, so does He also eat with Gentiles and tax collectors, with prostitutes, and all manner of sinners, in order to share His fellowship and life with them. He does not confirm them in their sins or encourage them to continue in their sins. In His mercy and grace He rather calls them to repentance, to become His disciples, His brothers and sisters, to be and to live as the children of His own God and Father, and to eat with Him at His Table in peace.
Here then is the greatness of Christ Jesus, in which He does all of this for you, as well, and for all people. For He has become the little Child, and He has lived as the true Man, in holy faith before His God and Father in heaven, and in holy love for all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve.
As a little Child, the Lord of heaven and earth, by whom all things were made, depended on His Mommy, St. Mary, and upon His father on earth, St. Joseph. He had real human needs, and He depended on His parents to care for Him. He also honored them, as the Fourth Commandment requires. He submitted to them in all things, even though He was without sin and they were not. And He learned from them. The One who is the very Word and Wisdom of God learned from His human parents, St. Mary and St. Joseph, with all their mortal frailties and weaknesses.
And as He grew, He knew hunger and thirst. He knew tiredness and fatigue. He knew heat and cold, hurt and pain. And finally He knew death, even death upon the Cross, bearing in His Body all the sins of the world and submitting Himself to their consequences and punishment. He yielded up His Body and Life to the judgment of both church and state, and to the condemnation of God’s holy and righteous Law, trusting that His God and Father in heaven would vindicate Him and raise Him up. To such an extent did He humble Himself “like a child,” unto His death upon the Cross.
So it is that His Cross and Resurrection are the way of repentance, by which you are born again as a child of God in Christ Jesus, as you are raised up to newness of life in His crucified and risen Body. This is not only the shape and pattern of your repentance, but the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus are your repentance, into which you are called and brought by His Word and Spirit.
And so it is that real greatness is found in the Cross of Christ Jesus. Not only because the Cross works humility and repentance in you — in your heart and mind, body and soul — but especially because it is from His Cross and in His Resurrection that He freely and fully forgives your sins. In calling you to repentance by His Cross, He calls you to receive and to rely on His forgiveness.
The good and gracious will of God is that you should not perish but have everlasting Life — not by your own works, but by His grace through faith in Christ Jesus. And so it is that He rejoices over your forgiveness, over your recovery and salvation, even more than He would rejoice over the hypothetical ninety-nine who never strayed. He is happier to save you by His grace than He would be if you could save yourself by your own righteousness. For this is the greatness and glory of God, that He has mercy upon sinners and saves them for the sake of His own divine Love — that the sons and daughters of affliction should become His own beloved children in Christ Jesus.
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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