Matthew 18: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The disciples ask Jesus who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and he answers by placing a child in front of them and warning against causing "these little ones" to stumble. He tells a short story about a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to look for one that wandered off, then gives instructions for confronting a fellow believer who has sinned against you, step by step, ending with the church. When Peter asks how often he must forgive, Jesus answers with a large number and tells a story about a servant whose enormous debt was canceled but who then jailed a fellow servant over a small one.

Claim by Claim

1. 18:1
   • At that time the disciples came to Jesus.
   • The disciples asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
2. 18:2
   • Jesus called a little child to him.
   • Jesus set the child in the midst of them.
3. 18:3
   • Jesus said, Truly I say to you.
   • Jesus said that unless you are turned and become as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.
4. 18:4
   • Jesus said that whoever humbles himself like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
5. 18:5
   • Jesus said that whoever receives one such little child in his name receives him.
6. 18:6
   • Jesus said that whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in him to stumble faces a worse fate.
   • Jesus said it would be better for such a person that a millstone be hung around his neck.
   • Jesus said it would be better for such a person that he be drowned in the depth of the sea.
7. 18:7
   • Jesus pronounced woe on the world because of causes of stumbling.
   • Jesus said it is necessary that causes of stumbling come.
   • Jesus pronounced woe on the man by whom the cause of stumbling comes.
8. 18:8
   • Jesus said that if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off.
   • Jesus said to throw it away from you.
   • Jesus said it is better for you to enter into life crippled or lame.
   • Jesus said the alternative is having two hands or two feet and being thrown into the everlasting fire.
9. 18:9
   • Jesus said that if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out.
   • Jesus said to throw it away from you.
   • Jesus said it is better for you to enter into life with one eye.
   • Jesus said the alternative is having two eyes and being thrown into the fire of hell.
10. 18:10
    • Jesus said to take heed not to despise one of these little ones.
    • Jesus said that their angels in heaven always behold the face of his Father who is in heaven.
11. 18:11
    • Jesus said the Son of man has come to save that which was lost.
12. 18:12
    • Jesus asked what they think.
    • Jesus posed the case of a man who has a hundred sheep.
    • Jesus posed that one of the hundred sheep goes astray.
    • Jesus asked whether the man does not leave the ninety-nine.
    • Jesus said the man goes into the mountains.
    • Jesus said the man seeks the one that has gone astray.
13. 18:13
    • Jesus said that if the man finds the sheep, truly he says to them.
    • Jesus said the man rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.
14. 18:14
    • Jesus said it is not the will of their Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.
15. 18:15
    • Jesus said that if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
    • Jesus said that if he hears you, you have gained your brother.
16. 18:16
    • Jesus said that if he will not hear you, take one or two more with you.
    • Jesus said the purpose is that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.
17. 18:17
    • Jesus said that if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church.
    • Jesus said that if he refuses to hear the church, let him be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.
18. 18:18
    • Jesus said, Truly I say to you.
    • Jesus said whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.
    • Jesus said whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
19. 18:19
    • Jesus said again that he tells them.
    • Jesus said that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask, it will be done for them by his Father who is in heaven.
20. 18:20
    • Jesus said that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he is there in the midst of them.
21. 18:21
    • Peter came to Jesus.
    • Peter asked how often his brother may sin against him and he forgive him.
    • Peter asked whether up to seven times.
22. 18:22
    • Jesus said to him that he does not say to him up to seven times.
    • Jesus said up to seventy times seven.
23. 18:23
    • Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is therefore likened to a certain king.
    • Jesus said the king wanted to settle accounts with his servants.
24. 18:24
    • When the king had begun to settle accounts, one servant was brought to him.
    • That servant owed the king ten thousand talents.
25. 18:25
    • The servant did not have the means to pay.
    • The lord commanded that the servant be sold.
    • The lord commanded that the servant's wife and children be sold.
    • The lord commanded that all that the servant had be sold.
    • The lord commanded that payment be made.
26. 18:26
    • The servant fell down before him.
    • The servant did homage to him.
    • The servant asked the lord to have patience with him.
    • The servant said he would pay him everything.
27. 18:27
    • The lord of that servant was moved with compassion.
    • The lord released him.
    • The lord forgave him the debt.
28. 18:28
    • That same servant went out.
    • He found one of his fellow servants.
    • The fellow servant owed him a hundred denarii.
    • He laid hands on the fellow servant.
    • He took him by the throat.
    • He told him to pay what he owed.
29. 18:29
    • The fellow servant fell down at his feet.
    • The fellow servant begged him.
    • The fellow servant asked him to have patience with him.
    • The fellow servant said he would pay him everything.
30. 18:30
    • He was not willing.
    • He went and threw the fellow servant into prison until he should pay the debt.
31. 18:31
    • The other fellow servants saw what was done.
    • They were very sorry.
    • They came and told their lord all that was done.
32. 18:32
    • His lord called him.
    • His lord called him a wicked servant.
    • His lord said he had forgiven him all that debt.
    • His lord said he forgave it because the servant begged him.
33. 18:33
    • His lord asked whether the servant should not also have had mercy on his fellow servant.
    • His lord said he himself had had mercy on the servant.
34. 18:34
    • His lord was angry.
    • His lord delivered him to the tormentors until he should pay all that was owed to him.
35. 18:35
    • Jesus said his heavenly Father will do likewise to them.
    • Jesus said this applies if they do not each forgive their brother from their hearts.
    • Jesus said the forgiveness concerns their brothers' trespasses.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

