Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.— Matthew 18:3
Mark tells us what happened on the road. Jesus asked what they had been discussing, but they kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest (Mark 9:34). Matthew records the question they finally brought to Him. Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? (Matt 18:1).
No one asks that question hoping the answer is someone else. They were not asking for information. They were asking for a ranking, and each of them hoped to be near the top.
Jesus answered without a speech. Calling to Him a child, He put him in the midst of them (Matt 18:2).
We tend to picture this scene with warm light and a smiling child. The disciples would not have seen it that way. In their world, a child had no status to speak of. No rights. No voice in public. Nothing to offer anyone. Jesus did not choose a child because children are sweet. He chose the one person in the room nobody would have bothered to rank.
Then He explained. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:4).
A child is not humble because of some special virtue. A child simply has no illusion of self-sufficiency. A child knows he needs someone. That is the posture Jesus asked for. And look again at how He began. Unless you turn. He said it to men who had already left everything to follow Him. Even disciples can drift in a direction they did not intend.
We usually measure spiritual maturity by how much we know. Scripture seems to measure it by how low we are willing to go.
Many readers have noticed a pattern in Paul’s letters. Early on, he calls himself the least of the apostles (1 Cor 15:9). Later, the very least of all the saints (Eph 3:8). Later still, near the end of his life, he writes that Christ came to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost (1 Tim 1:15).
The longer Paul walked with Christ, the smaller he saw himself. Not because he was growing weaker. Because he was seeing God more clearly. The closer we come to the light, the more clearly we see our own dust.
This is what Scripture means by the fear of the Lord (Prov 9:10). It is not terror. It is the awe of someone who has finally understood how great God is.
Watch a new believer open the Bible. Everything is underlined. Every verse feels like it was written that morning. They ask questions and take every answer home.
Years later, something shifts. We hear a familiar verse and think, I know that one. We have heard the sermon before. We can finish the preacher’s sentence.
The Word has not changed. Our hunger has.
And it shows in how we speak to others too. When we share the Word from a posture of I already know, it tends to land as advice rather than as the voice of God. What we no longer receive with our whole heart, we cannot give with our whole weight.
Peter wrote to believers scattered across Asia Minor. He had just reminded them that they were born again through the living and abiding word of God (1 Pet 1:23). Then he gave them an image.
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.— 1 Peter 2:2
Anyone who has cared for a newborn knows this kind of longing. Newborns do not eat on a schedule they have chosen. They wake up hungry, again and again, every few hours. They do not grow out of needing milk by reading about milk.
The book of Hebrews uses milk to rebuke believers who never moved on to solid food (Heb 5:12–13). Peter uses it differently. His point is not that we should stay beginners. It is that we should never stop being hungry.
And he says we grow up into salvation. We were not saved because we were righteous (Titus 3:5). God declared us righteous by grace. But what He has declared, He is still working out in us, and the Word is how He does it. It feeds us. It also shows us ourselves. James compares it to a mirror, where we see the stains we would rather not notice (James 1:23–24).
George Müller, who cared for thousands of orphans in nineteenth-century Bristol, later wrote that as a young believer he spent more time reading books about the Bible than reading the Bible itself. He considered it one of his early mistakes. Once he turned back to Scripture, he never stopped. His biographers record that by the end of his long life he had read the whole Bible more than a hundred times.
He was over ninety. He was still drinking milk.
The disciples wanted to know who would be greatest. Jesus answered with someone who could not even compete.
It is worth asking honestly. When did a verse we already knew last stop us? When did we last open the Bible expecting to be fed, and not just reminded?
If the hunger has faded, the way back is not guilt. It is the table. The Word has not grown thinner. It is still enough.
The greatest in the kingdom are not the ones who have outgrown their need. They are the ones who never stopped being hungry.
© 2026 Bible Portal. Free to share with attribution. Please keep the source and a link to Bible Portal intact. For other uses, contact us.
