<p>9:50 <i>But Jesus said to him: Forbid not- </i>The preceding section has sternly warned against forbidding the little ones, and now we have a worked example. The little ones in view were John's disciples; although seeing &quot;John did no miracle&quot; we wonder whether the miracle claimed was legitimate. But the Lord is not only gentle, He seeks to accept even such misunderstanding and misguided ones. For He alludes without doubt to Num. 11:28,29: &quot;Joshua&hellip; answered and said, My lord Moses, forbid them. And Moses said unto him, Are you envious for my sake? Would God that all the Lord&rsquo;s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them&quot;. He considered this misguided miracle worker in John's group as all the same one of God's new Israel. As noted earlier, the disciples tended to &quot;forbid&quot; those whom the Lord wished to accept. And that same tension is seen time and again with the way closed, denominational mindsets seek to exclude and &quot;forbid&quot; others who differ and are immature. But the allusion to Numbers 11 seems to be saying that all in whom the Spirit is working should be accepted; and the litmus test is whether they shall &quot;speak evil of me&quot;. If they do not, then they are not against Him but for, despite their misunderstanding. An alternative reading however is &quot;Shall not lightly speak evil of me&quot; (as AV). In this case, the Lord is comforting His sceptical disciples that if such a person does is in fact against Him, then this is no light matter and will be dealt with by the Lord's judgment; but not by theirs. This incident is surely alluded to by Paul when he warns against some who claimed to possess the Spirit who 'call Jesus accursed' (1 Cor. 12:3). There were such, and it was their attitude to the Lord Jesus personally which proclaimed them against Him. What people think of Christ is the critical issue when it comes to deciding whether a person is for or against Him; and that is obvious really, but the natural tendency to &quot;forbid&quot; those who interpret differently to ourselves is strong.&nbsp;</p><p><i>For he that is not against you is for you</i>- If a person is not against the Lord personally (Mk. 9:39), then he is not against &quot;us&quot;, the body of Christ. And so even if that person will not mix with us, from God's wider point of view he is &quot;for us&quot;, &quot;on our part&quot;. Here on earth, sectors of the Lord's body are against each other. But from the Lord's perspective, those who are not against Him are on His part. But speaking evil of the Lord personally is parallel here with being against <i>us</i>. And here we have a worrying implication. Attitudes to those in Christ are attitudes to Him. To be &quot;against&quot; any of them is to be against Him.</p><p>And so the Lord's attitude to John&rsquo;s disciples is very telling. He saw those who &ldquo;follow not us&rdquo; as being &ldquo;on our part&rdquo;, not losing their reward, as being the little ones who believed in Him; and He saw wisdom as being justified by <i>all</i> her children, be they His personal disciples or those of John (Mk. 9:38-41; Lk. 7:35). John&rsquo;s men had a wrong attitude to fellowship- they should have &lsquo;followed with&rsquo; the disciples of Jesus; and it would seem their doctrinal understanding of the Holy Spirit was lacking, although not wrong (Acts 19:1-5). Indeed, they are called there &ldquo;disciples&rdquo;, a term synonymous with all believers in Luke&rsquo;s writing. And the Lord too spoke in such an inclusive way towards them. No wonder His disciples had and have such difficulty grasping His inclusiveness and breadth of desire to fellowship and save.</p>