18:1

"The kingdom of heaven" is Matthew's usual phrase for what the other Gospels call the kingdom of God. "Heaven" here stands in for the divine name, which many Jews avoided saying directly. The disciples' question is about rank: who stands highest in it.

18:2

In that society a child had no legal standing, no property and no honor to claim, and depended entirely on adults. Jesus puts in the middle of the circle the person the disciples would have ranked lowest.

18:3

Two things in the King James can mislead. "Verily I say unto you" translates "Amen, I say to you," an unusual formula that puts weight on what follows, not a mild filler. And "converted" in 1611 English means simply turned around, changed direction; it does not mean religious conversion in the modern sense of switching faiths.

18:4

"Humble himself" translates a Greek word meaning to make oneself low. In Greek and Roman culture lowliness was not a virtue but a condition to escape, so this sounded strange rather than pious.

18:5

"In my name" means on the basis of who I am, treating the child as someone who belongs to me. Welcoming a person "in the name of" another was ordinary language for receiving them as that person's representative.

18:6

"Offend" has shifted since 1611. The Greek word means to trip someone up, to make them fall, not to insult or upset them. The millstone here is the large kind turned by a donkey, not the small hand mill a woman worked at home; it is an unliftable weight. Death by drowning with a weight attached was a form of execution the Romans used and Jews regarded with horror.

18:7

"Offences" again means trip hazards: the Greek noun originally named the bait stick of a trap. "It must needs be that offences come" means such things are bound to happen, not that any particular person is compelled to cause them. "Woe unto" is closer to a cry of grief over someone than a curse laid on them.

18:8

"Halt" is old English for lame, and "maimed" means missing a limb. "Everlasting fire" translates a phrase meaning fire belonging to the coming age.

18:9

"Hell fire" translates "the Gehenna of fire." Gehenna is the Valley of Hinnom, a ravine just outside Jerusalem with a grim history in the Hebrew scriptures, and by this period its name was used for the place of final punishment. It is a different word from the one usually translated as the realm of the dead.

18:10

To "behold the face" of a king is court language: it means having the right to stand in his presence and speak to him directly, a privilege only the highest officials held. The saying assumes the common ancient Jewish idea that individuals or groups have angels assigned to them.

18:11

This verse is missing from the oldest surviving manuscripts of Matthew and is widely thought to have been copied in later from Luke 19:10. Many modern translations omit it or move it to a footnote, which is why the numbering can seem to skip.

