42. Greatest in the Kingdom
Matthew 18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Luke 9:48 He that is least among you all, the same shall be great.
Who doesn’t want to be great? This is a conditional promise: if you humble yourself like a child and be the least, then you will be the greatest in the kingdom of God. The condition of being the humblest and the least in the kingdom of the world leads to greatness and being great in the kingdom of God. This principle permeates the Scriptures and is repeated throughout. There is a definite correlation, a cause and effect relationship, between being humbled and being exalted. The principle is most clearly defined in the Event of the Cross and the Empty Tomb. The same spiritual principle applies consistently to the lives of the Disciples of Jesus.
How can many people be the greatest? The superlative usually applies to one, but in this case it applies to many. You will be greatest and I will be the greatest, if we allow ourselves to be humbled; we are all “greatest,” and in God’s economy each is greater than others and others greater than each of us. This is beyond human understanding: I am the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) and you are the GOAT at the same time. Great does not mean better; it means being highly regarded, esteemed, honored, exalted, especially loved by God, and set on a pedestal of His adulation. If we are humbled enough the adulation will not “go to our head,” but it will cause us to further and forever praise the Lord.
We cannot, however, make ourselves humble nor denigrate ourselves to become the least noticed. The humbling and making the least (or as Paul says of himself, “the leaster”) is all God’s doing. He does all the humbling; He makes us nothing; and Jesus does it in such a way as to keep us from being proud of our humility and nothingness. God has highly exalted Jesus, and us with Him by faith. We can slow down, but not speed up, God’s humbling process by complaining, griping, resisting, rebelling, and kicking against the pricks. But the Lord will finish what He started.
When God has brought us closer to the point of honest humility it is a beautiful thing to behold, for it looks like Jesus, our Beautiful Savior. Meanwhile, it is left to us to trust the process and that’s why He gives the promise. The Lord is making me great. We don’t see the greatness, but we believe God does.