18:12

"The mountains" means the open hill country where flocks grazed, not high peaks. Leaving ninety-nine animals unattended there was a real risk, which is the point of the question.

18:15

"Brother" here means a fellow member of the community, not a blood relative. "Trespass" means to wrong or to sin against. Some early manuscripts lack the words "against thee," which would widen the saying from a personal grievance to any wrongdoing.

18:16

This is a direct quotation of the law in Deuteronomy 19:15, which required two or three witnesses before a charge could stand in court. "Every word" translates a term that means every matter or every charge, and "established" is a legal word meaning confirmed as proven.

18:17

"The church" translates a word that simply means an assembly or a called-together gathering; it carried no sense of a building or an institution yet. "An heathen man" is a Gentile, someone outside the covenant community. Tax collectors, the King James "publican," were Jews who collected revenue for Rome and were treated as traitors and cheats, since they made their living by charging above the required amount.

18:18

"Bind" and "loose" were standard terms among Jewish teachers for two things: declaring a practice forbidden or permitted, and putting a person out of the community or receiving them back. The grammar of the Greek is debated and can also be read as "will have been bound in heaven," which would make the earthly decision a ratification of a heavenly one rather than the trigger for it.

18:20

"Two or three" picks up the number of witnesses from verse 16, tying this promise back to the procedure just described. Rabbis of the period said something similar about two who sit together over the law: God's presence rests among them.

18:21

Seven is the standard biblical number for completeness. Peter is not picking a random figure; he is offering what would have sounded like a generous outer limit.

18:22

The Greek phrase is ambiguous and can mean either seventy-seven times or seventy times seven, and translators still divide over it. Either way it deliberately echoes Genesis 4:24, where Lamech boasts that if Cain is avenged seven times, he will be avenged seventy-sevenfold. The boast of unlimited revenge is turned into unlimited forgiveness.

18:23

The word translated "servants" covers slaves and also high officials of a king's household, and the sums involved show these are senior administrators, perhaps regional governors handling tax revenue, not domestic help. "Take account" means to audit the books and settle balances.

18:24

A talent was a unit of weight used for money, worth roughly six thousand denarii, and a denarius was a day's pay for a laborer. One talent was therefore something like twenty years of wages. Ten thousand was the largest number Greek had a single word for, so "ten thousand talents" is the biggest sum the language could easily name: an amount no individual could owe or repay. For scale, the annual tax income of an entire province in this period ran to a few hundred talents.

18:25

Selling a defaulting debtor and his household into slavery was a recognized practice in the ancient world, though Jewish law restricted it. Since the debt is beyond any possible price, the sale is a punishment more than a recovery of the money.

18:26

"Worshipped him" translates a word meaning to fall to the ground before a superior. In the ancient Near East this was the normal gesture before a king or a great man and did not by itself imply that the person was divine.

18:28

"An hundred pence" is a hundred denarii, about a hundred days' wages for a laborer: a real debt, roughly four months of work, but something like six hundred thousand times smaller than the one just canceled. Seizing a debtor by the throat was a recognized way of hauling him toward court under Roman practice.

18:30

Imprisonment for debt was meant as pressure on the debtor's family and friends to produce the money, since a man in prison could earn nothing himself.

18:34

"Tormentors" means jailers who used torture, which was legally applied to debtors to force them to reveal hidden assets or to make relatives pay. "Till he should pay all that was due" is effectively without end, given the size of the sum named in verse 24.

18:35

"Trespasses" means wrongs done against you. "From your hearts" means genuinely, from the inside, rather than as a formality.

Where the Manuscripts Differ

Worth knowing before you stand up: a listener following a modern translation may not have this verse in front of them.

18:11

Most modern translations leave this verse out. It is in the Greek text the King James translators worked from, but not in the older manuscripts found since, so scholars generally take it as a copyist’s addition rather than part of the original.